1. The Horror in Clay
(Found among the papers of the late Francis Wayland Thurston, of Boston.)
"Great powers or beings like these may possibly have survived ... survived from a very distant time when ... thinking life appeared, perhaps, in shapes and forms. These forms went away long ago, before the coming tide of humans ... Only poetry and legend have caught a quick memory of them. They called them gods, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds...."
—Algernon Blackwood.
The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is this: the human mind cannot connect all the things it holds. We live on a calm island of ignorance in the middle of black seas of infinity. We were not meant to travel far. The sciences, each pulling in its own direction, have not harmed us much so far. But one day someone will put together separate pieces of knowledge. Then terrible views of reality will open up in front of us. We will also see our own frightening place in that reality. Then we will either go mad from what we learn. Or we will run away from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
Theosophists have guessed at the great and wonderful size of the cosmic cycle. In this cycle, our world and the human race are only short events. They have also hinted at strange things that have survived. Their words would freeze the blood if they were not hidden behind a cheerful optimism. But my one glimpse of forbidden eons did not come from them. This glimpse chills me when I think of it, and it drives me mad when I dream of it. Like all terrible glimpses of truth, it came from an accidental putting together of separate things. In this case, the things were an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. I hope that no one else will put these pieces together. Certainly, if I live, I will never knowingly add a link to such a terrible chain. I think that the professor, too, meant to keep silent about the part he knew. I think he would have destroyed his notes if sudden death had not taken him.
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My knowledge of the thing began in the winter of 1926-27, when my grand-uncle died. He was George Gammell Angell, Professor Emeritus of Semitic languages at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. Professor Angell was widely known as an expert on ancient inscriptions. The heads of important museums had often asked him for help. So many people may remember his death at the age of ninety-two. In Providence, people were even more interested, because the cause of his death was unclear. The professor was taken ill while he was coming back from the Newport boat. Witnesses said that he fell suddenly. Just before he fell, a negro who looked like a sailor had pushed him. This man had come from one of the strange, dark courtyards on the very steep hillside. The hillside was a short cut from the waterfront to the dead man's home in Williams Street. The doctors could not find anything visibly wrong with him. They discussed the case for a long time and were puzzled. In the end they decided that some hidden problem of the heart had killed him. It had been caused, they said, by such an old man climbing such a steep hill so fast. At the time I saw no reason to disagree with them. But lately I have begun to wonder—and more than wonder.
I was my grand-uncle's heir and executor, for his wife had died and he had no children. So I had to go through his papers carefully. For this reason I moved all his files and boxes to my rooms in Boston. Much of the material that I put in order will later be published by the American Archeological Society. But there was one box that puzzled me very much. I did not want to show it to anyone else. It was locked, and for a long time I could not find the key. Then I thought of the personal key ring that the professor always carried in his pocket. With it, I was able to open the box. But when I did, I seemed to face an even bigger barrier, locked even more tightly. What could the strange clay bas-relief mean? And what about the disconnected notes, ramblings and newspaper cuttings that I found there? Had my uncle, in his last years, become ready to believe the most obvious tricks? I decided to find the strange sculptor who was responsible. This young man had apparently disturbed the old man's peace of mind.
The bas-relief was a rough rectangle, less than an inch thick and about five by six inches in size. It was clearly modern. But its designs did not feel modern at all. Cubism and futurism have many wild ideas. But they do not often copy the mysterious regularity that hides in prehistoric writing. And most of these designs certainly seemed to be writing of some kind. I knew my uncle's papers and collections well. But I could not identify this kind of writing at all. I could not even guess what it might be distantly related to.
Above these hieroglyphics, or what seemed to be hieroglyphics, was a figure. It was clearly meant to be a picture. But it was made so roughly that its nature was not very clear. It seemed to be a kind of monster, or a symbol of a monster. Only a sick imagination could think of such a shape. My imagination is rather wild. It gave me pictures of an octopus, a dragon and a twisted human shape, all at the same time. I do not think this is unfair to the spirit of the thing. A soft head with tentacles sat on top of an ugly, scaly body with small, undeveloped wings. But it was the general outline of the whole thing that made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure there was a vague suggestion of Cyclopean buildings.