Ramsey Campbell - The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

Thus it was that Taylor called on Daniel Norton. The man lived with his two sons in an old farmhouse, where they managed to exist off a small herd of sheep and a few poultry. Norton was halfdeaf and, as Hinds had mentioned, not too intelligent, so that Taylor irritated himself by speaking slowly and loudly. The other had begun to look disquieted during Taylor’s speech, and remained uneasy as he answered:

"Listen, young zur, ’teant as if I haven’t bin mixed up in terrible doin’s. I had a friend once as would go down to the Devil’s Steps, an’ he swore as he’d zoon have them Yuggoth ones about him, ministerin’ at every word he zpoke. He thought he had words as would overcome them on the Steps. But one day they found him in’t woods, and ’twas so horrible that them who carried him warn’t the same ever agin. His chest an’ throat wuz bust open, an’ his face wuz all blue. Those as knew, they do zay those up the Steps grabbed him an’ flew off with ’im into space, where ’is lungs bust.

"Wait a minute, zur. ’Tis dangerous up them Devil’s Steps. But there’s zumthin’ out in’t woods by the Zevernford Road that could give you wot you want, maybe, and it don’t hate men zo much as them from Yuggoth. You’ve maybe bin to it—’tis under a slab o’ rock, an’ the Voola ritual brings it — but did you think of askin’ for what you need? ’Tis easier t’ hold — you don’t even need Alhazred fer the right words, an’ it might get to them from Yuggoth fer you.”

"You say they have an outpost on the Devil’s Steps?” Taylor persisted.

"No, zur,” the farmer replied, "that’s all I’ll zay till you’ve bin an’ tried me advice.”

Taylor left, dissatisfied, and some nights later visited the titan slab in the woods west of the Severnford Road. But the ritual needed more than one participant; he heard something vast stirring below his feet, but nothing more.

The next day he drove again to the farmhouse off the Goatswood road. Norton did not conceal his displeasure on opening the door, but allowed the visitor to enter. Taylor’s shadow flickered across the seated farmer as he spoke. "You didn’t think I’d leave you alone when it didn’t awaken, did you?”

"What’d be the use if I come with you to it? If one don’t raise it, nor will two. An’ anyway, maybe you like t’ mess about wit’ them from Yuggoth, but I don’t. They zay they carry you off to Yuggoth an’ give you t’ what they’re afraid of. I don’t want to come near sumthin’ that might go t’ them. In fact, I want t’ give it all up fer good.”

"Something which they’re afraid of?” repeated Taylor, not remembering.

"It’s in the Revelations of Glaak i,” explained the other. "You saw mine—”

"Yes, that’s a point,” Taylor interrupted. "If you’re really going to give up witchcraft, you won’t be needing that book. My God, I’d forgotten all about it! Give me that and maybe I won’t ever bother you again!”

"You can have it an’ welcome,” said Norton. "But you mean that? You’ll keep away an’ let me stop playin’ round with things from Outside?”

"Yes, yes,” Taylor assured him, took the pile of dusty volumes which the farmer toppled into his arms, and struggled with them to the car. He drove home and there discovered that the book contained what he sought. It contained other relevant passages also, and he reread one which ran:

"Beyond the Zone of the Thirteen Faveolate Colossi lies Yuggoth, where dwell the denizens of many extraterrestrial realms. Yuggoth’s black streets have known the tread of malformed paws and the touch of misshapen appendages, and unviseagable shapes creep among its lightless towers. But few of the creatures of the rim-world are as feared as that survival from Yuggoth’s youth which remains in a pit beyond one of the cities. This survival few have seen, but the legend of the crustaceans tells of a city of green pyramids which hangs over a ledge far down in the dark. It is said that no mind can stand the sight of what occurs on that ledge at certain seasons.”

(But nothing can battle the power of the other name of Azathoth.)

So Taylor ignored this; and two days later he drove with climbing tools to the rock formation beyond Brichester. It stretched fully two hundred feet up in a series of steps to a plateau; from some way off the illusion of a giant staircase was complete, and legend had it that Satan came from the sky to walk the earth by way of those steps. But when Taylor parked in the road of which they formed one side, he saw how rough they were and how easy ascent would be. He left the car, stood staring up for a moment, and began to chip footholds.

The climb was tedious and precarious. Sometimes he slipped and hung for a minute over nothing. Once, a hundred feet up, he glanced down at the car, and for the rest of the climb tried to forget the speck of metal far below. Finally he hooked his hand over the edge, pulled himself up and over. Then he looked up.

In the center of the plateau stood three stone towers, joined by narrow catwalks of black metal between the roofs. They were surrounded by fungus — an alien species, a grey stem covered with twining leaves. It could not have been completely vegetable, either, for as Taylor stood up, the stems leaned in his direction and the leaves uncurled toward him.

He began to pick his way through the avenues of fungus, shrinking away when the clammy leaves stroked him, and at last hurrying into the cleared space around the central steeple. The tower was about thirty feet high, windowless and with a strangely angled doorway opening on stairs leading into blackness. However, Taylor had brought a torch, and shone it up the stairs as he entered. He did not like the way the darkness seemed to move beyond the torchlight, and would have preferred an occasional window, if only to remind him that he had not already reached Yuggoth. But the thought of the tok'l -bought immortality drove him on.

He had been ascending for some time when he noticed the hieroglyphics on the walls — all apparently indicating something around the bend in the passage. He turned the bend, and saw that the steps ended some feet above — not at a wall or solid barrier, but the torch-beam would not penetrate beyond. This must be where the lizard-crustaceans connected Earth with Yuggoth; and the other side was Yuggoth itself.

He threw himself at the barrier, plunged through, cried out and fell. It was as if his body had been torn into atoms and recombined; only a memory remained of something he had no conviction of undergoing. He lay for a few minutes before he was able to stand up and look about.

He was on a tower roof above a city. He directed the torch-beam downward, and realized that there was no way down the smooth wall; but, remembering the catwalks, he guessed that the building at the end of each row would afford some means of descent. This seemed the only way the crustaceans could descend, for the Revelations engravings had shown no method of flight. He was unnerved by the abyss below the catwalk, but could not relieve it by his torch.

There were five narrow metal walks to be traversed. Taylor did not notice their odd shape until he was out on the first. It was slightly convex in section, and at intervals there protruded outward corrugated sections at an angle. He found it very difficult to change from equilibrium on the convex portions to balance on the angled stretches, and often slid to one side, but he reached the end finally, rounded the gaping blackness in the center of the roof and set out on the next walk. He had got the knack by now, and slipped less.

One thing disquieted him; the total silence of the nighted city. The clang of his footsteps broke the silence like pebbles dropped into some subterranean sea. Not even distant noises were audible, yet it seemed impossible that such a densely-populated world should be so silent. Even if, improbably, all the citizens were on Earth, surely some sound should occasionally drift from the distance. It was almost as if the inhabitants had fled some nightmare invasion of the city.