Titus Crow [1] The Burrowers Beneath (8 page)

He gave me time to consider this, then said, ‘But there, just supposing that by some freak those nightmares of mine were purely coincidental; and suppose further that

Mr Bentham is, as you suggest, “a hoaxer”. How do you explain away these eggs?

You think perhaps that Bentham, who appears to be a reasonably down-to-earth Northeasterner, went down to his workshop and simply put them together, out of a bucket or two of common-or-garden chrysolite and diamond-dust? No, Henri, it won’t wash. Besides’ - he stood up and took one of the things from the box, weighing it carefully in his hand - ‘I’ve checked them out. So far as I can determine they’re the real thing, all right. In fact I know they are! I’ve had little time to test them as fully as I would like to, true, but one thing is sure - they do defy X-rays! Very strange when you consider that while they’re undeniably heavy there doesn’t appear to be any lead in their makeup. And something else, something far more definite …’

He put down the egg, neatly stacked the books and papers earlier picked up from the floor, and returned to his chair. From the centre drawer in his desk he took a certain surgical instrument. “This was lent to me by a neighbour friend of mine, that same friend who tried to radiograph the eggs for me. Care to eavesdrop, de Marigny?’

‘A stethoscope?’ I took the thing wonderingly from him. ‘You mean - ?’

‘This was something Sir Amery missed,’ Crow cut me off. ‘He had the right idea with his earthquake-detector -I’ve decided, by the way, to obtain a seismograph as soon as possible - but he might have tried listening for small things as well as big ones! But no, that’s being unfair, for of course he didn’t know until the end just what his pearly spheres were. In trying the stethoscope test I was really only following his lead, on a smaller scale.

Well, go on,’ he demanded again as I hesitated. ‘Listen to them!’

I fitted the receivers to my ears and gingerly touched the sensor to one of the eggs, then held it there more

firmly. I imagine the rapid change in my expression was that which made Crow grin in that grim fashion of his. Certainly, in any situation less serious, I might have expected him to laugh. I was first astounded, then horrified!

‘My God!’ I said after a moment, a shudder hurrying down my spine. ‘There are

-fumblings!’

‘Yes,’ he answered as I sat there, shaken to my roots, ‘there are. The first stirrings of life, Henri, a life undreamed-of - except, perhaps, by an unfortunate few -from beyond the dim mists of time and from behind millennia of myth. A race of creatures unparalleled in zoology or zoological literature, indeed entirely unknown, except in the most doubtful and obscure tomes. But they’re real, as real as this conversation of ours.’

I felt an abrupt nausea and put the egg quickly back into its box, hurriedly wiping my hands on a kerchief from my pocket. Then I shakily passed the stethoscope back across the desk to my friend.

‘They have to be destroyed.’ My voice cracked a little as I spoke. ‘And without delay!’

‘Oh? And how do you think Shudde-M’ell, his brothers and sisters - if indeed they are bisexual - would react to that?’ Crow quietly asked.

‘What?’ I gasped, as the implications behind his words hit me. ‘You mean that already - ‘

‘Oh, yes.’ He anticipated my question. ‘The parent creatures know where their eggs are, all right. They have a system of communication better than anything we’ve got, Henri. Telepathy I imagine. That was how those other, earlier eggs were traced to Sir Amery’s cottage on the moors; that was how they were able to follow him home through something like four thousand miles of subterrene burrows! Think of it, de Marigny. What a task they set themselves - to regain possession of the stolen

eggs - and by God, they almost carried it off, too! No, I daren’t destroy them. Sir Amery tried that, remember? And what happened to him?’

After a slight pause, Crow continued: ‘But, having given Sir Amery’s portion of the Wendy-Smith papers a lot of thought, I’ve decided that he could only have been partly right in his calculations. Look at it this way: certainly, if as Wendy-Smith deduced the reproductive system of Shudde-M’ell and his kind is so long and tedious, the creatures couldn’t allow the loss of two future members of their race. But I’m sure there was more than merely that in their coming to England. Perhaps they’d had it planned for a long time - for centuries maybe, even aeons! The way I see it, the larceny of the eggs from G’harne finally prodded the burrowers into early activity. Now, we know they came out of Africa - to recover their eggs, for revenge, whatever - but we have no proof at all that they ever went back!’

‘Of course,’ I whispered, leaning forward to put my elbows on the desk, my eyes widening in dawning understanding. ‘In fact, at the moment, all the evidence lies in favour of the very reverse!’

‘Exactly,’ Crow agreed. ‘These things are on the move, Henri, and who knows how many of their nests there may be, or where those nests are? We know there’s a burrow in the Midlands, at least I greatly suspect it, and another at Harden in the Northeast - but there could be dozens of others! Don’t forget Sir Amery’s words: “… he waits for the time when he can infest the entire world with his loathsomeness …” And for all we know this invasion of 1933

may not have been the first! What of Sir Amery’s notes, those references to Hadrian’s Wall and Avebury? Yet more nests, Henri?’

He paused, momentarily lost for words, I suspected.

By then I was on my feet, pacing to and fro across that part of the floor Crow had cleared. And yet … Once more I found myself puzzled. Something Crow had said … My mind had not had time yet to adjust to the afternoon’s revelations.

‘Titus,’ I finally said, ‘what do you mean by “a Midlands nest”? I mean, I can see that there is some sort of horror at Harden, but what makes you think there may be one in the Midlands?’

‘Ah! I see that there’s a point you’ve missed,’ he told me. ‘But that’s understandable for you haven’t yet had all the facts. Now listen: Bentham took the eggs on the seventeenth of May, Henri, and later that same day, Coalville, two hundred miles away, suffered those linear shocks heading in a direction from south to north. I see it like this: a number of members of the Midlands nest had come up close to the surface - where the earth, not being so closely packed, is naturally easier for them to navigate

- and had set off to investigate this disturbance of the nest at Harden. If you line up Harden and Coalville on a map

- as I have done, again taking my lead from the Wendy-Smith document - you’ll find that they lie almost directly north and south! But all this in its turn tells us something else’ - he grew excited - ‘something I myself had missed until just now - there are no adults of the species “in residence”, as it were, at Harden! These four Harden eggs were to form the nucleus of a new conclave!’

He let this last sink in, then continued: ‘Anyhow, this Coalville …

expedition, if you like, arrived beneath Harden on or about the twenty-sixth of the month, causing that collapse of the mine which Bentham commented upon.

There, discovering the eggs to be missing, “abducted”, I suppose you could say, the creatures picked up the mental trail towards Bentham’s place at Alston.’

He paused here to sort out a newspaper cutting from a small pile on his desk and passed it across for my

inspection. ‘As you can see, Henri, there were tremors at Stenhope, County Durham, on the twenty-eighth. Need I point out that Stenhope lies directly between Harden and Alston?’

I flopped down again in my chair and helped myself liberally to Crow’s brandy.

‘Titus, it’s plain you can’t keep the eggs here!’ I told him. ‘Heavens, why even now - unseen, unheard, except perhaps as deep tremors on some meteorologist’s machinery - these underground octopuses, these subterranean vampires might be on their way here, burning their way through the bowels of the earth! You’ve put yourself in as much danger as Bentham before he sent you the eggs!’

Then, suddenly, I had an idea. I leaned forward to thump the table. ‘The sea!’

I cried.

Crow appeared startled by my outburst. ‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘What do you mean, “the sea”, de Marigny?’

‘Why, that’s it!’ I slapped a clenched fist into the palm of my hand. ‘No need to destroy the eggs and risk the revenge of the adult creatures - simply take them out to sea and drop them overboard! Didn’t Sir Amery say that they fear water?’

‘It’s an idea,’ Crow slowly answered, ‘and yet - ‘

‘Well?’

‘Well, I had it in my mind to use the eggs differently, Henri. To use them more constructively, I mean.’

‘Use them?’

‘We have to put a stop to Shudde-M’ell once and for all, my friend, and we have the key right here in our hands!’ He tapped the box with a fingernail.

‘If only I could conceive a plan, a system that might work, discover a way to put paid to the things for good. But for that I need time, which means hanging on to the eggs, and that in turn means -‘ ‘ ‘Titus, wait,’ I rudely interrupted, holding up my hands.

There was something in the back of my mind, something demanding concentration.

Abruptly it came to me and I snapped my fingers. ‘Of course! I knew there was something bothering me. Now, correct me if I go wrong, but surely we’ve decided that this Shudde-M’ell creature and his kind feature in the Cthulhu Cycle?’

‘Yes.’ My friend nodded, obviously at a loss to decide what 1 was getting at.

‘It’s simply this,’ I said. ‘How come these creatures aren’t prisoned, as their hideous brothers and cousins were in the mythology by the Elder Gods untold millions of years ago?’

I had a point. Crow frowned, quickly moving out from his desk and crossing the room to take from a bookshelf his copy of Feery’s Notes on the Necronomicon.

‘This will do for now,’ he said, ‘at least until I can get it fixed for you to check through the Necronomicon itself at the British Museum. And this time we’ll have to fix it for you to read the whole book! It’s a dangerous task, though, Henri. I’ve read it myself, some time ago, and was obliged to forget most of what I learned - it was that or madness! In fact, I think we’d better limit your research to selected sections from Henrietta Montague’s translation. Are you willing to help me in this?’

‘Of course, Titus,’ I answered. ‘Just pass on your orders. I’ll carry them out as best I can, you know that.’

‘Good, then that’s to be your special task in this,’ he told me. ‘You can save me a lot of time by correlating and summing up the whole Cthulhu Cycle, with special reference to Shudde-M’ell in the mythology. I’ll list certain other books which I think might be helpful later. Right now, though, let’s see what Feery has to say on it.’

We were hardly to know it at that time, but things were not to be in any way as Crow planned, for events yet to come would surely have confounded any plans he might

have made. As it was, we could not know this, and so my haggard friend flipped the leaves of Feery’s often fanciful reconstruction of Alhazred’s dreadful book until he found the page he was looking for.

‘Here we are,’ he eventually declared, ‘the passage entitled: “Ye Power in ye Five-Pointed Star”.’ He settled himself in his chair and began to read:

‘“Armour against Witches & Daemons, Against ye Deep Ones, ye Dools, ye Voormais, ye Tacho-Tacho, ye Mi-Go, ye Shog-gaoths, ye Ghasts, ye Valusians, & all such Peoples & Beings that serve ye Great Olde Ones & ye Spawn of Them, lies within ye Five-Pointed Star carven of grey Stone from ancient Mnar; which is less strong against ye Great Olde Ones Themselves. Ye Possessor of ye Stone shall find himself able to command all Beings which creep, swim, crawl, walk, or fly even to ye Source from which there is no returning. In Yhe as in Great R’lyeh, in Y’ha-nthlei as in Yoth, in Yuggoth as in Zothique, in N’kai as in Naa-Hk & K’n-yan, in Carcosa as in G’harne, in ye twin Cities of Ib and Lh-yib, in Kadath in ye Cold Waste as at ye Lake of Hali, it shall have Power; yet even as Stars wane & grow cold, even as Suns die & ye Spaces between Stars grow more wide, so wanes ye Power of all things - of ye Five-Pointed Star-Stone as of ye Spells put upon ye Great Olde Ones by ye benign Elder Gods, & that Time shall come as once was a Time when it shall be known: That is not dead which can eternal lie,

And with strange Aeons even Death may die.’

“In Carcosa as in G’harne,” I repeated when Crow had done. ‘Well, there we seem to have it!’

‘Yes,’ he answered drily, frowning at the open book, ‘but I’m pretty sure that this is a different version from the one in the Museum copy of the Necronomicon. I wish to God Feery was still alive! I’ve often pondered his knowledge regarding the Necronomicon - to say nothing of many another rare book. Still’ - he tapped with his

fingernail on the page with the relevant passage - ‘there’s part of your answer at least.’

‘So it appears that Shudde-M’ell was prisoned at G’harne.’ I frowned. ‘Which means that somehow he managed to escape! But how?’

‘That’s something we may never know. Henri, unless - ‘ Crow’s eyes widened and his face went grey.

‘Yes, what is it, Titus?’

‘Well,’ he slowly answered, ‘I have a lot of faith in Alhazred, even in Feery’s version. It’s a monstrous thought, I know, but nevertheless it’s just possible that the answer lies in what I’ve just read out: “… so wanes ye Power of all things - of ye Five-Pointed Star-Stone as of ye Spells put - “’

‘Titus!’ I cut him off. ‘What you’re saying is that the spells of the Elder Gods, the power of the pentacle is past - and if that’s true …’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know! It also means that Cthulhu and all the others must likewise be free to roam and kill and …’

He shook himself, as if breaking free from some monstrous spider’s web, and managed a weak smile. ‘But no, that can’t be - no, we’d know about it if Cthulhu, Yog-Sothoth, Yibb-Tstll, and all the others were free. We’d have known long ago. The whole world …’

‘Then how do you explain -‘

‘I make no attempt to explain anything, Henri,’ he brusquely replied. ‘I can only hazard guesses. It looks to me as though some years ago, anything up to a century ago, the spells or star-stones - whichever applies in Shudde-M’ell’s case - were removed from G’harne by some means or other. Perhaps by accident, or there again, perhaps purposely … by persons in the power of the Great Old Ones!’