As the steps and the
passage grew broader, I heard another sound, the thin, whining mockery
of a feeble flute; and suddenly there spread out before me the
boundless vista of an inner world--a vast fungous shore litten by a
belching column of sick greenish flame and washed by a wide oily river
that flowed from abysses frightful and unsuspected to join the
blackest gulfs of immemorial ocean. *       *       *       *       *

Fainting and gasping, I looked at that unhallowed Erebus of titan
toadstools, leprous fire and slimy water, and saw the cloaked throngs
forming a semicircle around the blazing pillar. It was the Yule-rite,
older than man and fated to survive him; the primal rite of the
solstice and of spring’s promise beyond the snows; the rite of fire
and evergreen, light and music. And in that Stygian grotto I saw them
do the rite, and adore the sick pillar of flame, and throw into the
water handfuls gouged out of the viscous vegetation which glittered
green in the chlorotic glare. I saw this, and I saw something
amorphously squatted far away from the light, piping noisomely on a
flute; and as the thing piped I thought I heard noxious muffled
flutterings in the fetid darkness where I could not see. But what
frightened me most was that flaming column; spouting volcanically from
depths profound and inconceivable, casting no shadows as healthy flame
should, and coating the nitrous stone above with a nasty, venomous
verdigris. For in all that seething combustion no warmth lay, but only
the clamminess of death and corruption. The man who had brought me now squirmed to a point directly beside the
hideous flame, and made stiff ceremonial motions to the semicircle he
faced. At certain stages of the ritual they did groveling obeisance,
especially when he held above his head that abhorrent “Necronomicon”
he had taken with him; and I shared all the obeisances because I had
been summoned to this festival by the writings of my forefathers. Then
the old man made a signal to the half-seen flute-player in the
darkness, which player thereupon changed its feeble drone to a scarce
louder drone in another key; precipitating as it did so a horror
unthinkable and unexpected. At this horror I sank nearly to the
lichened earth, transfixed with a dread not of this nor any world, but
only of the mad spaces between the stars. Out of the unimaginable blackness beyond the gangrenous glare of that
cold flame, out of the tartarean leagues through which that oily river
rolled uncanny, unheard, and unsuspected, there flopped rhythmically a
horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things that no sound eye could
ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly remember. They were not
altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor vampire bats,
nor decomposed human beings, but something I cannot and must not
recall. They flopped limply along, half with their webbed feet and
half with their membranous wings; and as they reached the throng of
celebrants the cowled figures seized and mounted them, and rode off
one by one along the reaches of that unlighted river, into pits and
galleries of panic where poison springs feed frightful and
undiscoverable cataracts. The old spinning woman had gone with the throng, and the old man
remained only because I had refused when he motioned me to seize an
animal and ride like the rest. I saw when I staggered to my feet that
the amorphous flute-player had rolled out of sight, but that two of
the beasts were patiently standing by. As I hung back, the old man
produced his stylus and tablet and wrote that he was the true deputy
of my fathers who had founded the Yule worship in this ancient place;
that it had been decreed I should come back; and that the most secret
mysteries were yet to be performed. He wrote this in a very ancient
hand, and when I still hesitated he pulled from his loose robe a seal
ring and a watch, both with my family arms, to prove that he was what
he said. But it was a hideous proof, because I knew from old papers that
that watch had been buried with my great-great-great-great-grandfather
in 1698. Presently the old man drew back his hood and pointed to the family
resemblance in his face, but I only shuddered, because I was sure that
the face was merely a devilish waxen mask. The flopping animals were
now scratching restlessly at the lichens, and I saw that the old man
was nearly as restless himself. When one of the things began to waddle
and edge away, he turned quickly to stop it; so that the suddenness of
his motion dislodged the waxen mask from what should have been his
head. And then, because that nightmare’s position barred me from the
stone staircase down which we had come, I flung myself into the oily
underground river that bubbled somewhere to the caves of the sea;
flung myself into that putrescent juice of earth’s inner horrors
before the madness of my screams could bring down upon me all the
charnel legions these pest-gulfs might conceal. *       *       *       *       *

At the hospital they told me I had been found half-frozen in Kingsport
Harbor at dawn, clinging to the drifting spar that accident sent to
save me. They told me I had taken the wrong fork of the hill road the
night before, and fallen over the cliffs at Orange Point--a thing they
deducted from prints found in the snow. There was nothing I could say,
because everything was wrong. Everything was wrong, with the broad
window showing a sea of roofs in which only about one in five was
ancient, and the sound of trolleys and motors in the streets below. They insisted that this was Kingsport, and I could not deny it. When I went delirious at hearing that the hospital stood near the old
churchyard on Central Hill, they sent me to St. Mary’s Hospital in
Arkham, where I could have better care. I liked it there, for the
doctors were broadminded, and even lent me their influence in
obtaining the carefully sheltered copy of Alhazred’s objectionable
“Necronomicon” from the library of Miskatonic University. They said
something about a “psychosis,” and agreed that I had better get my
harassing obsessions off my mind. So I read again that hideous chapter, and shuddered doubly because it
was indeed not new to me. I had seen it before, let footprints tell
what they might; and where it was I had seen it were best forgotten. There was no one--in waking hours--who could remind me of it; but my
dreams are filled with terror, because of phrases I dare not quote. I
dare quote only one paragraph, put into such English as I can make
from the awkward Low Latin. “The nethermost caverns,” wrote the mad Arab, “are not for the
fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and
terrific. Cursed the ground where dead thoughts live new and oddly
bodied, and evil the mind that is held by no head. Wisely did Ibn
Schacabac say that happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain, and
happy the town at night whose wizards are all in ashes.