The Dark Boatman: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos (10 page)

Charybdis, or Karyptes, ageless, remembered, and feared by the ancient Greeks, but powerful in the long aeons before that time, when mankind was young, worshipped during those terrible, orgiastic rites, coming at intervals out of the sea with others of its kind. Now the elusive records made sense. Now the terror was seen as cold, dark, naked fact. Those unnatural matings between the Warr Hoppes during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and, if the documents were anything to go by, continuing almost to the present day.

Nylene Poiseder, the wife of Henry Warhope during the early sixteenth century; one of those abominable creatures, an
outsider
, nonhuman in every respect except perhaps in general outward appearance, theoretically alien, the object of far-spread tales of those days, disturbing stories, which now held for me a more sinister meaning than before. What fearful happenings had occurred then? The hidden heirs of the Warhopes, kept locked away from the light of day and the sight of the peasants, down there in those dripping catacombs under the manor. There would have been some with more man in them than beast; and others so different from man that even the sight of them would have turned men mad. Things like William Warhope, whose body had been discovered on the beach, whose disfigurement had been such that it had been buried with no ceremony and an undue haste in the sand; and as late as 1784, one of the members of the family had been burned on the moors just behind the house, and even to this day nothing would grow there. It was as if the ground contained some evil nourishment, which would allow nothing hallowed to flourish.

With an effort, I pulled my thoughts back to the present. The most merciful thing in this world is the inability of the mind to take in every aspect of any situation and correlate them into a coherent whole. Had mine been able to do so, I would undoubtedly have gone insane at that very instant. But a generous nature had decreed the impossibility of piecing together every little scrap of seemingly disassociated information into the final, sense-obliterating reality.

The events of that morning had faded and become a little blurred in my brain, so that by the time the vaguely-seen watery sun had gone down in a clustering of darkening clouds, I refused to let the hazy qualms overtake me and fought them down as I moved through the house, going from one room to the next. But as I reached the main door, there came a sudden return of that nameless fear which had all but overwhelmed me in those Stygian depths far beneath the foundations.

I thought I was prepared for the worst and I should have been, considering all that had gone before. Yet when that dreadful clang, harsh and metallic, came from that deep below the house, echoing and reverberating along those terrible passages which honeycombed the cliff, my hands trembled so violently on the handle of the door that for long, precious seconds, I tugged vaguely at it before it opened and I rushed out into the twilight.

The wind, howling like a demonical thing, swirled about me. Because of that abnormal stillness inside the manor, I had temporarily forgotten about the storm, which had come sweeping in across the bay over the grey, heaving waters of the Atlantic. Rain slashed at my face. Moisture, dank and foul, ran among the fungoid weeds and overgrown plants underfoot. Walking or running on that treacherous surface was difficult enough; but I did my best and just before I reached the top of the cliff, I threw a quick look behind me, over my shoulder.

The tall, ancient spires and turrets of Faxted Manor rose at my back, clawing spectrally for the storm-torn heavens where the round, leering face of the leprous moon showed for brief intervals, throwing no light on the scene below. But in the faint, murky greyness and the occasional flash of vivid lightning, there was light enough for me to see by; too much light, for behind me, not close to the manor but down there below where the surf pounded on the rocks, something far less tranquil than those dreaming spires arrested my notice and held me immobile, rooted to the spot.

What I saw down there where the white line of foam crashed on to the grey needles of rock—or what I fancied I saw—was a heart-stopping, disturbing suggestion of movement. The distance was perhaps three hundred feet, and for a long second I could discern nothing in detail, but I did not like the look of what I could see.

The things were pale, leprous white, glistening too much in the light of a lightning flash, dripping with water, clawing their way around the tall, black monolith in the small bay, slipping through the water with a horribly, undulant motion. And there was a suggestion of sound, too, audible even above the shrieking voice of the wind—a bestial
flopping
and a hooting which could have been emitted by no human throat. These were the things which had made those inhuman marks upon the beach, half-dreamed-of monsters from some realm outside of our everyday knowledge and fancies, drawn out of vivid nightmares, whispered of down the long, grey ages, so evil that all reference to their true nature had been deliberately withheld from the eyes of ordinary people. Was it possible that such creatures could have actually been spawned here on Earth, maybe some incredibly old species, probably some strange branch in the tree of evolution? The grain of truth that lay at the very root of the old myths of gods and goddesses? Those mythical beings living during the old times? Those terrible, half-men, half-beast gods of ancient Egypt and, further back in time, of long lost Samaria and Lemuria, of the black stone city of Ib that was old before the first man walked the Earth? From what demonic, blasphemous reality had these ignorant first-people drawn inspiration for the statues and carvings on the walls of the long-dead tombs along the Nile and the Euphrates?

There are those who believe that there is no reality, that these things existed only in the fertile imaginations of the priestly cult seeking power over the mass of the people. And yet I saw them that storm-shrieking night, standing rooted to the spot on that godforsaken, accursed cliff; saw them come leaping, hopping, surging, out of the limitless black deeps of the sea, filing up some half-seen track in an evil, malignant, putrescent stream.

For all of that time I had seen them but dimly, indistinctly, in the heaven-sent darkness. But then, for a long and nightmarish instant, the clouds parted and the flooding yellow moonlight lit the scene almost as bright as day. I saw them clearly then, my mind hovering on the abysmal edge of madness. I think their colour was a greyish-white, and in the moonlight they were mostly smooth-skinned or scaly, with the suggestion of fins along their backs; their arms and legs were webbed, fibrous, their features repellent with wide-bulging eyes that stared unblinkingly into the night. The first had almost reached the top of the cliffs, and still a limitless stream of them was emerging from the sullen swell when something snapped inside my mind. The spell was mercifully broken. I turned and ran headlong into the night. A thin scream rose and fell in my ears, following me, seemed to swell in tune to the rapid thudding of my heart in its frenzied rhythm, and long seconds passed before I recognised the inarticulate yelling as my own.

There came a long, sustained peal of thunder, splitting the heavens asunder and close on its heels, like a cavernous roar out of the gaping mouth of Hell itself; a rumbling, grinding, grating sound as the ground shook and shuddered under my feet. Great fissures opened in the rocks. Chasms appeared behind me, and in one agonised glimpse, twisting my head with a wrenching of my neck muscles, I saw the front wall of the manor buckle and bulge, twist outward, and fall. It seemed the entire rock-face was crumbling into the sea, carrying with it that blasphemous place. There was a vile, graveyard stench that came out of the ground on every side. Choking and gasping, no longer caring what went on my back, knowing only that I had to get away from that place while there was still time, I ran with the howling wind, my lungs bursting with the terrible strain, my legs leading and afire with the tremendous effort. The reality of what I had seen was searing through my mind. I could not rid myself of the thought of that spawn of evil which had risen up from the deep and unknown fathoms within the sea, of what lay down in the tunnels beneath the manor itself, tunnels along which the seawater must have been permeating endlessly with the sweeping tides everyday for countless hundreds, thousands of years, weakening the whole cliff until that night when it had crumbled in upon itself, carrying Faxted Manor with it as it slid into the sea.

In Bude, shortly before midnight, I stumbled into Carrington’s room, more dead than alive, babbling a strange and almost incoherent tale. Somehow, with brandy, he managed to pull me round, got something out of me which sent him, ashen-faced, to the telephone.

A small party of men left Bude a little before two o’clock in the morning with the storm abating quickly, made their way out along a narrow path over the rocks and around the headland to Faxted Manor. Carrington had taken care to tell the authorities very little of what I had blurted out to him.

Perhaps it was just as well that he did, for there are things hidden just beyond the fringe of human knowledge and experience far best forgotten, even if by some they can never be ignored. The men returned a little after dawn the next day, strangely subdued. They asked questions, firmly put in a kindly tone, went away only partly satisfied by what Carrington and I had agreed to tell them.

Whether it was the action of all that tremendous mass of rock falling into the sea, or whether there are deeper reasons, it was difficult to say, but for days afterwards, the sea was a raging turmoil near that spot, and the small fishing vessels which normally sailed those waters kept well clear of the area. There was, too, an unwholesome smell, which persisted in the region for most of the winter, but by which time I had returned to London, knowing that there could be neither peace nor rest for me in Devon.

The letter I received from Carrington three weeks after my return to Chelsea told me little I had not already guessed, but there was one strange passage in it which struck a responsive of cord of fear in my mind, which is perhaps one of the reasons why the doctors fear I shall never fully recover from my experience.

“There is nothing now recognisable of the place which was known as Faxted Manor since the entire cliff collapsed into the sea at that point. The general opinion is that the action of the salt water on porous rock, riddled with underground passages and vaults, was sufficient to cause the entire structure to disintegrate. Be that as it may, I feel somehow oddly certain that those sub-human creatures you saw did not die. Someday they will inevitably rise again, if not here in Devon, then at some other place, evil and indestructible, ready to seek out and destroy all who know their terrible secret.”

DUST

It is fortunately seldom that one experiences such a moment of pure, unadulterated terror as befell me in the autumn of 1936, following a series of inexplicable incidents which, even now, I cannot possibly explain. At the end of June in that year I had relinquished my post as lecturer in mythology and ancient history at Cambridge, and accepted the offer of my uncle, James Oliver, to live with him in the large, rambling house on the outskirts of Wisterton, a picturesque fishing village on the Northumberland coast, some fifteen miles from Newcastle. For almost six years I had been working sporadically on my book dealing with the legends of this part of the country, but of late my academic duties had interfered more and more with it, and when the opportunity of devoting all my time to it had arisen, I had seized it willingly and gratefully.

The thought of actually living in that region of age-old myth and legend had an exhilarating effect on my mind, and I experienced a curious sense of excitement as my train rumbled north from York through wild, untouched countryside into deeply-forested places of which I had often read and dreamed, but never visited. This was a primitive part of England where old things were still remembered, and the green, domed hills, which nestled low on the skyline, hinted of half-forgotten mysteries which had existed there from the very beginning of time. The old tales of Northumberland had their roots deep in misted antiquity, and in spite of the speed of the train, it seemed that time had been turned back several centuries as I spied the tiny hamlets set on the low hillsides, clusters of houses gleaming faintly in the late afternoon sunlight.

An increasing and unexplainable atmosphere of elusive alienness seemed to pervade the square, cultivated fields and narrow, winding lanes, half-hidden by tall, thick hedgerows and walls of flint as the train continued further north. The wilderness grew more apparent until it intruded upon my thoughts, giving me the unshakeable feeling that I was an interloper here, that this was a territory I would never be able to understand nor become a part of. Deep gorges and ravines were cut through the dark hills where the sunlight never seemed to penetrate, and here and there I caught a glimpse of glinting water as a stream rushed down from the heights to vanish into inconceivable depths.

Certainly there was a strange beauty about the scenery I saw from the carriage window, but it was as though an underlying malignancy existed there, just beneath the surface, waiting to engulf those who tried to probe too deeply. For a little while, I began to doubt the wisdom of my move, but even as the thought crossed my mind, I told myself that this was surely the kind of atmosphere that was essential for me if I was to complete my book. Where else could I find the necessary inspiration if not in the very heart of legend-haunted Northumberland?

I already knew something of the reputation of this part of the country, had spent long hours among musty tomes, searching through ancient parchments, many written in archaic English, some even in the age-old runes of the early centuries. There were, too, other, more tangible remains of this haunted past; the circles of stone pillars which existed on the dark hilltops, lost, drowned towns beneath the sea where, whenever the tides were right, millennia-old bells could be heard ringing beneath the swelling waves. The gigantic black hound with the red, glaring eyes which had been reported at various spots in the county, frightening lonely travellers after dark and in more recent times, that terrible affair at Cornforth Abbey, now a fire-blackened ruin. To most people, these old myths were considered ridiculous, gross distortions of still earlier tales, handed down by word-of-mouth at glowing firesides whenever the winds howled off the moors and the blizzards swept over the bleak domed hills. But the deeper I had delved into them, the more I had become convinced that behind all of these wild fantasies there lay a germ of truth which, for the most part, lay hidden so far back in time that it might never be revealed. There were old gods here long before the Romans or the invading Danes stepped upon the wild shores, and the people in those days worshipped strange beings who have no modern counterparts, but who, according to the more superstitious folk, have not died, but still exist in deep caverns and in undersea caves well below the low-water mark.