Acolytes of Cthulhu

THE RECURRING DOOM

BY S. T. JOSHI

NEVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD HAD CIVILIZATION SO closely escaped annihilation as in that period of time over two months ago wherein occurred those incidents in which my friend and colleague Jefferson Coler and I were involved; never in all the years of man’s existence had such a shadow of death passed over all humanity, to be cast away only at the last moment; never in recorded history had chance and coincidence so conjoined as nearly to cause man’s decimation. My own part in the affair was minor: I was but a pathetic and inconsequential acolyte to Coler, who, by piecing together the scattered notes and fragments he had accumulated, detected and foiled the efforts of those things who ever encroach upon us from outside and from within; and averted—for now—a monstrous and recurring doom which shall hang over men as long as men are.

Yet, as irony would have it, had Coler not saved the world, and had those things then slaughtered us all, it would have been the fault of Coler himself; it was his initial actions which set in motion the aeon-forgotten plots of those things who once ruled the earth but were then expelled, and who in cosmic revenge wish the devastation of the world. Coler is our saviour; but had he not been, he would have been our exterminator.

Jefferson Coler is now four days dead, through utter physical and mental exhaustion, an old man at forty-two. I can now write this document so as to show the world how close it came to unthinkable turmoil, and to show that Professor Coler was not, as he was deemed in life, a madman, or an eccentric, but one who, through his own genius, realized and then forfended an outcome of whose proportions it is not pleasant to think.

Mankind is safe—but only for a time.

* * *

Coler was an archaeologist whose rivals were few. In actual knowledge he was almost unsurpassed; yet it was his instinct which lifted him above all others, and which allowed him to make startling breakthroughs in many fields then adumbral with misunderstanding. One of his early works, a report on Ancient Civilizations of Divers Polynesian Islands (1925), had earned him both envy and scorn—envy for its scholarship and erudition, and scorn for the several dubious yet seemingly authenticated extrapolations made in it. His research on the volume also awakened an insatiable thirst for things diluvian and arcane; a thirst which in time developed into an obsession for procuring archaic and curious tomes, many times for inconceivably fabulous prices. Who would give such a sum, many asked themselves, for not even an original but a copy of something called Necronomicon, by, indeed, a mad Arab named Alhazred? Or again, a work called De Vermis Mysteriis of Ludvig Prinn, or Comte d’Erlette’s Cultes des Goules, Laurent de Longnez’s L’Histoire des Planetes, Jawangi Warangal’s Civtates Antiquae Fantasticae? Coler’s acquisition of these volumes did much to brand him as one whose talents, though prodigious, were being pathetically wasted on subjects bordering upon the lunatic; and his assiduous learning of ancient tongues and dialects which had evaded the memories of even the best of linguists further gained him a reputation for eccentricity. Fanaticism is rarely productive of good; but, as it turned out, Coler’s fanaticism was the very thing that saved our lives.

His reclusiveness, another trait that earned the mockery of many, was thus not innate but gradually acquired through the ostracism resulting from his unique theories. While he was oftentimes the butt of transparent sarcasms by other archaeologists, he himself did not refrain from ridiculing those of his profession for what he called “their vile and pompous blindness at things which they can’t explain or understand”; of particular note was the epistolary argument between Coler and Sir Charles Burton concerning the origin and use of those curious statues on Easter Island, published in the British Archaeological Digest. This constant bickering between him and his associates served only to sever more and more their respect for one another, so that in time each cast the gravest doubts as to the other’s competency and ability. I, a lifelong friend of Coler’s, eventually became the only archaeologist with whom he would consult, for the simple reason that I did not disclaim the views he expressed. I listened to him not simply to humor him, but because I knew that men had yet to gain all the answers to the world and the universe.

Yet above all, Coler was secretive: through what seemed an inherent lack of faith in men, Coler refused to reveal to anyone his thoughts, his involvements, his actions. It might have been that he, through past experience, feared ridicule; yet this cannot totally explain why, in his most recent affair, he deigned not to tell even me of what he was doing or what was to come; he kept almost everything to himself, intermittently throwing out to me vague hints and remarks which could leave me only with my mind’s eye peering confusedly into his fog of ominous implications and portents. Coler did not explain everything to me until the very end: only then did I know how close we had come to death; only then did I understand Coler’s previously inexplicable manoeuvres.

The events began for me in the summer of 1940. Coler had just returned from an expedition to Arabia, and had asked me to stop in at his manor in Severnford because he wished to show me “a little curiosity which I dug up in the Arabian desert.” As I was myself not involved in anything of overwhelming exigency, I came immediately. Inviting me in, he then left to fetch his prize. He returned moments later.

It would be both trite and untrue to say that the thing was then at all significant of terror: it was anomalous only in that it was unfathomable. What it seemed to be was a roughly rectangular glass or crystal box, of a dull viridescent color. The one peculiarity was that the figure had no seam or opening in it; so that if it were indeed a box, then it was a box whose manner of use had yet to be discovered. That it was merely an object of decoration seemed improbable, for it was, by our standards, hardly attractive in any way. Seeing all of this I looked up to Coler, mutely expressing my apprehension.

“I’m as confused as you are,” he said, “not only as to its function but as to its constituents. It does superficially resemble fluorite, and, if it were not so dull, one might think it pure dioptase; but my chemical tests prove that it is neither. It certainly is some sort of crystal, yet it is a crystal which seems to have few or no earthly elements.”

“My dear fellow,” I cried, “you must show it to the Archaeological Institute!” I was referring to the Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. “What a find!”

“No, Collins, no,” he replied: “my reputation is too precarious. They will think it a hoax or some cleverly planned practical joke on my part. I’ve been in similar situations before: the result has always been the same.” He spoke with a dreary acerbity from which one could glean his remembrance of the past.

“How did you find it, anyway?” I queried.

“That’s another curious business! Our party was exploring some strange pillared ruins (possibly, though not certainly, Alhazred’s ‘fabulous Irem, City of Pillars’), and it happened that, while I was digging somewhere with a trowel, the ground beneath me suddenly gave way, and I plunged down what seemed to be a narrow pit. I fell down some twenty feet, landing finally on another sandy surface under the ground. Now my falling must have unearthed this crystal, for I then saw it lying next to me, still half-buried in the earth. Some of my men, who had seen me fall, threw me a rope, and I climbed out of the pit, bringing this thing up with me.”

It was, as he said, curious, but not totally out of the ordinary. When I asked him what he planned to do with the object, he replied:

“I don’t know, Collins, I don’t know. At present, there is nothing I can do, save somehow to find out its constituents and its purpose.”

“One moment, Coler,” I suddenly burst out. I had only then remembered some of my own readings in the arcane, which, although not within Coler’s level, were not inconsiderable. “Might this not be Blake’s Shining Trapezohedron?”

“I thought of that, too, Collins, but I’ve now dismissed the idea. Remember what Blake says about the Shining Trapezohedron: it is a many-faceted crystal or ‘glowing stone’ inside an ‘open box of yellowish metal.’ Now, in addition to the fact that our discovery has no opening, what we have here is simply a crystal box itself, or perhaps a solid block of crystal. Whatever it is, it is not the Shining Trapezohedron.”

Coler was staring at the thing as if hypnotized, and my gaze too became fixed on it. Its apparent functionlessness was what made it peculiar, not any inherent quality of the crystal itself. I am tempted to write that it even then gave off a miasma of otherworldly manufacture, and I cannot definitely adduce whether this view is actual or merely born of imperfect memory and subsequent explication. The thing was strange, but really nothing more; terror would come a little later.

* * *

Research and publishing of an historical-archaeological report on Roman ruins in Wales kept me almost constantly busy for an entire week after my visit with Coler. Indeed, it was exactly a week later that Coler called me again, saying that there had been a new development concerning his discovery. I had only concluded my work that morning, and was glad that Coler’s summons had come at such an opportune time. Again, I must refrain from adding that any feeling of dread was then overcoming me; for the enigma of the crystal was as yet minute, and in the course of my own activities, I had all but forgotten it. It would be the most pathetic of platitudes to say that the importance and significance which I gave it was far short of the mark.

The “new development” of which Coler had spoken was not as radical as I had supposed: its shape and color were still the same, and the only change was that there could be detected in the center of the green object a small glowing, as if some sort of phosphorescent ball had been placed within it. That this had resulted of its own accord was obvious, what with the seamlessness of the thing; and, because we knew not what the purpose of the box itself was, we could hardly have any notion as to the function of this odd glowing. I asked Coler when the glowing had begun, and he replied:

“I first detected it this morning, though it could well have started any time last night. But it is not that which bothers me: it is what we are to make of it.”

I could not but agree.

“What does it mean, man,” he said, more to himself than to me, “what does it mean? I cannot even begin to hypothesize on it, so outré and senseless does it seem. I can’t help feeling, however, that there is more here than meets the eye…

“The answer,” he continued, “may well be in one of my books. I’ve begun looking myself—there’s nothing in Prinn—but I still have dozens of volumes to go through.”

There could be nothing clearer than that Coler wanted help in his task. Being free of my own activities, I proffered my services, and he assented with an eagerness which told of his relief at not having to ask me himself. In his experience-gained self-sufficiency he had grown loath both of asking favors and of doing them. My suggestion that we begin at once was quickly adopted, and we two retired to his library, where his priceless collection of tomes lay.

Coler had already been some two-thirds of the way through von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten when I called, and, taking up that book again, advised me to look through any of the other volumes I wished. I had never completely read Alhazred’s Necronomicon, and considered that now would be as good a time as any to do so. I took down the handwritten copy which Coler had purchased from an old occultist in Massachusetts, and began its perusal, seating myself in one of the two occasional chairs in the room, in the other of which Coler himself was seated.

How many hours we were in that room reading I have been unable to determine; but the fact that the first time I looked up from Alhazred’s volume, I saw through the window that night had fallen, and that the grandfather’s clock in the library registered well past 9, proves that no inconsiderable time had elapsed in the course of our task. Coler’s despair at discovering not even the vaguest reference to his find in von Junzt was matched by my own discouragement at the apparent uselessness of the Necronomicon. I had managed to get half through the tome, and there could not be discerned in even its allegorical whisperings any obscure allusions to Coler’s crystalline receptacle. Alhazred’s mentioning of a box which was a “window to space and time” could be nothing other than a citation of the Shining Trapezohedron, coinciding as it did exactly with the descriptions in both the Blake manuscript and in Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis. That being the case, it could be of no use to us; although Alhazred’s later noting something called “Nyarlathotep’s weapon” could have meant anything from those “Druid” stones in Avebury to that mysterious round tower in Billington Woods near Arkham, Massachusetts. Coler, late in the afternoon, had finished the von Junzt and had begun Warangal’s Civitates Antiquae Fantasticae, though even that Indian philosopher’s work seemed to be as ignorant of the green crystal as Prinn’s and Alhazred’s had been, so that our disheartenment at finding no clues soon turned to a dread that not a single volume in Coler’s library would bring any facts to light. Our exhaustion was as great as our frustration, and Coler, gentleman to the last, told me, at close on 9:30, to stop our work and partake of a late supper. No suggestion could have been more apt.

The next day proved to be more productive, though in ways which we could not yet understand. The morning found me again in Coler’s library recommencing my examination of the Alhazred volume, while Coler himself continued to tackle the Warangal tome. Some time afterwards, perhaps an hour before noon, I, resting my eyes from the crabbed and blurred writing, looked at that morning’s paper, which was lying haphazardly on the floor next to me. In it was an article which, though small and of apparent inconsequence, proved later to be vastly significant. The article was this:

OCCULTISTS HOLD CLANDESTINE MEETING

Brichester: 2 July 1940. A band of some two dozen occult worshippers, ranging in age from eighteen to over seventy, were seen performing some dark ritual on the top of Sentinel Hill outside Brichester yesterday night, where there are located some primitive Druid megaliths. No sacrifices seem to have been made, but the leader of the flock, an old man of about sixty, who seemed to serve the function of a priest, was heard intoning weird chants which the “congregation” echoed. The whole incident seemed to be of little importance, for the ritual or ceremony lasted scarcely half an hour. This was the first of such meetings in over six months, and officials are fearing a recurrence of the disappearance of various young children which occurred the last time the gathering met, in late December 1939.

It cannot be said that, when I first read the article, I paid any great attention to it. In the quest for ascertaining the origin and function of Coler’s crystal, I was hardly about to give much notice to some absurd litany performed by a handful of degenerate, semi-crazed individuals. I remember remarking to myself that the Brichester Herald must truly be desperate for news, if it were lowered to including such trite and ludicrous affairs in its pages.

My subsequent finishing of the Necronomicon two hours later coincided almost exactly with Coler’s completion of the huge Warangal tome; the result, of course, was as before: although both the Necronomicon and Civitates Antiquae Fantasticae contained detailed accounts of Irem, the City of Pillars, there was nothing in either volume which we could relate to the excavated crystal. Our minds were already weary with reading, and Coler’s suggestion that we take some lunch was heartily accepted by me.

The phone call came immediately after we had finished. Coler was informed by the operator, when picking up the instrument, that he was receiving a call from Wolverhampton Airport from a man who was a resident, of all places, of Arkham, Massachusetts! Wilmarth, who had probably forgotten Coler’s very name, surely could have nothing to do with us, and the reputation for eccentricity and, it must be admitted, rank enmity of his colleagues which was Coler’s further created a mystery as to the identity of our transatlantic caller. The enigma was solved, however, immediately upon the utterance of the American’s first words.

“Meredith!” Coler jovially exclaimed in reply. “It’s been nearly fifteen years since I’ve heard your voice! Why in the world are you in Tewkesbury?… To see me? For what reason?… I understand… As a matter of fact, I am, but it has been so discouraging that I’d be glad to give it up and tackle something fresh… We will be there shortly. Good day.”

Upon Coler’s hanging up the phone, he related to me the gist of the conversation. It seemed that Joseph Meredith, now head of the Archaeology Department at Miskatonic, and one of Coler’s few friends, had come here to give Coler an ancient and curious hieroglyphic tract which a Miskatonic expedition to Egypt had recently discovered. Meredith’s staff, unable to decipher the evidently millennia-old fragment, had decided to put the thing in Coler’s hands, knowing that he was one of the world’s foremost authorities on elder tongues. The archaeologist had just arrived here, at Wolverhampton Airport in Tewkesbury, and had asked that Coler come and fetch him and bring him back here so that work might be begun on the text; to which request Coler had agreed.

When we arrived at the airport, we saw Meredith with, not only suitcases, but another small black container which we knew was a special housing case for old parchments, a case which would protect the manuscript from the decimating effects of time and the elements. As we entered the car and drove back to Coler’s manor, Meredith explained more about the find.

The trip to various ruins in Egypt had been made only that winter, and, aside from other minor archaeological artifacts, this parchment had been the only significant product. Its being unearthed in a ruin near the town of Kurkur had given it the name of the Kurkur Fragment. Linguists, archaeologists, and antiquarians alike had been baffled as to the language or dialect of its writing; that it was either a modern or archaic dialect of Egyptian had been almost at once ruled out, and, as it might easily have been transported to Egypt from as far a place as India, tests had been made as to whether the document was in either Arabic, Sanscrit, or the dozen modern and obsolete Indian dialects; but the results had all been equally negative, serving only to confirm that it was either penned in a language of unbelievable obscurity, or that it was inexplicably written in code. Meredith himself, remembering Lang’s Voynich Manuscript, had put forth the theory that the work might be in a sort of hybrid language, i.e. Sanscrit letters (for this much was obvious from the text) perhaps forming Hittite or Assyrian words. The work on this hypothesis had only begun, for there seemed to be, considering the unknown origin, almost no end of permutations that could be had. Meredith had then thought of letting Coler scrutinize the tract so that the possibility of its being in some abstruse tongue, known only to Coler and other such specialists, might be explored. This was, then, the reason for Meredith’s arrival.

Coler would not stand for Meredith’s lodging in a hotel, and offered his own mansion—a multi-roomed stone edifice whose construction might have dated from the sixteenth century, and only a fraction of which was used—as a temporary residence and base of operations. The afternoon was progressing by the time we had returned to Severnford, and Coler’s suggestion of an early dinner which would leave the entire evening free for studying the manuscript was accepted by both Meredith and myself.

That evening, however, was important not so much for our working on the Kurkur Fragment as for an incident which made us realize, perhaps for the first time, that we were involved in matters whose scope was far greater than we had originally supposed.

Putting forth the thoroughly justifiable plea of fatigue from his 4,000-mile trip, Meredith retired early that night. We did not fail, however, first to show him Coler’s anomalous crystal; indeed, it was Meredith himself who had requested to see it, having heard of the find from one of Coler’s party, a Miskatonic graduate student named Craig Phillips. Coler told his colleague all the facts about its discovery, its sudden commencing to glow, and our own inefficacious efforts at trying to enucleate its origin and use. Coler, too, explained that the glowing had definitely grown larger since the morning, the phosphorescent ball inside now approaching a diameter of two and a half inches. Meredith, not unnaturally involved in his own arcanum, seemed to pay Coler only enough attention as might just be within the bounds of courtesy, and then tried to steer Coler’s mind back to the new mystery which he had dropped in his lap. This was not a difficult task to perform, considering our double irritation at the total absence of any clues as to the crystal’s function and significance.

It must have been close on 11 o’clock when it occurred. Coler had initially given me a part of Meredith’s manuscript and had me make certain arrangements of the curious and faded letters which would allow him to break the centuries-old cipher, but after a time stopped me, telling me that he had perhaps discovered the base and method of the text. I had recommenced finding the answer to our other enigma, picking up Laurent de Longnez’s comparatively recent L’Histoire des Planetes (1792), to see if that contemporary of Sade and La Bretonne had any knowledge of the age-old green thing that had come from Arabia. De Longnez’s French was filled with irritating punctuational and literary archaisms that made reading none too easy, so that after a time I found myself bent almost double over the book, perpetually squinting my eyes and following with my head each individual line. Several hours of this had hypnotized me to the book, so much that I all but forgot the presence of Coler at the desk across the room. Only until I heard a sudden shuffling movement close at hand did I merge from my reverie and, for the first time in hours, look up.

What I saw was another man in the room, not Meredith, nor Coler, but one whose slovenly attire and facial vacuity told that his origin could be nothing else but that squalid decadence called Lower Brichester.

How the man had gotten in the house became more an enigma than what his object was, for it was now obvious that his steps were leading in straight to the glowing crystal on Coler’s desk, and now only yards separated him from his prize.

Coler, miraculously, was so entranced in his studies that he still had no inkling that this intruder was here at all, and only looked up, mutely baffled and disturbed, when I flung myself bodily at the man, half wrestling him to the ground. Either through my underestimation of the degenerate miscreant’s strength or through my own unrealized enervation, I found myself soon with my back to the ground, looking up into a visage which now held the image of absolute terror. Seeming now to be possessed of an incontrollable lunacy, the thief suddenly raised himself to his feet and, disregarding both his bizarre quest and any concern for bodily injury, flung himself headlong through the window of Coler’s library. Falling to the ground amidst a frightful shattering of glass, the man got up and ran off into the night.

Too awed at the whole spectacle to speak, I could only stand at the window and regard the curious voleur, who had now stopped running when he saw that he was unpursued. Coler, however, had not been idle: he suddenly came up behind me and, laying a hand on my shoulder, spoke the words:

“Quick, Collins! Follow him! See where he goes!”

“What?” I burst out. “What on earth for?”

“It would take too long to explain now: just follow him, man. It’s vital! I’ve nearly solved the Kurkur Fragment, and Collins, it deals with the very crystal I dug up! Everything is fitting together, everything is making sense. I think I even know why that robber came here. But go now, Collins: follow him, and tell me where he went. Go now!”

Coler would not hear another word of protest nor any demand at explication, and I could do nothing but carry out his request.

Trailing our erstwhile criminal proved to be of no difficulty, as he had no intimation whatever that anyone would want to watch his movements. He was walking easily now, and the simplicity of my task allowed me to ponder on the several enigmas which had so suddenly formed minutes ago. Paramount was the almost ludicrous audacity which this fellow had demonstrated; what phenomenal idiocy or urgency had impelled him to attempt his criminous act in our very presence, where his chances of success were of such exiguity as to be explained only by resorting to the appellation of lunacy? Then there was the matter of Coler’s fragmentary utterances concerning his success in decoding Meredith’s ancient tract. What could Coler have meant when he said that everything was “fitting together”? And how could the Kurkur Fragment, the green crystal, and this unsuccessful try at larceny be in any way related? I think that it was about then that I first began to perceive vaguely that we were dealing with great and appalling matters beyond our ken, involving elder secrets of galactic menace inexplicably joined with incidents in our own midst, the end result of which seemed to form such a devastating implication of doom as might, when correlated and understood, cause the mind to totter on the outermost reaches of irremediable insanity.

I had been following the man with only half my mind, ruminating on the mysteries which seemed imminent of solution by Coler. But even now, as we approached the outskirts of Brichester, I saw that our bucolic brigand could have only one destination: Sentinel Hill, the site of that occult nocturnal ritual of yestereve.

When we reached the hill itself, I felt no surprise at the sight: the congregation that had met almost exactly twenty-four hours ago, for what was taken to be a suggestive if innocuous assembly, was there again, all clustering around the flat, table-like mass of stone that lay on the very summit of the hill, surrounded by a score of carven menhirs whose prodigious age was evident even in near pitch-darkness. Sheltered behind a clump of trees, I saw my shadow timorously approach the others and, when he had reached him who seemed to be the leader of the band, mumble, with head bent low in mortification, a handful of words, arms gesturing plaintively. Upon the man’s concluding, the leader, a small, chunky man of sixty, was suddenly seized with a maniac rage, and slapped the erring subordinate in the face again and again, ceasing only when exhaustion overcame him. The brigand, who was almost twice the size of his punisher, seemed to have no notion whatever of retaliation: although he could easily have annihilated his violent castigator, he chose instead to endure the chastisement, seeming to regard the other with an ineffable respect that was as incredible as it was absurd. When finally the affair was concluded, the elderly padrone adjured all the members to depart, then himself left. I saw that the unfortunate young man who had been so severely reprimanded walked alone, the object of ridicule and outright hatred by the others.

When I returned to Coler’s manor and reported the incident, he, still working on the Egyptian document, nodded slowly and thoughtfully, as if it had only confirmed his hypothesis on the matter. He refused to tell me anything regarding either the attempt at stealing the crystal or his deciphering of the Kurkur Fragment, saying only that he must be left alone so that he could finish its translation. But here I intervened: seeing Coler’s haggard and dishevelled appearance, realizing that he was on the brink of utter physical and mental exhaustion, I refused to allow him to work any more that evening, and bade him get a good night’s sleep; Coler was either too weak or too sensible to resist.

There was hardly any indication when I awoke the next morning that the very night would see the culmination and end of the horrific incidents in which we had so accidentally become involved. Realizing, since Coler had already broken the code of the Kurkur Fragment and that only the arduous work of transcribing had to be done, that my presence at his home would be more a hindrance than a help, I decided to pick up the threads of my own archaeological studies. Leafing through my small report, I found that it contained a number of unsubstantiated statements which could only be rectified by referring to contemporary manuscripts, and in the late morning I journeyed down to Oxford and looked through the Bodleian Library collection of ancient documents to find the necessary sources. When I concluded this work it was mid-afternoon, and, since my time was my own, I decided not to return home but to reacquaint myself with an Oxford which I had not seen for well-nigh a dozen years. My particular architectural predilections tend toward the High Gothic, and few places could satisfy my desires better than Oxford. I must have spent hours in examining the buildings and in roaming the countryside, and I think I can be forgiven for so letting my fancy overcome me, though I often shudder at the thought that I came back to Severnford in what proved to be the very nick of time.

* * *

At about 7:00 I dined in a restaurant in Oxford, and, finally coming to the conclusion that I had wasted enough time in frivolity, made the return trip, reaching home at close on 8:30. Exhausted by my ramblings, I must have dropped off almost immediately afterwards, awaking some forty-five minutes later. For the first time in the day I thought of Coler, the crystal, and Meredith’s Kurkur Fragment, and decided to give the man a call to see how far he had progressed.

Curiously, I received no reply, though I let the phone ring several times. Surely, I thought, Coler could not have retired so early; and even if he had, why did Meredith not answer? Had the two gone somewhere, as I had done, on an archaeological mission? Or had pleasure spurred their departure, Meredith wishing to catch a brief glimpse of England while he was here? The possibilities were endless, and it was useless of me to speculate haphazardly in this manner; the only way I could solve this absurdly minor enigma was to go personally to Coler’s manor.

I cannot say that I was particularly surprised when no one answered either my vehement knocking at the door or my calling out loud of Coler’s and Meredith’s names. Indeed, I was about to come to the conclusion that the two must have gone somewhere, despite the late hour, when I saw something that, though it did not actually defy this hypothesis, did put a more curious and sinister significance upon the whole affair:

Coler’s car was still in his garage.

It was certainly possible that they had gone on foot to wherever they were going, and their absence could well indicate that some accident had befallen either one or both. For a time I considered scouring the countryside in my car for them, but then I became aware of another odd circumstance that almost definitely precluded any innocuous explication of the matter:

Coler’s front door was unlocked; and the reason that it was unlocked was that the lock was broken.

This was not Coler’s work, nor Meredith’s. There also came flooding back to my memory the unsuccessful criminous attempt of the night before, an incident to which Coler had attached a considerable and as yet an unaccountable importance. Something serious was involved, I knew, and I felt also that the consequences of whatever it was were not only overwhelming, but imminent of realization.

I burst through the door and began searching for Coler’s presence. The first place I looked was of course the library, and there I found him—on the floor, unconscious, with blood oozing thickly from a head wound which seemed remarkably recent.

Although I was shocked at this abrupt discovery, I remember noticing that the room was, paradoxically, in relative order: no papers were scattered anywhere, no chairs overturned, no books disturbed save those which we had ourselves perused, and only Coler’s prostrate form signified that any physical struggle had taken place here. I saw, too, that Meredith’s Kurkur Fragment was still on Coler’s desk.

My first task was to revive Coler, and this was accomplished with no great difficulty, for though Coler’s head wound was ugly, it was not serious. Only a minute or two after I began my ministrations I heard Coler moan gruffly and shuffle about, trying to get to his feet. When he opened his eyes, he first expressed a startled horror which again reminded me of our bootless miscreant of the preceding night; then, upon recognizing me, he became tranquil, murmuring:

“Oh, it’s only you, Collins. Thank God you’ve come—”

Breaking off suddenly, his face abruptly registered a wide-eyed dread which seemed to hint of the most awesome of horrors, and which allowed Coler to mutter only the words, “Oh, my God!” and then precipitously to arise from the floor and cast frenzied glances all about the room, as if he were looking for something…

Then I noticed that the crystal was gone.

“Collins, they’ve taken it! They’ve taken it! Come quickly, man, we must go immediately! If we are too late, Collins…”

Disregarding his injury, he first went to another room and seized a rifle, then urged me to come with him as he made his way out of the house. Trying to ignore what was so affecting Coler, I asked him what in the world had happened to Meredith, and Coler gave me this amazing reply:

“He has gone back to Arkham.”

“What!” I cried. “But he arrived here only yesterday! What made him go back so suddenly?”

Flinging at me the day’s newspaper, which was lying on an armchair in the living room, Coler snapped, while exiting through the front door: “The answer is there, Collins; read it on the way.”

And read it I did. The article was almost on the last page of the issue, ironically tucked away in a corner, as if it were some sort of filler:

BIZARRE RIVER TRAGEDY

Arkham, Massachusetts, U.S.A.: 3 July 1940. The shores of Devil Reef near Innsmouth and the Miskatonic River were the sites of peculiar deaths yesterday night. A number of citizens of Arkham, including some young students of Miskatonic University, were found murdered while fishing or swimming: their bodies were torn apart as if by great claws, and a noxious fishy smell adhered to them, along with a curious green slime which was so foetid that the bodies could not be approached for several hours. Whether a human agency was involved could not be determined, but officials and various old inhabitants of Arkham and Dunwich have expressed the belief that this event is somehow tied with the hushed-up government intervention at Innsmouth in the winter of 1927–28 and to the terrible holocaust at Dunwich which took place some months afterwards. They also refer to the great floods that occurred in the hills of Vermont in late 1927, the subsequent disappearance of an old folklorist named Akeley, and the resultant madness of Miskatonic instructor of literature Albert N. Wilmarth. How those diverse incidents could have any relation to the recent tragedy was not explained, though it has been noticed that the townspeople of Innsmouth have been unduly restless in the past few days, and that there has been unprecedented activity in the depths of Devil Reef on several occasions. Some lunatics have gone so far as to mumble about the Salem witch trials, which occurred two and a half centuries ago, though it is to be noted that no one has cared to disavow any of these rumors.

Officials are still looking into the matter, while state and federal authorities have again been contacted…

This certainly explained Meredith’s return home, although it hardly seemed to have any significance to our own affairs. Still running alongside Coler, with only the moonlight to guide us, I then saw another article which was of interest:

CURIOUS SEA INCIDENT

Papeete, Tahiti: 3 July 1940. Some twenty persons—many of them English and American tourists—were killed yesterday night by so-called “sea monsters,” which were said to have come from the sea. Several of the bodies were mutilated beyond recognition, others with limbs amputated and partially eaten. A green trail of slime led from the bodies back to the sea, and the odor of dead fish also prevailed. It is believed that some ordinary sea animals came out of the sea and wreaked the havoc, the claim of “sea monsters” being passed off as the exaggerations of superstitious natives…

Here were two identical incidents, tens of thousands of miles apart. My own readings in the weird could allow of only one answer to those twin disasters, yet the mystery lay in why these things had chosen this especial time to attack. If these two events were unrelated, then it was the most fabulous coincidence ever to come within the scope of my knowledge.

Coler was still rapidly running, and I had trouble in keeping up with him. We had now reached the outskirts of Brichester, but long before this I knew that our eventual destination must be Sentinel Hill. The incredible determination of Coler was what most impressed me: although I knew something of great consequence was involved, I could hardly envision that it was so great as to impel the man into this maniac haste with, further, the deadly rifle at his side. Could the possession of a mere block of crystal, anomalous and supermundane though it may have been, be of such earth-shaking importance? What awful power and significance lay in its weirdly glowing interior? What implications of future devastation could it hold? That the answer was as titanic as it was complex seemed evident, and I can truthfully say that even the wildest arabesques of my imagination did not encompass what I eventually learned was the truth.

We finally reached Sentinel Hill, and, hiding behind a thick copse of trees, I saw again a sight which had to me become monstrously familiar: the infernal congregation was there again, and this time a few of them carried torches to give the whole scene an unhallowed illumination. They were gathered in a close circle around the flat stone at the top of the hill, those with torches standing while the others knelt. The elderly priest also stood, and walked, his back to us, slowly toward the stone. He then reached out his arms and put something on it.

The crystal now lay in the center of the stone.

We could see even from where we were that the glowing had only grown in size, seeming to be close to twice as large as when I had seen it last. There now fell over all a great and deathly silence, yet in the air there was such a tension and apprehension as might make one think that Nature was holding her breath in the expectation of some ineffably towering cataclysm.

The priest now raised both his hands to the sky in a supplicating gesture. Just as he was about to speak Coler fired his rifle.

The priest fell dead to the ground without uttering.

Silence died as quickly, as the other members of the band now began clamoring at the abrupt interruption of their ceremony and looked about to find its cause. They did not have to look far, for Coler now sprang from his place of concealment and ran toward the hill, gun in hand, urging me to follow.

We were madmen to throw ourselves in the midst of that depraved band of blasphemers, yet necessity of the most terrific sort drove us on. We were two against twenty, but we, too, seemed suddenly filled with a bestial madness that made us claw and tear our way through, Coler intermittently firing his rifle in someone’s face or stomach. And when I grabbed the crystal and tucked it under my arm, there came over me an even greater rage at these grotesque perversions of all that is sane and normal, these handfuls of lunatic scoundrels whose desire of absolute decimation was born only of their failure to co-exist with a race who had so surpassed them in mental and spiritual progression that they no longer deserved the appellation of human but became a species apart in their odious and lurid decadence.

I kicked, I scratched, I maimed, and, using my head as a battering ram, thrust my body through the crowd, twisting and writhing away from them as they turned to wrestle the crystal away. I soon found myself in the open, Coler at my side, and we began sprinting away with a velocity we had never before known; and when we turned around to measure the extent of our escape from pursuit, we saw the score of fanatics now a considerable distance behind us, but still giving chase, leaping and tripping over one another, foaming at the mouth in multiple apexes of fury, arms outstretched as if itching not only to win back their other-worldly prize but to rend us apart for having so foiled the consummation of their ritual. But because we also possessed a thankful modicum of insanity, we pressed ourselves on almost beyond the farthest reaches of human capacity, racing through Brichester, Temphill, and finally to Severnford without allowing ourselves one minor yet irrevocably fatal pause.

But we were not finished yet. When we reached Coler’s manor, we stepped not inside but into his car, and drove off to a destination which only he knew. Some minutes later, we pulled to the side of the road and approached what seemed to be an abandoned mine shaft to our right. Coler took the crystal from me and plunged it into the deepest and darkest pit he could find, emitting a heavy sigh of relief after doing so. I recall that though we stayed there for perhaps a full minute, we never heard the crystal reach the bottom.

We had just succeeded in saving mankind—for now.

I had to wait until the next morning to learn the answer. Our exhaustion had reached such lengths that almost immediately upon seating ourselves in some chairs in Coler’s home, we dropped off into a heavy, dreamless, and undisturbed sleep, not waking until it was almost noon. The actions of the preceding night and the long rest had stimulated our appetites, and when our breakfast was prepared we abandoned any pretensions of dignity and attacked the meal like savages. It was some considerable time before we reached anything close to satiation, and when we did Coler led me back to the library, where finally he could reveal to me a truth which he had himself known for less than twenty-four hours.

He began by saying: “You know as well as I, Collins, how we got involved in this business: I accidentally dug up the crystal in Arabia, brought it back with me, tried unsuccessfully to ascertain its use and manufacture, and then noticed how it began glowing, first minutely, then with greater and greater strength. We began looking through my ancient texts to find some sort of reference to the thing, but came up with nothing. Then Meredith came with his Kurkur Fragment from Egypt, and asked me to try to solve it. I did exactly that. It was really very simple: Meredith had himself suggested the answer that it might be a mixture of two languages, which it was—Sanscrit letters forming words roughly akin to these in the R’lyeh Text.

“Now there came those strange meetings on top of Sentinel Hill by those occultists of Brichester. They were up to something, to be sure; but their doing nothing serious the first time seemed to suggest some curious expectancy, and it was of course proved by that incredible effort to rob the crystal two nights ago. It was obvious that they wanted the crystal, but what we could not understand was why.

“I found the answer, as I told you, in the Kurkur Fragment. But before I tell you that, let me show you something else.”

He went to his desk and picked up a packet of about a dozen newspaper clippings, all from various London newspapers of the past few days.

He continued, as he handed them to me: “While you were at Oxford, Collins, I telephoned to London and asked to have recent issues of the Times, the Guardian, and the Daily Telegraph brought to me. (I was not fool enough to go myself and leave the crystal unguarded.) Read the articles: their significance is obvious enough.”

And it was. I read of curious deaths and disappearances in the Australian desert, in the heights of the Himalayas, and in the frozen wastes of Antarctica. I read of an uprising of dolphins in California; I read of the recommencement of human sacrifices in Manitoba; I read of unheard-of excitement amongst primitive tribes in the depths of the African desert, in Panama, in south France, in the Yucatan peninsula, in southern Louisiana, in Polynesia; I read of ships sighting bizarre objects in the Pacific Ocean, in the north Atlantic, in the Gulf of Mexico. It was incredible, the worse because I sensed what was causing it.

“All across the world,” Coler said, “these things have been happening, the incidents in New England and Tahiti were but a part of it. And I could not help but ask myself: why now? What ineffable forces were spurring those things to attack now? Meredith’s Kurkur Fragment told me.”

Again going to his desk, he took hold of a sheet of paper which I could see was Coler’s translation of part of the text. What I read was this:

…And the minions of Azathoth first moulded the Earth as a plaything of the gods, who might fashion upon it what they would—living travesties of the planet’s scarce-cooled crust to serve as ultimate signs of the mistake that is Life. But Cthulhu and the Deep Ones came to wrest the earth away, so that they could serve as the gods of the hoary denizens that shambled before there were men; and this pleased not the minions of Azathoth, who by a supreme jest entrapped the feeble god within the waters. Thence did the prehuman worshippers of Cthulhu fashion the Crystal of Zamalashtra from elements spawned on Yuggoth, burying within it the fire from Nyarlathotep. And when the stars are right, the fire will glow; and may this serve as a sign to the worshippers of Cthulhu to deliver the Crystal of Zamalashtra to their entombed god, whereupon he shall break through his shackles and crush the plaything of the gods called Earth…”

“Need I say more, Collins? need I say more?

“You know that Yuggoth is nothing but that recently discovered planet called Pluto. And you know, too, that the orbit of ‘Pluto’ has been calculated as roughly 248 years. Once every 248 years Yuggoth lines up perfectly so that ‘the stars are right’; now is it not obvious what has happened?

“I dug up the crystal in that exact 248th year!

“Think of what a phenomenal coincidence that was! What an unbelievable stroke of bad luck that I dug it up at the exact time when Cthulhu could be freed from his prison! The glowing confirmed it.

“But why, then, was Cthulhu not released aeons ago? Why has the earth not been crushed? What must have happened was that the crystal was lost before ‘the stars were right,’ and because of this Cthulhu and his minions could never completely escape their watery tombs! All they could do was to make random and ineffectual attacks on men, as the Johansen narrative and the Wilmarth manuscript prove. Without the crystal, it would all be futile…

“Yet the worshippers seem somehow to know when ‘the stars are right,’ and as a result their activities, and the activities of Cthulhu’s spawn, suddenly increase. This most recent attempt proves it; yet this time, because they knew that the crystal had now been rediscovered, their anxiety was a thousandfold greater: for the first time in millennia, they had a chance finally to annihilate the world! Why else did one of the worshippers try to rob the crystal in our very presence? Why else, when that failed, did they resort to physical violence? Why else did they so madly try to get back the crystal when we had taken it from them? Why else did those incidents occur all over the planet?

“Then, too, Collins, think of this: this is 1940; we know that this is the period when ‘the stars are right’; then 248 years ago, the stars must again have been right. And what is 248 years from this date? Is it not 1692, the time of the Salem witch trials? Is there any other explanation for the sudden activity of the witches? Then, as now, they knew it was time; but the crystal was lost, and they could do nothing about it. They had to be content at merely intensifying their rituals, to such an extent that they were caught and killed. But it was all useless: they could do nothing without the crystal.

“If it had not been for me, we would not have gone through what we have; yet think of our marvelous good fortune that Meredith dropped in our laps the very thing we needed to counteract all that had happened! There has never been a time when coincidence has been so devastating, when chance so entered into the composition of events, when sheer accident first threatened, then saved our lives.

“We need not worry about the Crystal of Zamalashtra for another 248 years: by now, the stars have surely moved their alignment, and the crystal has again become powerless. We shall both be dead before the proper time next comes: let us hope that no idiot stumbles upon the crystal as I did, or if someone does, that he has the sense to leave it in its place. I don’t see how we can ever escape the recurring doom of this crystal; and I don’t see how in time Cthulhu will not escape his prison. Uncontrolled curiosity has ever been our worst enemy.”

Jefferson Coler died thirty-six days later, having saved the world yet having left a legacy of eternal dread that seems destined eventually to overcome mankind. The preservation of this document is vital to the preservation of our race: if men cast doubts as to its veracity, then they will pay the consequences of their folly.

Really, it would be the most priceless irony.