Kitabı oku: «Зов Ктулху / The Call of Cthulhu. Уровень 2», sayfa 2
In the elder time chosen men talked with the entombed Old Ones in dreams. Then something happened. The great stone city R’lyeh, with its monoliths and sepulchres, sank beneath the waves. The deep waters, full of the primal mystery, cut off the communication. No thought can pass through them. But memory never died. The high-priests say that the city will rise again when the stars are right. Then the black spirits of earth will come out of the earth, mouldy and shadowy, and full of dim rumours. But old Castro dared not speak much of them.
He became silent hurriedly and said nothing more. He curiously declined to mention the size of the Old Ones, too. Of the cult, he said that he thought the centre lay amid the pathless desert of Arabia, where Irem, the City of Pillars48, dreams hidden and untouched. It was not connected to the European witch-cult, and was virtually unknown beyond its members. No book ever mentioned it. Only in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, as the deathless Chinamen said were double meanings, which the initiated can read, especially the this couplet:
Legrasse was deeply impressed. He inquired about the historic affiliations of the cult. Castro, apparently, told the truth when he said that it was wholly secret. The authorities at Tulane University said nothing about either cult or image. So the detective came to the highest authorities in the country now and met only with the Greenland tale of Professor Webb.
The great interest aroused at the meeting by Legrasse’s tale. It echoed in the correspondence of those who attended; although was not mentioned in the formal publications of the society. Caution is the first care of scientists who often face charlatanry and imposture. Legrasse lent the image to Professor Webb. When Professor died, it was returned to him. I saw it not long ago. It is truly a terrible thing, and very similar to the dream-sculpture of young Wilcox.
It is no surprise that my uncle was excited by the tale of the sculptor. The fact that sensitive young man saw in his dreams these figure and hieroglyphics was very interesting. Professor Angell started an investigation immediately. Privately I suspected young Wilcox of a trickery. He could invent a series of dreams to heighten and continue the mystery. My rationalism made me think this way. So, after thoroughly studying the manuscript again and correlating the theosophical and anthropological notes with the cult narrative of Legrasse, I made a trip to Providence. I wanted to see the sculptor and accuse him of deceiving a learned and aged man.
Wilcox still lived alone in the Fleur-de-Lys Building in Thomas Street, a hideous Victorian imitation of seventeenth century Breton Architecture50. I found him at work in his rooms. I understood at once that his genius was indeed profound and authentic. I believe, one day he will be well-known as one of the great decadents. He has crystallized in clay and one day will repeat in marble nightmares and phantasies. Like those which Arthur Machen51 evokes in prose, and Clark Ashton Smith52 makes visible in verse and in painting.
He was dark and frail, a little bit unkempt. He asked me about my business without rising. When I told him who I was, he displayed some interest. My uncle excited his curiosity because he was studying his strange dreams, yet never explained the reason for the study. In a short time I became convinced of his absolute sincerity. He spoke of the dreams honestly. They influenced his art profoundly. He showed me a morbid statue whose contours almost shook me. He hasn’t seen the original of this thing except in his own dream bas-relief. The outlines formed themselves insensibly under his hands. It was, no doubt, the giant shape that he saw in delirium. But he really knew nothing of the hidden cult.
He talked of his dreams in a strangely poetic fashion. It made me imagine the damp Cyclopean city of slimy green stone – whose geometry, he said, was all wrong. He heard with frightened expectancy the ceaseless, half-mental calling from underground: “Cthulhu fhtagn”, “Cthulhu fhtagn.”
These words formed part of that dread ritual which told of dead Cthulhu’s dream-vigil in his stone vault at R’lyeh53. I felt deeply touched despite my rational beliefs. Wilcox, I was sure, heard of the cult in some casual way. He soon forgot it amidst the mass of his equally weird reading and imagining. Later it found subconscious expression in dreams, in the bas-relief, and in the terrible statue. The young man was slightly affected and slightly ill-mannered. I never liked that type, but I admitted both his genius and his honesty. I wished him all the success his talent promises when I left.
The matter of the cult still fascinated me. Sometimes I dreamed of earning fame from serious researches into its origins. I visited New Orleans, talked with Legrasse and other people of that old-time party. I saw the frightful image, and even questioned some mongrel prisoners. Old Castro, unfortunately, was dead. What I now heard was really no more than a detailed confirmation of what my uncle wrote before. It excited me once again. I felt sure that I touched a very real, very secret, and very ancient religion. Its discovery will make me a famous scholar. My attitude was absolutly materialistic (I wish it still were) and I discounted the coincidence between Willcox dreams and the cuttings collected by my grand-uncle.
One thing I began to suspect, and which I now fear I know, is that my uncle’s death was not natural. He fell on a narrow hill street. This street was swarming with foreign mongels. He fell after a careless push from a Negro sailor. I did not forget the mixed blood and marine background of the cult-members in Louisiana. I won’t be surprised to learn of poisoned needles and other ruthless secret methods. Legrasse and his men, it is true, are still alive; but in Norway a certain seaman who saw some strange things is dead. Maybe the deeper inquiries of my uncle came to sinister ears? I think Professor Angell died because he knew too much. Or because there was a chance for him to learn too much as well. And at the moment I knew much, too…
III. The Madness from the Sea
I almost ceased my inquiries into what Professor Angell called the “Cthulhu Cult”, and was visiting a learned friend in Paterson, New Jersey. He was the curator of a local museum and a famous mineralogist. One day I was examining the stones in a rear room of the museum. My eye noticed an odd picture in one of the old papers spread beneath the stones. It was the Australian journal, the Sydney Bulletin54, for April 18, 1925. There was a picture of a hideous stone image almost identical with that which Legrasse found in the swamp.
I read the article in detail. What I read was very important for my investigation. So I carefully tore it out. It read as follows:
MYSTERY DERELICT FOUND AT SEA
Vigilant Arrives With Helpless Armed New Zealand Yacht in Tow 55.
One Survivor and Dead Man Found Aboard. Tale of Desperate Battle and Deaths at Sea. Rescued Seaman Refuses Particulars of Strange Experience. Odd Idol Found in His Possession. Inquiry to Follow56.
The Morrison Co.’s freighter Vigilant57, bound from Valparaiso, arrived this morning at its wharf in Darling Harbour. It had in tow the battled and disabled but heavily armed steam yacht Alert of Dunedin, N.Z., which was sighted April 12th in S. Latitude 34°21’, W. Longitude 152°17’, with one living and one dead man aboard.
The Vigilant left Valparaiso March 25th. On April 2nd, exceptionally heavy storms and monster waves drove the ship considerably south of its course. On April 12th the derelict was sighted. One survivor in a half-delirious condition and one man who was evidently dead for more than a week were found. The living man was holding a horrible stone idol of unknown origin, about foot in height. The authorities at Sydney University, the Royal Society, and the Museum in College Street were unable to say anything about its origin. The survivor says he found it in the cabin of the yacht, in a small carved shrine.
This man told an exceedingly strange story of piracy and slaughter. He is Gustaf Johansen, a Norwegian. He is from the two-masted schooner Emma of Auckland, which sailed for Callao February 20th with a complement of eleven men. He says, the great storm of March 1st threw the Emma widely south of her course by. On March 22nd, in S. Latitude 49°51’ W. Longitude 128°34’, the ship encountered the Alert. It was manned by a queer and evil-looking crew of Kanakas and half-castes58. They ordered to turn back, Capt. Collins refused. The strange crew began to fire savagely and without warning. The schooner began to sink from shots beneath the water-line, but the Emma’s men managed to heave alongside their enemy and board it. They killed them all.
Three of the Emma’s men, including Capt. Collins and First Mate Green, were killed. The remaining eight under Second Mate Johansen continued to navigate the captured yacht. They were going in their original direction to see why they were ordered back The next day, it appears, they found and landed on a small island. None knew about it in that part of the ocean. Six of the men somehow died ashore. Johansen strangely says very little about this part of his story. Later, it seems, he and one companion boarded the yacht and tried to manage it. But they were driven by the storm of April 2nd. From that time till his rescue on the 12th the man remembers little. He does not even recall when William Briden, his companion, died. There was no apparent cause for Briden’s death. It happened probably due to excitement or exposure. The Alert was well known there as an island trader59. It bore evil reputation. It was owned by a curious group of half-castes. Their frequent meetings and night trips to the woods attracted curiosity. It started in great haste just after the storm and earth tremors of March 1st. Our Auckland correspondent gives the Emma and her crew an excellent reputation. He describes Johansen as a sober and worthy man. The admiralty will start an inquiry. They will try to make Johansen speak more freely than he did before.
This was all, together with the picture of the hellish image. What a train of ideas it started in my mind! Here was new information about the Cthulhu Cult! Here was the evidence that it had strange interests at sea as well as on land. Why did the hybrid crew order the Emma to sail back? What was the unknown island on which six of the Emma’s crew died? Why Johansen was so secretive? And most important, what deep connection was there, between these dates and events so carefully noted by my uncle?
March 1st – or February 28th according to the International Date Line60 – the earthquake and storm came. From Dunedin the Alert and her crew sailed eagerly. It looked as if somebody summoned it. On the other side of the earth poets and artists began to dream of a strange Cyclopean city while a young sculptor moulded in his sleep the form of the dreaded Cthulhu. March 23rd the crew of the Emma landed on an unknown island. They left six men dead. On that date the dreams of sensitive men became very vivid and darkened with dread of a giant monster’s malign pursuit. On that date architect went mad and a sculptor went suddenly into delirium! And what of this storm of April 2nd – the date on which all dreams of the strange city ceased? The date on which Wilcox recovered from the strange fever? An old Castro talked about the sunken, star-born Old Ones and their coming reign; their faithful cult and their mastery of dreams. In some way the second of April stopped monstrous menace, which began the siege of mankind’s soul.
That evening I took a train for San Francisco. In less than a month I was in Dunedin. There I found that little was known of the strange cult-members who spent their time in the old sea-taverns. But there was vague talk about one inland trip these mongrels made. During that trip faint drumming and red flame were noted on the distant hills. In Auckland I learned that Johansen returned with yellow hair turned white after a questioning at Sydney. Hereafter he sold his cottage in West Street and sailed with his wife to his old home in Oslo. He did not told much to his friends but they gave me his Oslo address.
After that I went to Sydney and talked with seamen and members of the vice-admiralty court but without result. I saw the Alert but gained nothing. The Alert was sold and now in commercial use. The crouching image with its cuttlefish head, dragon body, scaly wings, and hieroglyphed pedestal, was preserved in the Museum at Hyde Park. I studied it long and well. Geologists, the curator told me, found it a monstrous puzzle. They vowed that the rock like it did not exist. Then I remembered with a shudder the words that Old Castro told Legrasse about the Old Ones;
“They came from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.”
My rationalistic thinking was shaken. I decided to visit Mate Johansen in Oslo. Johansen lived, I discovered, in the Old Town. I made a brief taxi-trip. Then I knocked at the door of a neat and ancient building. A sad-faced woman in black came out and told me in broken English that Gustaf Johansen was dead.
It was his wife and she told me something. He did not live long after his return. The sea events in 1925 broke him. He told her no more than he told the public. But he left a long manuscript – of “technical matters” as he said – written in English. During a walk near the Gothenburg dock, a bundle of papers from an attic window knocked him down. Two Lascar sailors61 at once helped him, but before the ambulance arrived, he was dead. Physicians said that his death occurred due to a heart trouble and a weakened constitution.
I felt dark terror now, the terror that will never leave me. At least till I die, “accidentally” or otherwise. I persuaded the widow to get her husband’s “technical matters”. I bore the document away and began to read it on the London boat. It was a naive sailor’s effort at a diary – to recall day by day that last awful voyage. After I read this story I was unable to hear the sound of the waves anymore. But I will try to retell this story.
Johansen, thank God, did not know everything, even though he saw the city and the Thing. I shall never sleep calmly again when I think of the horrors that lurk ceaselessly behind life in time and in space. These blasphemies from elder stars dream beneath the sea and the nightmare cult is ready to let them loose when they have another chance.
Johansen’s voyage began just as he told it to the vice-admiralty. The Emma left Auckland on February 20th. The ship felt the full force of the earthquake-born tempest. Once more under control, the ship was making good progress. The Alert stopped the ship on March 22nd. I could feel the mate’s regret as he wrote of the bombardment and sinking. He speaks with significant horror of the dark cult-fiends on the Alert. Then they went forward driven by curiosity. They sailed in their captured yacht under Johansen’s command. The men saw a great stone pillar sticking out of the sea. In S. Latitude 47°9’, W. Longitude l23°43’, they came upon a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth’s supreme terror. It was the nightmare corpse-city of R’lyeh. This city was built in measureless ages behind history by the vast, loathsome creatures that came down from the dark stars. There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green slimy vaults. They were sending out at last the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive. These thoughts called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but he soon saw enough!
I suppose that only a single mountain-top, the hideous monolith-crowned citadel actually emerged from the waters. Here great Cthulhu was buried. When I think what else lies there I almost want to kill myself. Johansen and his men were awed by the cosmic majesty of this dripping Babylon of elder demons. They probably guessed that it was nothing of this planet. Awe at the unbelievable size of the greenish stone blocks, at the height of the great carven monolith, and at the identity of the colossal statues and bas-reliefs with the queer image found in the shrine on the Alert, is visible in every line of the frightened description. Johansen had no idea of futurism. But his description of the city was very similar to it: great stone surfaces, vast angles, horrible images and hieroglyphs. The whole geometry of this place was not normal, just like in Wilcox awful dream.
Johansen and his men landed at a sloping mud-bank on this monstrous Acropolis. They climbed slipperily up over titan oozy blocks. Even the sun seemed distorted. The menace was lurking in the corners of this carven rock.
It was Rodriguez the Portuguese62 who climbed up the foot of the monolith. He shouted of what he found. The rest followed him. They looked curiously at the immense carved door with the squid-dragon bas-relief. It was, Johansen said, like a great barn-door. But they could not decide whether it lay flat like a trap-door63 or slantwise like an outside cellar-door. As Wilcox said, the geometry of the place was all wrong. The sea and the ground were not horizontal, because the relative position of everything else seemed phantasmally variable.
Briden pushed at the stone in several places without result. Then Donovan studied the edge and pressed each point separately. He climbed along the grotesque stone moulding. The door was impossibly vast. Then, very softly and slowly, the acre-great panel began to go down; and they saw that it was balanced. Everyone watched the queer recession of the monstrously carven portal. In this prismatic distortion it moved in a diagonal way.
The aperture was black. The odour that rose from the newly opened depths was intolerable. Hawkins thought he heard a nasty, slopping sound down there. Everyone listened. Everyone was listening still when It appeared. It gropingly squeezed Its gelatinous green immensity through the black doorway into the tainted outside air of that poison city of madness64.
Of the six men who never reached the ship, two died of fear immediately. The Thing cannot be described. There is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy65. It contradicted all matter, force, and cosmic order. A mountain walked or stumbled. God! No wonder that across the earth a great architect went mad, and poor Wilcox raved with fever in that telepathic instant. The Thing of the idols, the green, sticky spawn of the stars, awaked to claim his own66. The stars were right again. What an age-old cult failed to do, a band of innocent sailors did by accident. After millions of years great Cthulhu was loose again. And It was ravening for delight.
The flabby claws swept three men up before anybody turned. They were Donovan, Guerrera, and Angstrom. Parker slipped as the other three were running to the boat. Johansen swears he was swallowed up by a masonry. When Briden and Johansen reached the boat, and pulled desperately for the Alert, the mountainous monstrosity flopped down the slimy stones and was floundering at the edge of the water.
Slowly, amidst the distorted horrors of that indescribable scene, the Alert began to sail. Then on the masonry of that shore great Cthulhu slid greasily into the water and began to pursue. Briden looked back and went mad. He was laughing till death found him one night in the cabin while Johansen was wandering deliriously.
But Johansen did not surrender. He knew that the Thing could surely overtake the Alert. So he set the engine for full speed, and reversed the wheel. The brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly. The awful squid-head came to the bowsprit but Johansen drove on relentlessly.
There was a horrific bursting as of an exploding bladder, a stench as of a thousand opened graves. There was a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was hidden by an acrid green cloud. And – God in heaven! The distance widened every second as the Alert gained impetus from its mounting steam.
That was all. After that Johansen only watched the idol in the cabin and prepared some food for himself and the laughing maniac. He did not try to navigate, for he was completely exhausted. Then came the storm of April 2nd. He lost his consciousness.
One day came rescue – the Vigilant, the vice-admiralty court, the streets of Dunedin, and the long voyage back home to the old house. He did not tell anything. Everybody would call him mad. He wrote of what he knew before death came. Death will be a boon if only it deletes the memories.
That was the document I read. Now I placed it in the tin box beside the bas-relief and the papers of Professor Angell. This record of mine will be placed with them. I do not think my life will be long. As my uncle went, as poor Johansen went, so I shall go. I know too much, and the cult still lives.
Cthulhu still lives, too, I suppose, again in that chasm of stone which shielded him since the sun was young. His accursed city is sunken once more. I know it because the Vigilant sailed over the spot after the April storm; but his ministers on earth still bellow and prance and slay around idol-capped monoliths in lonely places. Who knows the end? What rose may sink. What sank may rise. It waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men. A time will come… – but I must not and cannot think about it! Let me pray that, if I do not survive this manuscript, my executors let nobody read this.
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