The Burrowers Beneath Read online

  Unable to escape I await the thing. I am trapped by the same hypnotic power that claimed the others at G’harne. What monstrous memories! How I awoke to see my friends and companions sucked dry of their life’s blood by wormy, vampirish things from the cesspools of time! Gods of alien dimensions! I was hypnotized then by this same terrible force, unable to move to the aid of my friends or even to save myself!

  Miraculously, with the passing of the moon behind some wisps of cloud, the hypnotic effect was broken. Then, screaming and sobbing, utterly broken, temporarily out of my mind, I fled, hearing behind me the droning, demoniac chanting of Shudde-M’ ell and his hordes.

  Not knowing that I did it, in my mindlessness I carried with me those hell-spheres … . Last night I dreamed of them. And in my dreams I saw again the inscriptions on that stone box. Moreover, I could read them!

  All the fears and ambitions of those hellish things were there to be read as clearly as the headlines in a daily newspaper! “Gods” they may or may not be but one thing is sure: the greatest setback to their plans for the conquest of Earth is their terribly long and complicated reproductory cycle! Only a handful of young are born every thousand years; but, considering how long they have been here, the time must be drawing ever nearer when their numbers will be sufficient! Naturally, this tedious buildup of their numbers makes them loath to lose even a single member of their hideous spawn—and that is why they have tunneled these many thousands of miles, even under deep oceans, to retrieve the spheres!

  I had wondered why they should be following me—and now I know. I also know how! Can you not guess how they know where I am, Paul, or why they are coming? Those spheres are like a beacon to them; a siren voice calling. And just as any other parent—though more out of awful ambition, I fear, than any type of emotion we could understand—they are merely answering the call of their young!

  But they are too late!

  A few minutes ago, just before I began this letter, the things hatched! Who would have guessed that they were eggs—or that the container I found them in was an incubator? I can’t blame myself for not knowing it; I even tried to have the spheres X-rayed once, damn them, but they reflected the rays! And the shells were so thick! Yet at the time of hatching those same shells just splintered into tiny fragments. The creatures inside were no bigger than walnuts. Taking into account the sheer size of an adult they must have a fantastic growth rate. Not that those two will ever grow! I shriveled them with a cigar … and you should have heard the mental screams from those beneath!

  If only I could have known earlier, definitely, that it was not madness, then there might have been a way to escape this horror. But no use now. My notes—look into them, Paul, and do what I ought to have done. Complete a detailed dossier and present it to the authorities. Wilmarth may help, and perhaps Spencer of Quebec University. Haven’t much time now. Cracks in ceiling.

  That last shock—ceiling coming away in chunks—the floor—coming up! Heaven help me, they’re coming up. I can feel them groping inside my mind as they come—

  Sir,

  Reference this manuscript found in the ruins of 17 Anwick Street, Marske, Yorkshire, following the earth tremors of September this year and believed to be a “fantasy” which the writer, Paul Wendy-Smith, had completed for publication. It is more than possible that the so-called disappearances of both Sir Amery Wendy-Smith and his nephew, the writer, were nothing more than promotion stunts for this story: it is well-known that Sir Amery is/was interested in seismography and perhaps some prior intimation of the two quakes supplied the inspiration for his nephew’s tale. Investigations continuing.

  Sgt. J. Williams

  Yorks County Constabulary

  2nd October 1933

  IV

  Cursed the Ground

  (From de Marigny’s Notebooks)

  It soon became obvious that the occultist, despite his denials, was far more tired then he had admitted, for he did in fact doze, closing his eyes and drowsing, breathing deep and rhythmically where he sat in his chair, while I read the letters and the—fantasy?—of Paul Wendy-Smith.

  I admit quite frankly that when I was finished with that document my mind was in something of a whirl! There had been so many factual references in the supposed “fiction,” and why had the author deliberately chosen to give his characters his own, his uncle’s, and many other once-living persons’ names? Considering the letters I had read prior to this disturbing document, the conviction was rapidly growing in me that Crow’s assertions—so far at least—stood proven. For while my friend had not directly said so, nevertheless I could guess that he believed the Wendy-Smith manuscript to be nothing less than a statement of fantastic fact!

  When I had properly done with my reading, and while I checked over again the contents of certain of the letters, Crow still nodded in his chair. I rustled the papers noisily as I put them down on his desk and coughed politely. These sudden sounds brought my friend back in an instant to full consciousness.

  There were many things for which I would have liked explanations; however, I made no immediate comment but remained intently alert and thoughtful as Crow stirred himself to pass the box containing … what?

  I believed I already knew.

  I carefully removed the cardboard lid, noting that my guess had been correct, and lifted one of the four beautifully lustrous spheres the box contained.

  “The spawn of Shudde-M’ell,” I quietly commented, placing the box back on the desk and examining the sphere in my hand. “The eggs of one of the lesser known deities of the Cthulhu Cycle of myth. Bentham did send them to you, then, as you requested?”

  He nodded an affirmative. “But there was no letter with the box, and it seemed pretty hastily or clumsily wrapped to me. I believe I must have frightened Bentham pretty badly … or at least, something, did!”

  Frowning, I shook my head, doubt suddenly inundating my mind once more. “But it’s all so difficult to believe, Titus, and for a number of reasons.”

  “Good!” he instantly replied. “In resolving your own incredulity, which I intend to do, I might also allay the few remaining doubts which I myself yet entertain. It is a difficult thing to believe, Henri—I’ve admitted that—but we certainly can’t afford to ignore it. Anyhow, what reasons were you speaking of just now, when you voiced your reluctance to accept the thing as it stands?”

  “Well, for one thing”—I sat back in my chair—“couldn’t the whole rigamarole really be a hoax of some sort? Wendy-Smith himself hints of just such a subterfuge in that last paragraph of his, the ‘police report.’”

  “Ah!” he exclaimed. “A good point, that—but I’ve already checked, Henri, and that last paragraph was not part of the original manuscript. It was added by the author’s publisher, a clever extract from an actual police report on the disappearances.”

  “Then what about this Bentham chap?” I persisted. “Couldn’t he have read the story somewhere? Might he not simply be adding his own fancies to what he considers an intriguing mystery? He has, after all, admitted to a certain interest in weird and science-fiction cinema. Perhaps his taste also runs to macabre literature! It’s possible, Titus. The Wendy-Smith story may, as you seem to suspect, be based on fact—may indeed have been drawn from life, a veritable diary as the continuing absence of Sir Amery and his nephew after all these years might seem to demand—but it has seen print as a fiction!”

  I could see that he considered my argument for a moment, but then he said, “Do you know the story of ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf,’ Henri? Of course you do. Well, I’ve a feeling that Paul Wendy-Smith’s last manuscript was dealt with on a similar principle. He had written a fair number of macabre stories, you see, and I’m afraid his agent and executor—despite some preliminary doubts, as witness the delay in publishing—finally saw this last work as just another fiction. It puts me disturbingly in mind of the Ambrose Bierce case. You know the circumstances to which I refer, don’t you?”

  “Hmm?” I murmured, frowning
as I wondered what he was getting at. “Bierce? Yes. He was an American master of the macabre, wasn’t he? Died in 1914 … ?”

  “Not ‘died,’ Henri,” he quickly corrected me. “He simply disappeared, and his disappearance was quite as mysterious as anything in his stories—quite as final as the vanishment of the Wendy-Smiths!”

  He got down on his hands and knees on the floor and began to collect up some of the books and maps. “But in any case, my friend, you’ve either not been listening to me as well as you might, or”—he smiled at me—“you have very little faith in what I’ve sworn to be the truth. I’m talking about my dreams, Henri—think about my dreams!”

  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 that perhaps 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 seem 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 center drawer in his desk he took a certain surgical instrument. “This was lent to me by a neighbor 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 favor 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 tests, 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 yet had time 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 can 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, Henril, 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 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 toward Bentham’s place at Alston.”

  He paused here to sort out a newspaper clipping 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 Als
ton?”

  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 scientist’s apparatus—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 onto 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?”