Benutzer:Mr.Lovecraft/The Return of Hastur

The Return of Hastur eine 1939 veröffentlichte Kurzgeschichte des US-amerikanischen Schriftstellers August Derleth. The Return of Hastur ist Teil des von Howard Phillips Lovecraft erdachten Cthulhu Mythos und spielt in der fiktiven Stadt Arkham, Massachusetts

Eigentlich begann es schon vor langer Zeit: wie lange, wagte ich nicht zu sagen: aber was meine eigene Verbindung mit dem Fall betrifft, der meine Praxis ruiniert und mir die Zweifel der Ärzteschaft an meiner Zurechnungsfähigkeit eingebracht hat, so begann sie mit dem Tod von Amos Tuttle. Es war in einer Nacht im Spätwinter, als ein Südwind den Frühling ankündigte. Ich war an jenem Tag im alten, sagenumwobenen Arkham gewesen; er hatte von meiner Anwesenheit dort durch seinen behandelnden Arzt Ephraim Sprague erfahren und diesen veranlasst, das Lewiston House anzurufen und mich zu diesem düsteren Anwesen an der Aylesbury Road nahe der Innsmouth Turnpike zu bringen. Es war kein Ort, an den ich gerne ging, aber der alte Mann hatte mich gut dafür bezahlt, seine Mürrischkeit und Exzentrik zu tolerieren, denn Sprague hatte mir klar gemacht, dass er im Sterben lag: nur noch eine Frage von Stunden. Und das war er auch. Er hatte kaum noch die Kraft, Sprague aus dem Zimmer zu befördern und mit mir zu sprechen, wenngleich seine Stimme deutlich genug und ohne große Anstrengung zu hören war. " Sie kennen meinen Willen", sagte er. "Halten Sie sich buchstabengetreu daran." Dieses Testament war ein Streitpunkt zwischen uns gewesen, weil es vorsah, dass das Haus zerstört werden musste - nicht abgerissen, sondern vernichtet -, bevor sein Erbe und einziger überlebender Neffe, Paul Tuttle, Anspruch auf seinen Nachlass erheben konnte, und zwar zusammen mit bestimmten Büchern, die in seinen letzten Anweisungen mit Regalnummern bezeichnet waren. An seinem Sterbebett war kein Platz, um diese mutwillige Zerstörung neu zu diskutieren; ich nickte, und er akzeptierte es. Hätte ich doch nur ohne zu fragen gehorcht!

"Nun denn", fuhr er fort, " im Erdgeschoss gibt es ein Buch, das Sie in die Bibliothek der Miskatonic Universität zurückbringen müssen." Er gab mir den Titel. Damals sagte mir das Buch wenig, aber inzwischen bedeutet es mehr, als ich in Worte fassen kann - ein Symbol des uralten Grauens, der wahnsinnigen Dinge jenseits des dünnen Schleiers des prosaischen Alltags - die lateinische Übersetzung des verabscheuten Necronomicon des verrückten Arabers, Abdul Alhazred.

Ich konnte das Buch recht leicht finden. Während der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte seines Lebens hatte Amos Tuttle in zunehmender Abgeschiedenheit zwischen Büchern gelebt, die er aus allen Teilen der Welt gesammelt hatte: alte, wurmzerfressene Texte mit Titeln, die einen weniger hart gesottenen Menschen hätten abschrecken können - das düstere De Vermis Mysteriis von Ludvig Prinn, Comte d'Erlettes schreckliche Cultes des Ghoules, von Junzts verdammenswerte Unaussprechliche Kulte. Damals wusste ich noch nicht, wie selten diese Werke waren, noch verstand ich die unschätzbare Bedeutung bestimmter fragmentarischer Stücke: das schreckliche Buch von Eibon, die entsetzlichen Pnakotischen Manuskripte und der gefürchtete R'lyeh-Text, für die er, wie ich nach dem Tod von Amos Tuttle bei einer Prüfung seiner Konten feststellte, eine sagenhafte Summe bezahlt hatte. Aber nirgends fand ich eine so hohe Summe wie die, die er für den R'lyeh-Text bezahlt hatte, der ihm irgendwo aus dem dunklen Inneren Asiens zugefallen war; seinen Unterlagen zufolge hatte er dafür nicht weniger als einhunderttausend Dollar bezahlt; zusätzlich dazu gab es in seinem Konto in Bezug auf dieses vergilbte Manuskript einen Vermerk, der mich damals irritierte, an den ich mich aber noch auf unheilvolle Weise erinnern sollte - nach der oben genannten Summe hatte Amos Tuttle in seiner krakeligen Hand geschrieben: Zusätzlich zur Verheißung.

Diese Tatsachen kamen erst ans Licht, nachdem Paul Tuttle in den Besitz des Necronomicon gelangt war, doch zuvor ereigneten sich mehrere seltsame Vorfälle, die meinen Verdacht hinsichtlich der landläufigen Legenden über einen mächtigen übernatürlichen Zauber, der dem alten Haus anhaftete, hätten erwecken müssen. Die erste dieser Begebenheiten war im Vergleich zu den anderen von geringer Bedeutung: Als ich das Necronomicon in die Bibliothek der Miskatonic University in Arkham zurückbrachte, wurde ich von einem wortkargen Bibliothekar direkt in das Büro des Direktors, Dr. Llanfer, geführt, der mich unverblümt aufforderte, zu erklären, warum ich das Buch in Händen hielt. Ich zögerte nicht, dies zu tun, und erfuhr so, dass der seltene Band nie aus der Bibliothek ausgeliehen werden durfte, sondern dass Amos Tuttle ihn bei einem seiner seltenen Besuche entwendet hatte, nachdem seine Versuche, Doktor Llanfer zu überreden, ihm die Ausleihe zu gestatten, gescheitert waren. Zudem war Amos klug genug gewesen, im Vorfeld eine erstaunlich gute Imitation des Buches anzufertigen, mit einem Einband, nahezu makellos in seiner Ähnlichkeit, und der tatsächlichen Wiedergabe des Titels sowie der ersten Seiten des Textes, die er aus dem Gedächtnis wiedergegeben hatte. Nachdem er das Buch des verrückten Arabers ausgehändigt bekommen hatte, hatte er seine Attrappe gegen das Original ausgetauscht und war mit einem der beiden Exemplare dieses verachteten Werkes verschwunden, die auf dem nordamerikanischen Kontinent verfügbar waren, einem der fünf Exemplare, von denen bekannt war, dass sie auf der Welt existierten.

Das zweite dieser Ereignisse war ein wenig verblüffender, obwohl es die Züge herkömmlicher Spukhausgeschichten trägt. Sowohl Paul Tuttle als auch ich hörten zu ungewöhnlichen Zeiten in dem Haus, vor allem nachts, während die Leiche seines Onkels dort lag, das Geräusch dumpfer Schritte, die allerdings etwas Seltsames an sich hatten: Sie waren nicht wie Schritte, die irgendwo im Haus zu hören waren, sondern wie die Schritte eines Lebewesens von einer Größe, die fast jenseits des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermögens lag, das sich tief unter der Erde bewegte so dass das Geräusch aus den Tiefen der Erde das regelrecht Haus zum Vibrieren brachte. Und wenn ich von Schritten spreche, dann nur aus Mangel an einem besseren Wort, um die Geräusche zu beschreiben, denn sie klangen nicht wie Schritte, sondern wie eine Art schwammiges, geleeartiges, schmatzendes Geräusch, erzeugt durch die Kraft von so viel Gewicht dahinter, dass das darauf folgende Beben der Erde an diesem Ort uns auf die Weise mitgeteilt wurde, wie wir es hörten. Das war alles, und bald war alles zu Ende, zufälligerweise in den Stunden der Dämmerung, als der Leichnam von Amos Tuttle abgeholt wurde, vierundvierzig Stunden früher als geplant. Die Geräusche taten wir als Erdbewegungen entlang der fernen Küste ab, nicht nur, weil wir ihnen keine allzu große Bedeutung beimaßen, sondern auch wegen des letzten Ereignisses, das stattfand, bevor Paul Tuttle das alte Haus an der Aylesbury Road offiziell in Besitz nahm. Dieses letzte Ereignis war das schockierendste von allen, und von den dreien, die es wussten, bin nur ich nun noch am Leben, denn Dr. Sprague, der, obwohl er nur einen Blick darauf geworfen hatte verlangte die Leiche sofort zu begragen, ist seit einem Monat tot. Und dies taten wir auch, denn die Veränderung an Amos Tuttles Körper war unvorstellbar grausig und besonders entsetzlich in ihrer Wirkung, denn der Körper verfiel nicht in eine sichtbare Verwesung, sondern veränderte sich auf subtile Art und Weise, indem er von einem seltsamen Schimmer überzogen wurde, der sich allmählich zu einem fast schwarzen Ton verdichtete, außerdem zeigten sich auf der Haut seiner geschwollenen Hände und seines Gesichts winzige, schuppenartige Wucherungen.

Auch die Form seines Kopfes veränderte sich; er schien sich zu verlängern und ein merkwürdiges, fischähnliches Aussehen anzunehmen, begleitet von einer vagen Ausdünstung zähen Fischgeruchs. Dass diese Veränderungen keine reine Einbildung waren, wurde uns auf schockierende Weise bestätigt, als der Leichnam später an jenem Ort gefunden wurde, wohin ihn sein schändlicher Nachkomme gebracht hatte. Und dort, wo er schließlich der Fäulnis anheimfiel, erblickten andere, die gnädigerweise nicht wussten, was zuvor geschehen war, mit mir die schrecklichen, bedrohlichen Veränderungen, die sich ereignet hatten. Während Amos Tuttle in seinem Haus ruhte, gab es keine Anzeichen für bevorstehende Ereignisse; wir versiegelten den Sarg schnell und beeilten uns, ihn in das efeubewachsene Tuttle-Mausoleum auf dem Arkham-Friedhof zu bringen.

Paul Tuttle war zu diesem Zeitpunkt Ende vierzig, aber wie so viele Männer seiner Generation hatte er das Gesicht und die Gestalt eines jungen Mannes in seinen Zwanzigern. Der einzige Hinweis auf sein Alter waren die schwachen Spuren von Grau im Haar seines Schnurrbartes und seiner Schläfen. Er war ein großer, dunkelhaariger Mann mit leichtem Übergewicht und strahlend blauen Augen, die trotz jahrelanger wissenschaftlicher Forschung nicht die Notwendigkeit einer Brille aufwiesen. Auch war er nicht völlig unerfahren in Rechtsfragen, denn er machte mir schnell klar, dass er das Testament anfechten würde, wenn ich als Testamentsvollstrecker seines Onkels nicht bereit wäre, die Klausel in seinem Testament zu streichen, die die Zerstörung des Hauses in der Aylesbury Road vorsah, und zwar mit der berechtigten Begründung, Amos Tuttle sei unzurechnungsfähig. Ich wies ihn darauf hin, dass er allein gegen Dr. Sprague und mich stehe, war aber gleichzeitig nicht blind für die Tatsache, dass die Unzumutbarkeit der Forderung uns sehr wohl zum Verhängnis werden könnte; außerdem hielt ich selbst die Klausel in dieser Hinsicht für erstaunlich überzogen, was die geforderte Zerstörung betraf, und war nicht bereit, wegen einer so geringfügigen Angelegenheit einen Rechtsstreit auszufechten.

Hätte ich jedoch das Kommende voraussehen können, hätte ich mir das Grauen, das folgen würde, ausmalen können, wäre ich Amos Tuttles letztem Wunsch nachgekommen, unabhängig von der Entscheidung eines Gerichts. Doch eine solche Voraussicht war mir nicht gegeben. Wir suchten Richter Wilton auf, Tuttle und ich, und trugen ihm die Angelegenheit vor. Er stimmte mit uns überein, dass die Zerstörung des Hauses unnötig sei, und mehr als einmal deutete er an, dass er Paul Tuttles Glauben an den Wahnsinn seines verstorbenen Onkels teilte. Der alte Mann ist schon so lange verrückt, wie ich ihn kenne", sagte er trocken.

Und was Sie betrifft, Haddon, können Sie sich in den Zeugenstand begeben und schwören, dass er absolut zurechnungsfähig war?"

Da ich mich mit einem gewissen Unbehagen an den Diebstahl des Necronomicon aus der Miskatonic University erinnerte, musste ich zugeben, dass ich das nicht konnte. So nahm Paul Tuttle das Anwesen an der Aylesbury Road in Besitz, und ich kehrte in meine Anwaltskanzlei in Boston zurück, nicht unzufrieden mit dem Verlauf der Dinge, aber doch nicht ohne ein lauerndes, schwer zu definierendes Unbehagen, ein heimtückisches Gefühl der bevorstehenden Tragödie, das nicht zuletzt durch die Erinnerung daran genährt wurde, was wir in Amos Tuttles Sarg gesehen hatten, bevor wir ihn versiegelt und in der jahrhundertealten Gruft auf dem Arkham-Friedhof eingeschlossen hatten.

Es dauerte einige Zeit, bis ich die Satteldächer und georgianischen Balustraden des von Hexen verfluchten Arkham wiedersah, ehe ich im Auftrag eines Klienten dorthin reiste, der darum bat, dafür zu sorgen, dass sein Besitz im alten Innsmouth vor den Agenten der Regierung und der Polizei geschützt wurde, die die gemiedene und verfluchte Stadt in Besitz genommen hatten. Und dies obgleich seit der mysteriösen Sprengung von Gebäudeblöcken am Wasser und eines Teils des vom Schrecken gezeichneten Teufelsriffs im Meer einige Monate vergangen waren - ein Geheimnis, das seither sorgfältig gehütet und verborgen wurde, auch wenn ich von einer Veröffentlichung erfuhr, die angeblich die wahren Fakten des Innsmouth-Horrors wiedergab - ein privat veröffentlichtes Manuskript eines Autors aus Providence. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war es unmöglich, nach Innsmouth zu fahren, da der Geheimdienst alle Straßen gesperrt hatte; ich wurde jedoch bei den zuständigen Personen vorstellig und erhielt die Zusicherung, dass das Anwesen meines Klienten vollständig in Sicherheit sei, da es weit vom Ufer entfernt liege; also kümmerte ich mich um andere kleine Angelegenheiten in Arkham.

An diesem Tag ging ich zum Mittagessen in ein kleines Restaurant in der Nähe der Miskatonic University und während ich dort war, hörte ich, eine vertraute Stimme zu mir sprechen. Ich sah auf und erblickte Doktor Llanfer, den Direktor der Universitätsbibliothek. Er schien etwas aufgeregt zu sein, denn seine Gesichtszüge verrieten deutlich seine Besorgnis. Ich lud ihn ein, sich zu mir zu setzen, aber er lehnte ab; schließlich setzte er sich doch auf die Stuhlkante. "Waren Sie bei Paul Tuttle?", fragte er unvermittelt. "Ich dachte daran, heute Nachmittag zu ihm zu gehen", antwortete ich. "Stimmt etwas nicht?"

Er errötete ein wenig schuldbewusst. "Das kann ich nicht sagen", antwortete er präzise. "Aber in Arkham kursieren einige unangenehme Gerüchte. Und das Necronomicon ist wieder verschwunden."

"Gütiger Himmel! Sie wollen doch nicht etwa Paul Tuttle beschuldigen, es gestohlen zu haben?" erwiderte ich halb verwundert, halb amüsiert. "Ich kann mir nicht wirklich vorstellen, wozu er es brauchen könnte." "Trotzdem hat er es", beharrte Doktor Llanfer. "Aber ich glaube nicht, dass er es gestohlen hat, und ich möchte auch nicht so verstanden werden. Ich bin der Meinung, dass einer unserer Angestellten es ihm gegeben hat und nun zögert, die Ungeheuerlichkeit seines Irrtums zuzugeben. Wie dem auch sei, das Buch ist nicht wieder aufgetaucht, und ich fürchte, wir werden dem nachgehen müssen." "Ich könnte ihn danach fragen", sagte ich. "Wenn Sie das tun würden, bitte gerne", antwortete Doktor Llanfer ein wenig ungeduldig, "ich nehme an, Sie haben noch nichts von den Gerüchten gehört, die hier kursieren?" Ich schüttelte den Kopf. "Wahrscheinlich sind sie nur die Ausgeburt irgendeines phantasiebegabten Geistes", fuhr er fort, aber seine Miene verriet, dass er nicht bereit oder in der Lage war, eine so prosaische Erklärung zu akzeptieren. "Es scheint, dass Reisende entlang der Aylesbury Road spät in der Nacht seltsame Geräusche gehört haben, die offenbar vom Tuttle-Haus ausgingen."

"Welche Geräusche?" fragte ich, nicht ohne sogleich besorgt zu sein. "Offensichtlich Schritte; aber ich verstehe, dass niemand das mit Sicherheit sagen würde, außer einem jungen Mann, der sie als klitschig bezeichnete und meinte, sie hörten sich an, als ob etwas Großes in der Nähe durch Schlamm oder Wasser laufen würde." Die seltsamen Geräusche, die Paul Tuttle und ich in der Nacht nach Amos Tuttles Tod gehört hatten, waren aus meinem Gedächtnis verschwunden, aber bei der Erwähnung von Schritten durch Doktor Llanfer kehrte die Erinnerung an das Gehörte in vollem Umfang zurück. Ich fürchte, ich hätte mich ein wenig verraten, denn Doktor Llanfer bemerkte mein plötzliches Interesse; glücklicherweise deutete er es als Zeichen dafür, dass ich tatsächlich etwas von diesen Gerüchten gehört hatte, ungeachtet meiner gegenteiligen Aussage. Ich entschied mich ihn ihn in dieser Hinsicht nicht zu berichtigen, und verspürte zugleich ein plötzliches Verlangen, nichts mehr davon zu hören; daher drängte ich ihn nicht zu weiteren Einzelheiten. Er erhob sich, alsbald zu seinen Pflichten zurückzukehren, und verließ mich mit meinem Versprechen, Paul Tuttle nach dem fehlenden Buch zu fragen, das mir noch immer in den Ohren lag.

His story, however slight it was, nevertheless sounded within me a note of alarm; I could not help recalling the numerous small things that held to memory—the steps we had heard, the odd clause in Amos Tuttle’s will, the awful metamorphosis in Amos Tuttle’s corpse. There was already then a faint suspicion in my mind that some sinister chain of events was becoming manifest here; my natural curiosity rose, though not without a certain feeling of distaste, a conscious desire to withdraw, and the recurrence of that strange, insidious conviction of impending tragedy. But I determined to see Paul Tuttle as early as possible.

My work in Arkham consumed the afternoon, and it was not until dusk that I found myself standing before the massive oaken door of the old Tuttle house on Aylesbury Road. My rather peremptory knock was answered by Paul himself, who stood, lamp held high in hand, peering out into the growing night. “Haddon!” he exclaimed, throwing the door wider. “Come in!” That he was genuinely glad to see me I could not doubt, for the note of enthusiasm in his voice precluded any other supposition. The heartiness of his welcome also served to confirm me in my intention not to speak of the rumors I had heard, and to proceed about an inquiry after the Necronomicon at my own good time. I remembered that just prior to his uncle’s death, Tuttle had been working on a philological treatise relating to the growth of the Sac Indian language, and determined to inquire about this paper as if nothing else were of moment.

“You’ve had supper, I suppose,” said Tuttle, leading me down the hall and into the library. I said that I had eaten in Arkham. He put the lamp down upon a bookladen table, pushing some papers to one side as he did so. Inviting me to sit down, he resumed the seat he had evidently left to answer my knock. I saw now that he was somewhat disheveled, and that he had permitted his beard to grow. He had also taken on more weight, doubtless as a consequence of strictly enforced scholarship, with all its attendant confinement to the house and lack of physical exercise. “How fares the Sac treatise?” I asked. “I’ve put that aside,” he said shortly. “I may take it up later. For the present, I’ve struck something far more important—just how important I cannot yet say.”

I saw now that the books on the table were not the usual scholarly tomes I had seen on his Ipswich desk, but with some faint apprehension observed that they were the books condemned by the explicit instructions of Tuttle’s uncle, as a glance at the vacant spaces on the proscribed shelves clearly corroborated. Tuttle turned to me almost eagerly and lowered his voice as if in fear of being overheard. “As a matter of fact, Haddon, it’s colossal—a gigantic feat of the imagination; only for this: I’m no longer certain that it is imaginative, indeed, I’m not. I wondered about that clause in my uncle’s will; I couldn’t understand why he should want this house destroyed, and rightly surmised that the reason must lie somewhere in the pages of those books he so carefully condemned.” He waved a hand at the incunabula before him.

“So I examined them, and I can tell you I have discovered things of such incredible strangeness, such bizarre horror, that I hesitate sometimes to dig deeper into the mystery. Frankly, Haddon, it is the most outré matter I’ve ever come upon, and I must say it involved considerable research, quite apart from these books Uncle Amos collected.” “Indeed,” I said dryly. “And I dare say you've had to do considerable trayeling?” He shook his head. “None at all, apart from one trip to Miskatonic University Library. The fact is, I found I could be served just as well by mail. You'll remember those papers of uncle’s? Well, I discovered among them that Uncle Amos paid a hundred thousand for a certain bound manuscript—bound in human skin, incidentally—together with a cryptic line: in addition to the promise. 1 began to ask myself what promise Uncle Amos could have made, and to whom; whether to the man or woman who had sold him this R’lyeh Text or to some other. I proceeded forthwith to search out the name of the man who had sold him the book, and presently found it with his address: some Chinese priest from inner Tibet: and wrote to him. His reply reached me a week ago.”

He bent away and rummaged briefly among the papers on his desk, until he found what he sought and handed it to me. “I wrote in my uncle’s name, not trusting entirely in the transaction, and wrote, moreover, as if I had forgotten or had a hope to avoid the promise,” he continued. “His reply is fully as cryptic as my uncle’s notation.” Indeed, it was so, for the crumpled paper that was handed to me bore, in a strange, stilted script, but one line, without signature or date: To afford a haven for Him Who is not to be Named.

I dare say I looked up at Tuttle with my wonderment clearly mirrored in my eyes, for he smiled before he replied. “Means nothing to you, eh? No more did it to me, when first I saw it. But not for long. In order to understand what follows, you should know at least a brief outline of the mythology— if indeed it is only mythology—in which this mystery is rooted. My Uncle Amos apparently knew and believed all about it, for the various notes scattered in the margins of his proscribed books bespeak a knowledge far beyond mine. Apparently the mythology springs from a common source with our own legendary Genesis, but only by a very thin resemblance; sometimes I am tempted to say that this mythology is far older than any other—certainly in its implications it goes far beyond, being cosmic and ageless, for its beings are of two natures, and two only: the Old or Ancient Ones, the Elder Gods, of cosmic good, and those of cosmic evil, bearing many names, and themselves of different groups, as if associated with the elements and yet transcending them: for there are the Water Beings, hidden in the depths; those of Air that are the primal lurkers beyond time; those of Earth, horrible animate survivals of distant eons. Incredible time ago, the Old Ones banished from the cosmic places all the Evil Ones, imprisoning them in many places; but in time these Evil Ones spawned hellish minions who set about preparing for their return to greatness. The Old Ones are nameless, but their power is and will apparently always be great enough to check that of the others.

Now, among the Evil Ones there is apparently often conflict, as among lesser beings. The Water Beings oppose those of Air; the Fire Beings oppose Earth Beings, but nevertheless, they together hate and fear the Elder Gods and hope always to defeat them in some future time. Among my Uncle Amos’s papers there are many fearsome names written in his crabbed script: Great Cthulhu, the Lake of Hali, Tsathoggua, Y og-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, ‘Azathoth, Hastur the Unspeakable, Yuggoth, Aldones, Thale, Aldebaran, the Hyades, Carcosa, and others: and it is possible to divide some of these names into vaguely suggestive classes from those notes which are explicable to me—though many present insoluble mysteries I cannot hope as yet to penetrate; and many, too, are written in a language I do not know, together with cryptic and oddly frightening symbols and signs. But through what I have learned, it is possible to know that Great Cthulhu is of the Water Beings, even as Hastur is of the Beings that stalk the star-spaces; and it is possible to gather from vague hints in these forbidden books where some of these beings are. So I can believe that in this mythology, Great Cthulhu was banished to a place beneath the seas of Earth, while Hastur was hurled into outer space, into that place where the black stars hang, which is indicated as Aldebaran of the Hyades, which is the place mentioned by Chambers, even as he repeats the Carcosa of Bierce.

haven is, or what manner of place it may be, has not thus far been my concern, though I can guess, perhaps. This is not the time for guessing, and yet it would seem, from certain other evidence at hand, that there may be some permissible deductions made. The first and most important of these is of a double nature—ergo, something unforeseen prevented the return of Hastur within my uncle’s lifetime, and yet some other being has made itself manifest.” Here he looked at me with unusual frankness and not a little nervousness. “As for the evidence of this manifestation, I would rather not at this time go into it. Suffice it to say that I believe I have such evidence at hand. I return to my original premise, then.

“Among the few marginal notations made by my uncle, there are two or three especially remarkable ones in the R’lyeh Text; indeed, in the light of what is known or can justifiably be guessed, they are sinister and ominous notes.”

So speaking, he opened the ancient manuscript and turned to a place quite close to the beginning of the narrative. “Now attend me, Haddon,” he said, and I rose and bent over him to look at the spidery, almost illegible script that I knew for Amos Tuttle’s. “Observe the underscored line of text: Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyech wgah’ nagl fhtagn, and what follows it inmy uncle’s unmistakable hand: His minions preparing the way, and he no longer dreaming? and at a more recent date, to judge by the shakiness of his hand, the single abbreviation: Jnns/ Obviously, this means nothing without a translation of the text. Failing this at the moment I first saw this note, I turned my attention to the parenthetical notation, and within a short while solved its meaning as a reference to a“Coming upon this communication from the priest in Tibet in the light of these things, surely one fact must come clearly forth: Haddon, surely, beyond the shadow of a doubt, He Who is not to be Named can be none other than Hastur the Unspeakable!” popular magazine, Weird Tales, for February, 1928. Ihave it here.”

HE OPENED the magazine against the meaningless text, partially concealing the lines which had begun to take on an uncanny atmosphere of eldritch age beneath my eyes, and there beneath Paul Tuttle’s hand lay the first page of a story so obviously belonging to this unbelievable mythology that I could not repress a start of astonishment. The title, only partly covered by his hand, was The Call of Cthulhu, by H. P. Lovecraft. But Tuttle did not linger over the first page; he turned well into the heart of the story before he paused and presented to my gaze the identical, unreadable line that lay beside the crabbed script of Amos Tuttle in the incredibly rare R’lyeh Text upon which the magazine reposed. And there, only a paragraph below, appeared what purported to be a translation of the utterly unknown language of the Text: In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.

“There you have it,” resumed Tuttle with some satisfaction. “Cthulhu, too, waited for the time of his resurgence— how many cons, no one may know; but my uncle has questioned whether Cthulhu still lies dreaming, and following this, has written and doubly underscored an abbreviation which can only stand for Innsmouth! This, together with the ghastly things half hinted in this revealing story purporting to be only fiction, opens up a vista of undreamed horror, of age-old evil.” “Good Heaven!” I exclaimed involuntarily. “Surely you can’t think this fantasy has come to life?” Tuttle turned and gave me a strangely distant look. “What J think doesn’t matter, Haddon,” he replied gravely. “But there is one thing I would The sudden cessation of his voice startled me; there was something hypnotic about his eager whisper, and something too that filled me with a conviction far beyond the power of Paul Tuttle’s words. Somewhere, deep within the recesses of my mind, a chord had been struck, a mnemonic connection I could not dismiss nor trace and which left me with a feeling as of limitless age, a cosmic bridge into another place and time. “That seems logical,” I said at last, cautiously. “Logical! Haddon, it is; it must be!” he exclaimed. “Granting it,” I said, “what then?” “Why, granting it,” he went on quickly, “we have conceded that my Uncle Amos promised to make ready a haven in preparation for the return of Hastur from whatever region of outer space now imprisons him. Where that like very much to know—what happened at Innsmouth? What has happened there for decades past that people have shunned it so? Why has this once prosperous port sunk into oblivion, half its houses empty, its property practically worthless? And why was it necessary for Government men to blow up row after row of the waterfront dwellings and warehouses? Lastly, for what earthly reason did they send a submarine to torpedo the marine spaces beyond Devil Reef just out of Innsmouth ?” “I know nothing of that,” I replied. But he paid no heed; his voice rose a little, uncertain and trembling, and he said, “I can tell you, Haddon. It is even as my Uncle Amos has written: Great Cthulhu has risen again!” ; For a moment I was shaken; then I said, “But it is Hastur for whom he waited.” “Precisely,” agreed Tuttle in a clipped, professorial voice. “Then I should like to know who or what it is that walks in the earth in the dark hours when Fomalhaut has risen and the Hyades are in the east!”

With this, he abruptly changed the subject; he began to ask me questions about myself and my practise, and presently, when I rose to go, he asked me to stay the night. This I consented finally, and with some reluctance, to do, whereupon he departed at once to make a room ready for me. I took the opportunity thus afforded to examine his desk more closely for the Necronomicon missing from the library of Miskatonic University. It was not on his desk, but, crossing to the shelves, I found it there. I had just taken it down and was examining it to make certain of its identity, when Tuttle reentered the room. His quick eyes darted to the book in my hands, and he half smiled. “I wish you'd take that back to Doctor Llanfer when you go in the morning, Haddon,” he said casually. “Now that I’ve copied the text, I have no further use for it.” “I'll do that gladly,” I said, relieved that the matter could so easily be settled. Shortly after, I retired to the room on the second floor which he had prepared for me. He accompanied me as far as the door, and there paused briefly, uncertain of speech ready for his tongue and yet not permitted to pass his lips; for he turned once or twice, bade me good-night before he spoke what weighed upon his thoughts: “By the way—if you hear anything in the night, don’t be alarmed, Haddon. Whatever it is, it’s harmless—as yet.” It was not until he had gone and I was alone in my room that the significance of what he had said and the way he had said it dawned upon me. It grew upon me then that this was confirmation of the wild rumors that had penetrated Arkham, and that Tuttle spoke not entirely without fear. I undressed slowly and thoughtfully, and got into the pajamas Tuttle had laid out for me, without deviating for an instant from the preoccupation with the weird mythology of Amos Tuttle’s ancient books that held my mind. Never quick to pass judgment, I was not prone to do so now; despite the apparent absurdity of the structure, it was still sufficiently well erected to merit more than a casual scrutiny. And it was clear to me that Tuttle was more than half convinced of its truth. This in itself was more than enough to give me pause, for Paul Tuttle had distinguished himself time and again for the thoroughness of his researches, and his published papers had not been challenged for even their most minor detail. As a result of facing these facts, I was prepared to admit at least that there was some basis for the mythology-structure outlined to me by Tuttle, but as to its truth or error, of course I was in no position at that time to commit myself even within the confines of my own mind; for once a man concedes or condemns a thing within his mind, it is doubly, nay triply, difficult to rid himself of his conclusion, however ill-advised it may subsequently prove to be. Thinking thus, I got into bed, and lay there awaiting sleep. The night had deepened and darkened, though I could see through the flimsy curtain at the window that the stars were out, Andromeda high in the east, and the constellations of autumn beginning to mount the sky. I was on the edge of sleep when I was startled awake again by a sound which had been present for some time, but which had only just then been borne ir upon me with all its significance: the faintly trembling step of some gigantic creature vibrating all through the house, though the sound of it came not from within the house, but from the east, and for a confused moment I thought of something risen from the sea and walking along the shore in the wet sand. But this illusion passed when I raised myself on one elbow and listened more intently. For a moment there was no sound whatever; then it came again, irregularly, broken—a step, a pause, two steps in fairly quick succession, an odd sucking noise. Disturbed, I got up and went to the open window. The night was warm, and the air still almost sultry; far to the northeast a beacon cut an arc upon the sky, and from the distant north came the faint drone of a night plane. It was already past midnight; low in the east shone red Aldebaran and the Pleiades, but I did not at that time, as I did later, connect the disturbances I heard to the appearance of the Hyades above the horizon. The odd sounds, meanwhile, continued unabated, and it was borne in upon me presently that they were indeed approaching the house, however slow their progress. And that they came from the direction of the sea I could not doubt, for in this place there were no configurations of the earth that might have thrown any sound out of directional focus. I began to think again of those similar sounds we had heard while Amos Tuttle’s body lay in the house, though I did not then remember that even as the Hyades lay now low in the east, so they were then setting in the west. If there were any difference in the manner of their approach, I was not able to ascertain it, unless it was that the present disturbances seemed somehow closer, but it was not a physical closeness as much as a psychic closeness. The conviction of this was so strong that I began to feel a growing uneasiness not untinged with fear; I began to experience a wild restlessness, a desire for company; and I went quickly to the door of my room, opened it, and stepped quietly into the hall in search of my host.

But now at once a new discovery made itself known. As long as I had been in my room, the sounds I had heard seemed unquestionably to come from the east, notwithstanding the faint, almost intangible tremors that seemed to shudder through the old house; but here in the darkness of the hall, whither I had gone without a light of any kind, I became aware that the sounds and tremblings alike emanated from below—not, indeed, from any place in the house, but below that—rising as if from subterranean places. My nervous tension increased, and I stood uneasily to get my bearings in the dark, when I perceived from the direction of the stairway a faint radiance mounting from below. I moved toward it at once, noiselessly, and, looking over the banister, saw that the light came from an electric candle held in Paul Tuttle’s hand. He was standing in the lower hall, clad in his dressing-gown, though it was clear to me even from where I stood that he had not removed his clothes. The light that fell upon his face revealed the intensity of his attention; his head was cocked a little to one side in an attitude of listening, and he stood motionless the while I looked down upon him.

“Paul!” I called in a harsh whisper.

He looked up instantly and saw my face doubtless caught in the light from the candle in his hand. “Do you hear?” he asked.

“Yes—what in God’s name is it?”

“I’ve heard it before,” he said. “Come down.”

I went down to the lower hall, where I stood for a moment under his penetrating and questioning gaze.

“You aren’t afraid, Haddon?”

I shook my head.

“Then come with me.”

He turned and led the way toward the back of the house, where he descended into the cellars below. All this time the sounds were rising in volume; it was as if they had approached closer to the house, indeed, almost as if they were directly below, and now there was obvious a definite trembling in the building, not alone of the walls and supports, but one with the shuddering and shaking of the earth all around: it was as if some deep subterranean disturbance had chosen this spot in the earth’s surface to make itself manifest. But Tuttle was unmoved by this, doubtless for the reason that he had experienced it before. He went directly through the first and second cellars to a third, set somewhat lower than the others, and apparently of more recent construction, but, like the first two, built of limestone blocks set in cement. In the center of this sub-cellar he paused and stood quietly listening. The sounds had by this time risen to such intensity that it seemed as if the house were caught in a vortex of volcanic upheaval without actually suffering the destruction of its supports; for the trembling and shuddering, the creaking and groaning of the rafters above us gave evidence of the tremendous pressure exerted within the earth beneath us, and even the stone floor of the cellar seemed alive under my bare feet. But presently these sounds appeared to recede into the background, though actually they lessened not at all, and only presented this illusion because of our growing familiarity with them and because our ears were becoming attuned to other sounds in more major keys, these, too, rising from below as from a great distance, but carrying with them an insidious hellishness in the implications that grew upon us. For the first whistling sounds were not clear enough to justify any guess as to their origin, and it was not until I had been listening for some time that it occurred to me that the sounds breaking into the weird whistling or whimpering derived from something alive, some sentient being, for presently they resolved into uncouth and _ shocking mouthings, indistinct and not intelligible even when they could be clearly heard. By this time, Tuttle had put the candle down, had come to his knees, and now half lay upon the floor with his ear close to the stone.

IN OBEDIENCE to his motion, I did likewise, and found that the sounds from below resolved into more recognizable syllables, though no less meaningless. For the first while, I heard nothing but incoherent and apparently unconnected ululations, with which were interpolated chanting sounds, which later I put down as follows: 1a! Ia! ...Shub-Niggurath! ... Ugh! Cthulhu fhiagn! ... ia! Tél, Cthulhu! But that I was in some error in regard to at least one of these sounds, I soon learned. Cthulhu itself was plainly audible, despite the fury of mounting sound all around; but the word that followed now seemed somewhat longer than fhtagn; it was as if an extra syllable had been added, and yet I could not be certain that it had not been there all the while, for presently it came clearer, and Tuttle took from a pocket his notebook and pencil and wrote: “They are saying Cthulhu naflfhtagn.” Judging by the expression of his eyes, faintly elated, this evidently conveyed something to him, but to me it meant nothing, apart from my ability to recognize a portion of it as identical in character with the words that appeared in the abhorred R’lyeh Text, and subsequently again in the magazine story, where its translation would seem to have indicated that the words meant: Cthulhu waits dreaming. My obvious blank ignorance of his meaning apparently recalled to my host that his philological learning was far in excess of mine, for he smiled bleakly and whispered, “It can be nothing else but a negative construction.”

Even then I did not at once understand that he meant to explain that the subterranean voices were not saying what I had thought, but: Cthulhu no longer waits dreaming! There was now no longer any question of belief, for the things that were taking place were of no human origin, and admitted of no other solution than one in some way, however remotely, related to the incredible mythology Tuttle had so recently expounded to me. And now, as if this evidence of feeling and hearing were not enough, there became manifest a strange fetid smell mingled with a nauseatingly strong odor of fish, apparently seeping up through the porous limestone. Tuttle became aware of this almost simultaneously with my own recognition, and I was alarmed to observe in his features traces of apprehension stronger than any I had heretofore noticed. He lay for a moment quietly; then he rose stealthily, took up the candle, and crept from the room, beckoning me after him. Only when we were once more on the upper story did he venture to speak. “They are closer than I thought,” he said then, musingly.

“Is it Hastur?” I asked nervously.

But he shook his head. “It cannot be he, because the passage below leads only to the sea and is doubtless partly full of water. Therefore it can only be one of the Water Beings—those who took refuge there when the torpedoes destroyed Devil Reef beyond shunned Innsmouth—Cthulhu, or those who serve him, as the Mi-Go serve in the icy fastnesses, and the Tcho-Icho people serve on the hidden plateaus of Asia.” Since it was impossible to sleep, we sat for a time in the library, while Tuttle spoke in a half-chanting manner of the strange things he had come upon in the old books that had been his uncle’s: sat waiting for the dawn while he told of the dreaded Plateau of Leng, of the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young, of Azathoth and Nyarlathotep, the Mighty Messenger who walked the star-spaces in the semblance of man; of the horrible and diabolic Yellow Sign, the haunted and fabled towers of mysterious Carcosa; of terrible Lloigor and hated Zhar; of the hellish monstrosity of the north country, Wind-Walker; of Ithaqua the Snow-Thing, of Chaugnar Faugn and N’gah-Kthun, of unknown Kadath and the Fungi from Yuggoth—so he talked for hours while the sounds below continued and I sat listening in a deadly, terror-fraught fear. And yet that fear was needless, for with the dawn the: stars paled, and the tumult below died subtly away, fading toward the east and the ocean’s deeps, and I went at last to my room, eagerly, to dress in preparation for my leave-taking.

In LITTLE over a month, I was again on my way to the Tuttle estate, via Arkham, in response to an urgent card from Paul, upon which he had scrawled in a shaky hand the single word: Come! Even if he had not written, I should have considered it my duty to return to the old house on the Aylesbury Road, despite my distaste for Tuttle’s soulshaking research and the now active fear I could not help but feel. Still, I had been holding off ever since coming to the decision that I should attempt to dissuade Tuttle from further research until the morning of the day on which his card came. On that morning I found in the Transcript a garbled story from Arkham; I would not have noticed it at all, had it not been for the small head to take the eye: Outrage in Arkham Cemetery, and below: Tuttle Vault Violated. The story itself was brief, and disclosed little beyond the information already conveyed by the

headings:

It was discovered here early this morning that vandals had broken into and partly destroyed the Tuttle vault in Arkham cemetery. One wall is smashed almost beyond repair, and the coffins have been disturbed. It has been reported that the coffin of the late Amos Tuttle is missing, but confirmation cannot be had by the time this issue goes to press.

Immediately upon reading this vague bulletin, I was seized with the strongest apprehension, come upon me from I know not what source; yet I felt at once that the outrage perpetrated upon the vault was not an ordinary crime, and I could not help connecting it in my mind with the occurrences at the old Tuttle house. I had therefore resolved to go to Arkham, and thence to see Paul Tuttle, before his card arrived; his brief message alarmed me still more, if possible, and at the same time convinced me of what I feared—that some revolting connection existed between the cemetery outrage and the things that walked in the earth beneath the house on Aylesbury Road. But at the same time I became aware of a deep reluctance to leave Boston, obsessed with an intangible fear of invisible danger from an unknown source. Still, duty compelled my going, and however strongly I might shun it, go I must.

I ARRIVED in Arkham in early afternoon and went at once to the cemetery, in my capacity as solicitor, to ascertain the extent of the damage done. A police guard had been established, but I was permitted to examine the premises as soon as my identity had been disclosed. The newspaper account, I found, had been shockingly inadequate, for the ruin of the Tuttle vault was virtually complete, its coffins exposed to the sun’s warmth, some of them broken open, revealing long-dead bones. While it was true that Amos Tuttle’s coffin had disappeared in the night, it had been found at midday in an open field about two miles east of Arkham, too far from the road to have been carried there; and the mystery of its being there was, if anything, deeper now than at the time the coffin had been found; for an investigation had disclosed certain deep indentations set at wide intervals in the earth, some of them as much as forty feet in diameter! It was as if some monstrous creature had walked there, though I confess that this thought occurred only within my own mind; the impressions in the earth remained a mystery upon which no light was thrown even by the wildest surmises as to their source. This may have been partly due to the more startling fact that had emerged immediately upon the finding of the coffin: the body of Amos Tuttle had vanished, and a search of the surrounding terrain had failed to disclose it. So much I learned from the custodian of the cemetery before I set out along the Aylesbury Road, refusing to think further about this incredible information until I had spoken with Paul Tuttle. This time my summons at his door was not immediately answered, and I had begun to wonder with some apprehension whether something had happened to him, when I detected a faint scuffing sound beyond the door, and almost immediately heard Tuttle’s muffled voice.

“Who is it?” “Haddon,” I replied, and heard what seemed to be a gasp of relief.

The door opened, and it was not until it had closed that I became aware of the nocturnal darkness of the hall, and saw that the window at the far end had been tightly shuttered, and that no light fell into the long corridor from any of the rooms opening off it. I forbore to ask the question that came to my tongue and turned instead to Tuttle. It was some time before my eyes had mastered the unnatural darkness sufficiently to make him out, and then I was conscious of a distinct feeling of shock; for Tuttle had changed from a tall, upright man in his prime to a bent, heavy man of uncouth and faintly repulsive appearance, betraying an age which actually was not his. And his first words filled me with high alarm.

“Quick now, Haddon,” he said. “There’s not much time.”

“What is it? What's wrong, Paul?” I asked.

He disregarded this, leading the way into the library, where an electric candle burned dimly. “I’ve made a packet of some of my uncle’s most valuable books—the R’lyeh Text, The Book of Eibon, the Pnakotic Manuscripts— some others. These must go to the library of Miskatonic University by your hand today without fail. They are henceforth,to be considered the property of the library. And here is an envelope containing certain instructions to you, in case I fail to get in touch with you either personally or by telephone— which I have had installed here since your last visit—by ten o’clock tonight. You are staying, I assume, at the Lewiston House. Now attend me closely: if I fail to telephone you to the contrary before ten o'clock tonight, you are to follow the instructions herein contained without hesitation. I advise you to act immediately, and, since you may feel them too unusual to proceed swiftly, I have already telephoned Judge Wilton and explained that I’ve left some strange but vital instructions with you, but that I want them carried out to the letter.”

“What’s happened, Paul?” I asked.

For a moment it seemed as if he would speak freely, but he only shook his head and said, “As yet I do not know all. But this much I can say: we have both, my uncle and I, made a terrible mistake. And I fear it is now too late to rectify it. You have learned of the disappearance of Uncle Amos’s body?” I nodded. “It has since turned up.” I was astounded, since I had only just come from Arkham, and no such intelligence had been imparted tome. “Impossible!” I exclaimed. “They are still searching.” “Ah, no matter,” he said oddly. “It is not there. It is here—at the foot of the garden, where it was abandoned when it was found useless.” At this, he jerked his head up suddenly, and we heard the shuffling and grunting sound that came from somewhere in the house. But in a moment it died away, and he turned again to me. “The haven,” he muttered, and gave a sickly laugh. “The tunnel was built by Uncle Amos, I am sure. But it was not the haven Hastur wanted—though it serves the minions of his half-brother, Great Cthulhu.”

It was almost impossible to realize that the sun shone outside, for the murkiness of the room and the atmosphere of impending dread that hung over me combined to lend to the scene an unreality apart from the world from which I had just come, despite the horror of the violated vault. I perceived also about Tuttle an air of almost feverish expectancy coupled with a nervous haste; his eyes shone oddly and seemed more prominent than I had previously known them, his lips seemed to have coarsened and thickened, and his beard had become matted to a degree I would not have thought possible. He listened now only for a moment before he turned back to me.

“I myself need to stay for the present; I have not finished mining the place, and that must be done,” he resumed erratically, but went on before the questions that rose in me could find utterance. “I’ve discovered that the house rests upon a naturally artificial foundation, that below the place there must be not only the tunnel, but a mass of cavernous structure, and I believe that these caverns are for the most part water-filled—and perhaps inhabited,” he added as a sinister afterthought. “But this, of course, is at the present time of small importance. I have no immediate fear of what is below, but what I know is to come.”

Once again he paused to listen, and again vague, distant sounds came to our ears. I listened intently, hearing an ominous fumbling, as if some creature were trying a door, and strove to discover or guess at its origin. I had thought at first that the sound emanated from somewhere within the house, thought almost instinctively of the attic; for it seemed to come from above, but in a moment it was borne in upon me that the sound did not derive from any place within the house, nor yet from any portion of the house outside, but grew from some place beyond that, from 4 point in space beyond the walls of the house—a fumbling, plucking noise which was not associated in my consciousness with any recognizable material sounds, but was rather an unearthly invasion. I peered at Tuttle, and saw that his attention was also for something from outside, for his head was somewhat lifted and his eyes looked beyond the enclosing walls, bearing in them a curiously rapt expression, not without fear, nor yet without a strange air of helpless waiting.

“That is Hastur’s sign,” he said in a hushed voice. “When the Hyades rise and Aldebaran stalks the sky tonight, He will come. The Other will be here with His water people, those of the primal gilled races.” Then he began to laugh suddenly, soundlessly, and with a sly, half-mad glance, added, “And Cthulhu and Hastur shall struggle here for the haven while Great Orion strides above the horizon, with Betelguese where the Elder Gods are, the Ancient Ones, who alone can block the evil designs of these hellish spawn!” My astonishment at his words doubtless showed in my face and in turn made him understand what shocked hesitation and doubt I felt, for abruptly his expression altered, his eyes softened, his hands clasped and unclasped nervously, and his voice became more natural. “But perhaps this tires you, Haddon,” he said. “I will say no more, for the time grows short, the evening approaches, and in a little while the night. I beg you to have no question about following the instructions I have outlined in this brief note for your eyes. I charge you to follow my directions implicitly. If itis as I fear, even that may be of no avail; if it is not, I shall reach you in time.”With that he picked up the packet of books, placed it in my hands, and led me to the door, whither I followed him without protest, for I was bewildered and not a little unmanned at the strangeness of his actions, the uncanny atmosphere of brooding horror that clung to the ancient, menace-ridden house.

At the threshold he paused briefly and touched my arm lightly. ‘“Goodbye, Haddon,” he said with friendly intensity.

Then I found myself on the stoop in the glare of the lowering sunlight so bright that I closed my eyes against it until I could again accustom myself to its brilliance, while the cheerful chortle of a late bluebird on a fence-post across the road sounded pleasantly in my ears, as if to belie the atmosphere of dark fear and eldritch horror behind.

I come now to that portion of my narrative upon which I am loath to embark, not alone because of the incredibility of what I must write, but because it can be at best a vague, uncertain account, replete with surmises and remarkable, if disjointed, evidence of horror-torn, eon-old evil beyond time, of primal things that lurk just outside the pale of life we know, of terrible, animate survival in the hidden places of Earth. How much of this Tuttle hearned from those hellish texts he entrusted to my care for the locked shelves of Miskatonic University Library, I cannot say. Certain it is that he guessed many things he did not know until too late; of others, he gathered hints, though it is te be doubted that he fully comprehended the magnitude of the task upon which he so thoughtlessly embarked when he sought to learn why Amos Tuttle had willed the deliberate destruction of his house and books.

Following my return to Arkham’s ancient streets, events succeeded events with undesirable rapidity. I deposited Tuttle’s packet of books with Doctor Llanfer at the library, and made my way immediately after to Judge Wilton’s house, where I was fortunate enough to find him. He was just sitting down to supper, and invited me to join him, which I did, though I had no appetite of any kind, indeed, food seeming repugnant to me. By this time all the fears and intangible doubts I had held had come to a head within me, and Wilton saw at once that I was laboring under an unusual nervous strain.

“Curious thing about the Tuttle vault, isn’t it?” he ventured shrewdly, guessing at the reason for my presence in Arkham.

“Yes, but not half so curious as the circumstance of Amos Tuttle’s body reposing at the foot of his garden,” I replied.

“Indeed,” said he without any visible sign of interest, his calmness serving to restore me in some measure to a sense of tranquillity. “I dare say you’ve come from there and know whereof you speak.”

At that, I told him as briefly as possible the story I had come to tell, omitting only a few of the more improbable details, but not entirely succeeding in dismissing his doubts, though he was far too much a gentleman to permit me to feel them. He sat for a while in thoughtful silence after I had finished, glancing once or twice at the clock, which showed the hour to be already past seven. Presently he interrupted his revery to suggest that I telephone the Lewiston House and arrange for any call for me to be transferred to Judge Wilton’s home. This I did instantly, somewhat relieved that he had consented to take the problem seriously enough to devote his evening to it.

“As for the mythology,” he said, directly upon my return to the room, “it can be dismissed as the creation of a mad mind, the Arab Abdul Alhazred. I say advisedly, it can be, but in the light of the things which have happened in Innsmouth, I should not like to commit myself. However, we are not at present in session. The immediate concern is for Paul Tuttle himself; I propose that we examine his instructions to you forthwith.

I PRODUCED the envelope at once, and opened it. It contained but a single sheet of paper, bearing these cryptic and ominous lines: “I have mined the house and all. Go immediately, without delay, to the pasture gate west of the house, where in the shrubbery on the right side of the lane as you approach from Arkham, I have concealed the detonator. My Uncle Amos was right—it should have been done in the first place. If you fail me, Haddon, then before God you loose upon the countryside such a scourge as man has never known and will never see again—if indeed he survives it!” Some inkling of the cataclysmic truth must at that moment have begun to penetrate my mind, for when Judge Wilton leaned back, looked at me quizzically, and asked, “What are. you going to do?” I replied without hesitation: “I’m going to follow those instructions to the letter!” He gazed at me for a moment without comment; then he bowed to the inevitable and settled back. ‘We shall wait for ten o’clock together,” he said gravely. The final act of the incredible horror that had its focal point in the Tuttle house took place just a little before ten, coming upon us in the beginning in so disarmingly prosaic a manner that the full horror, when it came, was doubly shocking and profound. For at five minutes to ten, the telephone rang. Judge Wilton took it at once, and even from where I sat I could hear the ago nized voice of Paul Tuttle calling my name.

I took the telephone from Judge Wilton. "This is Haddon,” I said with a calmness I did not feel. “What is it, Paul?” “Do it now!” he cried. “Oh, God, Haddon—right away—before . . . too late. Oh, God—the haven! The haven! ... You know the place. . . pasture gate. Oh, God, be quick! .. .” And then there happened what I shall never forget: the sudden, terrible degeneration of his voice, so that it was as if it crumpled together and sank into abysmal mouthings; for the sounds that came over the wire were bestial and inhuman—shocking gibberings and crude, brutish, drooling sounds, from among which certain of them recurred again and again, and I listened in steadily mounting horror to the triumphant gibbering before it died away:

“Ia! la! Hastur! Ugh! Ugh! Tal Hastur cfayak vulgtmm, vugtlagln vulgimm! Ail Shub-Niggurath! .. « Hastur—Hastur cf’tagn! la! Ia! Hasfarlin..”

Then abruptly all sound died away, and IJ turned to face Judge Wilton’s terror-stricken features. And yet I did not see him, nor did I see anything in my understanding of what must be done; for abruptly, with cataclysmic effect, I understood what Tuttle had failed to know until too late. And at once I dropped the telephone; at once I ran hatless and coatless from the house into the street, with the sound of Judge Wilton frantically summoning police over the telephone fading into the night behind me. I ran with unnatural speed from the shadowed, haunted streets of witch-cursed Arkham into the October night, down the Aylesbury Road, into the lane and to the pasture gate, where for one brief instant, while sirens blew behind me, I saw the Tuttle house through the orchard outlined in a hellish purple glow, beautiful but unearthly and tangibly evil. Then I pushed down the detonator, and with a tremendous roar, the old house burst asunder, and flames leaped up where the house had stood. For a few dazed moments I stood there, aware suddenly of the arrival of police along the road south of the house, before I began to move up to join them, and so saw that the explosion had brought about what Paul Tuttle had hinted: the collapse of the subterranean caverns below the house; for the land itself was settling, slipping down, and the flames that had risen were hissing and steaming in the water gushing up from below.

Then it was that that other thing happened—the last unearthly horror that mercifully blotted out what I saw in the wreckage jutting out above the rising waters—the great protoplasmic mass risen from the center of the lake forming where the Tuttle house had been, and the thing that came crying out at us across the lawn before it turned to face that other and begin a titanic struggle for ‘mastery interrupted only by the brilliant explosion of light that seemed to emanate from the eastern sky like a bolt of incredibly powerful lightning: a tremendous discharge of energy in the shape of light, so that for one awful moment everything was revealed—before lightning-like appendages descended as from the heart of the blinding pillar of light itself, one seizing the mass in the waters, lifting it high, and casting it far out to sea, the other taking that second thing from the lawn and hurling it, a dark dwindling blot, into the sky, where it vanished among the eternal stars! And then came sudden, absolute, cosmic silence, and where, a moment before, this miracle of light had been, there was now only darkness and the line of trees against the sky, and low in the east the gleaming eye of Betelguese as Orion rose into the autumn. night.

For an instant I did not know which was worse—the chaos of the previous moment, or the utter black silence of the present; but the small cries of horrified men brought it back to me, and it was borne in upon me then that they at least did not understand the secret horror, the final thing that sears and maddens, the thing that rises in the dark hours to stalk the bottomless depths of the mind. They may have heard, as I did, that thin, far, whistling sound, that maddening ululation from the deep, immeasurable gulf of cosmic space, the wailing that fell back along the wind, and the syllables that floated down the slopes of air: Tekeli-li, tekeli-li, tekelili.... And certainly they saw the thing that came crying out at us from the sinking ruins behind, the distorted caricature of a human being, with its eyes sunk to invisibility in thick masses of scaly flesh, the thing that flailed its arms bonelessly at us like the appendages of an octopus, the thing that shrieked and gibbered in Paul Tuttle’s voice!

But they could not know the secret that I alone knew, the secret Amos Tuttle might have guessed in the shadows of his dying hours, the thing Paul Tuttle was too late in learning: that the haven sought by Hastur the Unspeakable, the haven promised Him Who is not to be Named, was not the tunnel, and not the house, but the body and soul of Amos Tuttle himself, and, failing these, the living flesh and immortal soul of him who lived in that doomed house on the Aylesbury Road.

Charaktere

Cyrus Llanfer

Der Leiter der Miskatonic Universitätsbibliothek.

Amos Tuttle

ist ein Okkultist, der außerhalb von Arkham lebte. Er verbrachte die letzten zwanzig Jahre seines Lebens zurückgezogen in seinem Haus beim studieren seiner Sammlung okkulter Manuskripte. Nach seinem Tod im Jahr 1936 ging sein Haus auf seinen Neffen Paul über. Paul verschwand bald darauf, und seine Bücher wurden der Bibliothek der Miskatonic University vermacht.

Literatur

• Daniel Harms: The encyclopedia Cthulhiana. Chaosium, Oakland 1998, ISBN 1-56882-119-0 (englisch). 

Einzelnachweise

Kategorie:Literarisches Werk Kategorie:Literatur (Englisch) Kategorie:Literatur (Vereinigte Staaten) Kategorie:Literatur (20. Jahrhundert) Kategorie:Horrorliteratur Kategorie:Kurzgeschichte Kategorie:Cthulhu-Mythos