Titus Crow [1] The Burrowers Beneath (10 page)

But what of the pictures on that box, I had further probed? - at which my learned friend had simply shuddered, saying that he might only direct me, as Sir Amery

had once directed his nephew, to the works of Commodus and the hag-ridden Caracalla. The pictures in his dreams had been more than enough without dwelling on the horrors others had known; for there had been more than simply blind, cephalopod obscenity to those nightmares of his. Likewise he believed that Bentham’s cave-pictures had contained far more than the man had cared to mention - and perhaps understandably! This had whetted my curiosity all the more, so that I had pressed Crow until finally he had given in to me and described, all too clearly, some of those pictures of his dreams.

In some of them, he had told me, there had been an almost symbolic reaching towards the surface, a group-stretching of hideous tentacles; and in others, plainly surface scenes as opposed to subterrene - in those there had been sheer horror!

Vividly I remembered Crow’s mode of expression, the cracked hollowness of his voice as he had said: “There were four of them in one dream-fragment, de Marigny, rearing like caterpillars on their haunches, mouths agape - and they had a woman between them, pulling her to pieces and slobbering while the blood gushed and slopped …’

‘But how,’ I had morbidly demanded, my voice a whisper, ‘could creatures without heads have … mouths?’ Even asking my question I had known that I would not like the answer.

‘Try thinking in less routine terms, Henri,’ Crow had quietly advised. ‘But whatever you do don’t think on it too long, or with too great an attention to detail. They’re so very - alien - these things.’

The memory of Crow’s words and the way he had said them saw me reaching from my bed in one convulsive instant to switch on the light. I could not help it but a line from Ibn Schacabao’s ancient and cryptic Reflections had sprung unbidden to my mind, a line I knew had been repeated by Alhazred in the Necronomicon: ‘Evil the mind that is held by no head!’ Ye gods! Minds and mouths without heads!

I am not normally a nervous man - God knows that if such were the case I should long ago have given up certain of my more outre interests - but with those eggs in their box beside my bed, and with the knowledge that somewhere, far away or perhaps not so far, deep down in the earth, monstrous burrowers even now burned and bubbled in the ground - well, who could say that merely illuminating my bedroom was an act of cowardice?

But in any case, even with the light on, I found myself no less apprehensive.

There were shadows now where none had been before - thrown by my wardrobe, my dressing gown hanging on the door - so that before I knew it I found myself calculating how long it would take me to get out of bed and through the window in the event of-

I reached out again to switch off the light, purposely turning my back on the cardboard box in an attempt to put its contents from my mind …

Perhaps I did sleep then for a little while, for I remember a merging of my own drowsing thoughts with Crow’s descriptions of some of his dreams as I recalled their telling; and when this brought me sweatingly back to wakefulness I also remembered his explanation of how he had first been alerted to the existence of the cthonian menace.

It had been those chants heard in his latter dreams of the burrowers; those chants containing the tell-tale name of a legendary city - G’harne!

Remembering Wendy-Smith’s expedition in search of that place, and something of the disastrous results, and then tying in certain of the newer contents of his voluminous cuttings-file and the

details of his underground nightmares themselves, Crow had been led on to the Wendy-Smith document. That document, along with the letter of explanation obtained from Raymond Bentham, had clinched the thing in his mind. The remainder had been merely his normal follow-through of intelligently applied, if weirdly-inspired, logic.

We had also talked on the spread of Shudde-M’ell and his kin, and had given more thought to the horror’s release from the prison of the Elder Gods. Crow was inclined to the belief that some natural cataclysm had freed the horror-deity, and I could see no better explanation, but how long ago had this convulsion of the Earth occurred - and how far had the cancer spread since then? Wendy-Smith had seemed concerned with the same problem, but Crow had seen Sir Amery’s suggestions regarding a means of combating the creatures as ludicrous.

‘Think of it, de Marigny, ‘ he had told me. ‘Just think of trying to destroy the likes of Shudde-M’ell with flamethrowers! Why, these beings themselves are almost volcanic. They must be! Think of the temperatures and pressures required to fuse carbon and chrysolite and whatever else into the diamond-dust composition of those eggshells! And their ability to burn their way through solid rock. Flamethrowers? Hah! They’d delight in the very flames! It truly amazes me, though, the changes these beings must go through between infancy and adulthood. And yet, is it really so surprising? Human beings, I suppose, go through equally fantastic alterations -infancy, puberty, menopause, senility - and what about the amphibians, frogs, and toads … and the lepidopter-ous cycle? Yes, I can quite believe that Sir Amery killed off those two “babies” of his with a cigar - but by God it will take something more than that for an adult!’

And on the secret, subterranean spread of the horrors since that tremendous blunder of nature which he

believed had freed them, Crow had likewise had his own ideas:

‘Disasters, Henri! Look at the list of disasters caused by so-called “natural”

seismic shocks, particularly in the last hundred years. Oh, I know we can’t blame every tremor on Shudde-M’ell - if he, or it, still survives as godhead to its race - but, by heaven, we can certainly tag him with some of them! We already have the list put together by Paul Wendy-Smith; not big stuff, but costing lives nevertheless. Chinchon, Calahorra, Agen, Aisne, and so on. But what about Agadir? My God, but wasn’t that a horror? And Agadir is not far off the route they took to England back in 1933. Look at the size of Africa, Henri. Why! In the other direction the things could have spread themselves all over that great continent by now -the entire Middle East even! It all depends on how many they were originally. And yet, there couldn’t have been too many, despite Wendy-Smith’s “hordes”. No, I don’t think that the Elder Gods would ever have allowed that. But who knows how many eggs have hatched since then, or how many others are still waiting to hatch in unsuspected depths of rock?

The more I think of it, the more hideous the threat grows in my mind.’

Finally, before I had left him, Crow had tiredly scribbled for me a list of books he believed I should research. The Necronomicon of course headed the list, for the connection of that book with the Cthulhu Cycle of myth was legendary. My friend had recommended the expurgated manuscript translation (in a strictly limited edition for scholarly study only), by Henrietta Montague from the British Museum’s black-letter. He had known Miss Montague personally, had been by her side when she died of some unknown wasting disease only a few weeks after completing her work on the Necronomicon for the Museum authorities. I knew that my friend blamed that

work for her death; which was one of the reasons why he had warned me time and time again regarding too comprehensive a study of the book’s contents. It was therefore understood that I should merely extract those sections directly concerning Shudde-M’ell and beings like him but keep, as far as possible, from becoming too involved with the book as a whole. Crow himself would arrange for a copy of Miss Montague’s scholarly work to be put at my disposal.

Next on the list had been Ibn Schacabao’s Reflections, also at the British Museum but under glass because of its short life expectancy. Although the museum had taken the usual precautions - chemical treatment had been applied, photostat copies made (one of which I would have to read, and more thoroughly than at that time some years previously) - still the venerable tome was gradually rotting away.

The list continued with two little known books by Commodus and Caracalla respectively, simply for the sake of their authors having been given mention by Wendy-Smith, and directly after these there followed the translated sections of the almost unfathomable Pnakotic Manuscript for the same reason.

Similarly was Eliphas Levi’s History of Magic listed, and finally, this time from Crow’s own shelves (he had carefully wrapped it for me), his copy of the infamous Cultes des Goules. He had scanned the latter book so often himself that he was fearful of missing something important in a further personal perusal. On my inquiring, he told me he did, however, intend to give special personal attention to the Cthaat Aquadingen; there was much in that hideously bound book - particularly in the two middle chapters, which Crow long ago had had separately bound - that might very well apply. Most of these writings, as I have previously stated, I had read before, but without a definite purpose other than occult and macabre curiosity.

It could, I suppose, be reasoned that my itinerary should also include the G’harne Fragments, and of course it would have, if that mass of crumbling, centuried shards had been in any one of the four languages with which I am familiar! As it was, there had been only two supposed authorities on the fragments: Sir Amery Wendy-Smith, who left nothing of his decipherings behind, and Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole, whose *spoof notes’ contained what purported to be whole chapters of translations from the G’harne Fragments’

cryptic ciphers, but which had been mocked as absurd fakery by any number of reliable authorities. For these reasons Crow had omitted the fragments from his list.

All these and other thoughts flew around in my strangely misty mind, until eventually I must have drowsed off again.

My next remembered thought was that of hearing, seemingly close at hand, the dreadful droning and buzzing of monstrously alien voices - but it was not until I found myself awake and leaping from my bed on wildly trembling legs, my hair standing up straight on my head, that I realized I had only been dreaming. The sun was already up, filling the day outside with light.

And yet even then there echoed in my ears those loathsome, monotonously buzzing tones of horror. And they were in my mind exactly as they had been in Wendy-Smith’s document:

Ce’haiie ep-ngh fl’hur G’harne fhtagn,

Ce’haiie fhtagn ngh Shudde-M’ell.

Hai G’harne orr’e ep fl’hur,

Shudde-M’ell ican-icanicas fl’hur orr’e G’harne.

As the thing finally faded away and disappeared, I shook my head and numbly moved back over to my bedside table to pick up the cardboard box and feel its weight. I examined the box minutely, still more than half asleep. I honestly do not know what I expected to find, but I found nothing. All was as it had been the night before.

I washed, shaved, and dressed, and had hardly returned from mailing the parcel of eggs to Professor Peaslee from a local post office - all done very lethargically - when the telephone rang. It was quite insistent, clamouring like mad, but for some reason I hesitated before picking it up to put the receiver timorously to my ear.

‘De Marigny? It’s Crow here.’ My friend’s voice was urgent, electrical.

‘Listen. Have you sent off the eggs yet?’

‘Why, yes - I just managed to catch the morning post.’

‘Oh, no!’ he groaned; then: ‘Henri, do you still have that houseboat at Henley?’

‘Why, yes. In fact, it’s been in use until recently. Some friends of mine. I told them they could have it for a week just before I went to France. They’re off the boat now, though; I got the key back in a little parcel in last night’s mail. But why?’ Despite my question I felt oddly listless, growing more disinterested by the second.

‘Pack yourself some things, Henri, enough to live with decently for a fortnight or so. I’ll pick you up within the hour in the Mercedes. I’m just loading my stuff now.’

‘Eh?’ I asked, completely uncomprehending, not really wanting to know.

‘Stuff?’ The mists were thick in my mind. ‘Titus’ - I heard myself as if from a hundred miles away - ‘what’s wrong?’

‘Everything is wrong, Henri, and in particular my reasoning! Haven’t you heard the morning news or read the newspapers?’

‘No,’ I answered through a wall of thickening fog. ‘I’m just up. Slept badly.’

‘Bentham is dead, de Marigny! The poor devil - a “subsidence” at Alston. We’re going to have to drastically revise our thinking. The houseboat is a godsend.’

‘Eh? What?’

‘The houseboat, Henri! It’s a godsend! Like Sir Amery said: “They don’t like water.” I’ll see you within the hour.’

‘Titus,’ I gropingly answered, barely managing to catch him before he could break the connection, ‘not today, for God’s sake! I … I really don’t feel up to it. I mean … it’s a damned nuisance - ‘

‘Henri, I -‘ He faltered, amazement in his voice; then, in a tone full of some strange understanding: ‘So, they’ve been at you, have they?’ Now he was deliberate and calm. ‘Well, not to worry. Be seeing you.’ And with that the line went dead.

I don’t know how much later it was when the infernal banging came at my door, and the ringing at my doorbell, but for quite a long time I simply ignored it.

Then, despite an urge to close my eyes and go back to sleep where I sat in my chair, I managed to get up and go to the door. Yawningly I opened it - and was almost bowled over as a frenzied figure in black rushed in.

It was of course Titus Crow - but his eyes were blazing in a strange and savage passion completely alien to his character as I had previously known it!

That is Not Dead

(From de Marigny’s Notebooks)

‘De Marigny!’ Crow exploded as soon as he was inside and had the door shut behind him. ‘Henri, you’ve been got at!’

‘Eh? Got at?’ I sleepily replied. ‘No such thing, Titus -I’m tired, that’s all.’ Yet despite my odd lethargy I was still slightly curious. ‘How do you mean, “Got at”? By whom?’

Quickly taking my arm and leading me, half dragging me to my own study, he answered: ‘Why, the burrowers beneath, of course! Your place isn’t protected as Blowne House is. I might have expected as much. To leave you with those things all night. Even my place hasn’t got full protection - far from it.’