The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 3, page 14
I have not seen him since the door shut. The Worm Unknown has been quiescent for some time, but now it stirs once more, and I can feel the coldness of its probing head push higher into my esophagus, questing up and up, toward my windpipe, seeking escape through my upper orifices.
I struggle to breathe…. Brain pounding madly…. I can write no more—
MISS HITCHBONE RECLAIMS HER OWN
I waited with my apartment door half-open for the tenant in 4-C to return, Chinatown neon signage painting my living room with garish, discordant splashes. I didn’t hear the damned scratching. But it was early yet….
Somewhere in the eleventh hour, the dull clumping of footsteps trudged up the worn oaken stairs. I stepped out to meet him.
“Mr. Queet?”
“Yeah.” His voice was as empty as his expression.
“I need to talk to you about your cat.”
His loose fleshy face winced, gray eyes veering evasively. “Cat, you say?”
“He’s kept me awake scratching at your door the last three nights,” I explained. “What are you going to do about it?”
He froze on the stairs. “You hear it tonight?” he asked guardedly.
“Not yet. Bring it in now, so I can get some shuteye. Okay?”
Reaching the landing, Queet took hold of the bannister post and peered up through the shadows to the scarred door at the end of the hall. His door. Meeting mine, his eyes turned penitent.
“Her name was Eldreth Hitchbone,” he croaked.
“Your cat?”
“I don’t have a cat,” Queet muttered.
“I keep hearing a cat scratching at your door, Queet.”
“She died back in ‘99—1899. More than a century ago.”
“Can we stay on the subject? Please?”
Queet chewed his lip. “Trade you a beer for the story. What say?”
It seemed like a fair deal. Queet shut my door behind him, rattling it to make sure the lock’s tongue had caught.
I popped him a cold Sam Adams while he dropped into a chair. Queet accepted the can with an appreciative grunt. Folding my arms, I decided to remain on my feet.
After his first chug, Queet spoke. “I wouldn’t have gone down into her tomb, but it was already open, see? Stone slab flat on the grass and cracked steps leading down. So I went. Hundred-year-old tomb. Why not? I like old burying grounds. And Copp’s Hill’s one of Boston’s best. They got old Cotton Mather buried there, you know.”
He took a short sip. Then a long guggling pull. I thought I heard a scratching down the hall. Queet paused, but didn’t otherwise react. He went on.
“There was trash at the bottom. From local kids drinking. Coffin was still there, though. Just separated planks now, all fallen in mixed up with the dry bones scattered like dice. I really wanted her skull. But it was gone. So I settled for two fistfuls of spinal column. God, I should’ve left the damn things there. Souvenirs, hah! What good did they do me?”
Between sips, his voice got progressively lower.
“The scratching started the very next night. Thought it was a cat myself. At first.”
“Sounds like a cat,” I said. “Footpads scraping along the hall.”
“That’s her bare-boned feet you hear,” Queet said harshly. I kept my expression stiff. “Ever peek out?”
I shook my head no. “Allergic.”
“I looked the first night. Never again. It was her.”
“Eldreth?” I was humoring him.
He finished the can, reluctantly removing his lips and peering into the opening as if disappointed that it wasn’t bottomless. “Wanted her bones back, but I wouldn’t let her in for ‘em. She hasn’t the strength to bust in, fortunately.”
“Why not give them back?” I asked casually.
Queet crushed the can in his heavy fist. “Can’t. Dumped ‘em in the trash next morning. Guess she don’t know that. No brain matter left in her cracked old cranium. No ears to hear with, anyways, so no point in tellin’ her. Won’t give up.”
“You have a point,” I said dryly.
Regarding me plaintively, he asked, “Got another beer?”
Disgusted, I was about to show Queet out, when the scratching came again. Distinctly. This time low on my door. But not as low as a cat clawing. The inner doorknob rattled weakly, but failed to turn.
Queet came out of the chair, face shuddering. “It’s her! My voice musta carried. God damn!”
I almost laughed in his bleary face. “I’ll get it,” I said, reaching the door before Queet. “Always wanted to meet a ghost,” I added dryly.
My chuckle died in my throat as I flung open the door while Queet’s wretched voice screamed, “That’s her damn fingerbone scratching, you idiot! And I’ve no bones to give her!”
A short brown skeleton floated there, skull staring sightlessly at my belt buckle. I laughed, swiping the air over its head for supporting wires, expecting the jointed assembly of bones to jiggle.
Instead, with a grinding, the skull rotated on its spinal column. The empty sockets came to rest upon trembling Queet. Gathering its spindly self, it brushed past me, clicking like an old pocket watch.
That’s when I ran from the building.
They found poor dead Queet on the landing, with his back gouged open, spine exposed, the lumbar vertebrae missing. They never found the missing bones, or the killer. And I never went back for my stuff. Once the nightmares stopped I went to Eldreth Hitchbone’s tomb and found it sealed with cement, I hope forever.
It was her fleshless skull in my doorway that night. Trust me, I know. For the stunted deformity of bone that clicked by me walked with the lower points of its shoulder blades scraping the top of the pelvic saddle.
You see, the spinal column designed to hold them apart was painfully, disturbingly truncated.
THE SHADOW OVER UXMAL
(Manuscript found at the bottom of a cenote,
dated April 28, 1971)
It was not my intention to come to this god-forsaken corner of the world. Even as I pen this, my last communication with my fellow man, the cliched phrase “god-forsaken”, sends unnatural chills up my spine and I find myself now shuddering uncontrollably.
Nonetheless, I must convey my knowledge of what has transpired here to my ex-countrymen in the hope that they can in time destroy the forces that now threaten to overwhelm this earth, because God knows I am too weak to dare, once more, confront this thing.
I am, or was, a citizen of the United States of America. As I approached the age of conscription, it was with growing alarm that I witnessed the rapid expansion of the unholy war in which my country was embroiled. My academic abilities enabled me to enroll in a well-respected college, and thus secure for myself a temporary deferment, while I awaited, in vain, the first signs of a lysis in the disease of war.
I have always prided myself on my inflexible moral code, as well as my religious convictions. It was this faith and background, as well as an interest in pre-Columbian cultures, which led me to plead a state of conscientious objector before a draft review board and, as a consequence of its eventual acceptance, in lieu of military service, I joined the Peace Corps. Because of my impressive qualifications––I had, in the course of my college studies, extensively immersed myself in the study of Central American history and, as a result of a learned professor’s kindly tutoring, became quite fluent in Mayan and Aztec dialects (an accomplishment in which I pride myself to this day)––I was assigned to an Indian village which lay in the shadow of the ancient Mayan city of Uxmal.
My assignment, I was told, was to teach the Indians the necessary agricultural skills in order to lift their subsistence culture from a level that bordered on near-extinction. But I later found that the organization I worked for expected of me duties that are not generally connected with it.
The Mayan village––for the people were some of the last of that once great jungle-taming empire––was a decrepit mushroom forest of cinderblock, adobe, and straw huts. Disease flourished in this vermin-infested jungle, and the old and infirm simply lay in the sun awaiting the sound of the leathern wings of Camazotz, the death-bat god whom they believed would release them from their misery.
The people were sun-bronzed and coarse featured, but they nevertheless communicated to me a regal dignity and pride that made me think of them as fallen angels. In the beginning, they were resentful of my intrusions, for as I was shocked to learn, I was the only Peace Corps worker in the area. But my ministrations to those suffering from malaria earned me the gratitude of Nohkukum, their chieftain, and finally, the people themselves––a situation no doubt enhanced by my fluency in their native language.
I had been there less than a month when I discovered that my superiors were making political bargains with certain revolutionary factions present in the small nation in which Uxmal is located. This country was one of those in which revolution was an annual event.
My discovery of these machinations led me to resign from the Peace Corps and eventually renounce my United States citizenship. However, my growing fondness and sympathy for the fallen Mayans made me decide to remain in the village as long as I was needed. In this respect, there was no problem, as a bequest from a late uncle had enabled me to build a modest but comfortable ranch near the village. I purchased supplies by jeep.
Month after month, conditions steadily improved beneath my guidance. I found life without the pressures of modern civilization surprisingly agreeable.
But the most enjoyable aspect of it all was at night, when the ancient moon was high in the stellular sky, and I listened to the fascinating myths and legends of these time-forgotten people. One of the most intriguing of which was that of Kukulcan, the fabled culture hero of the Central American Indians. The legend dates back to the shadowy Toltecs, whose rude technology raised the fabulous city of Tula and whose culture gave birth to all Nahuatl-speaking peoples. Kukulcan, whose symbol was the winged serpent, was the god identified with the planet Venus and learning. It was he who descended from the sky and gave civilization to man. Kukulcan lived and ruled for a time on earth until he sailed away on a raft of snakes to the unknown shores of the land of Tlillan-Tlappallan, vowing to return one day. One of the most
fascinating aspects of the legend is that Kukulcan was depicted as a white man with a beard. The copper-skinned Indians are almost beardless by nature.
Occasionally, I managed to explore the ancient, araneous ruins of the abandoned city of Uxmal. The ancestors of the modern Mayans erected this intermontane city whose massive pyramids and temples now stand broken and liana-draped. On one such terraced teocalli, in place of the usual cromlech-like building, stood an antique Spanish chapel, a remnant of the conquering Spaniards. It looked incongruous, a frail thing of wood and glass atop a huge stone pyramid that defied time itself. I must confess the juxtaposition of modern Christianity against an older faith shook my own in ways I can neither understand nor explain.
It was late in October when I first caught a glimpse of the terrors to come. To the Mayans, this was the month of Xul and we were approaching the most festive time of the year. This was the Chickaban, a celebration in honor of Kukulcan. As I had been with these people for over a year, this was not a new thing to me. But this year, instead of the gayety of a coming holiday, there was in its place, a mood both ominous and foreboding. It was as if a shadow had fallen over the land, foretokening doom. The Indians, instead of hunting wild game for a feast, sat around gathering wood and obsidian to be used in the making of weapons. To all appearances, they were preparing for war. At the same time, they became quite taciturn and indifferent to my presence. Their sudden change of behavior quite exasperated me, for I could get nothing out of them.
It was during this time that I first saw strangers in the village. At first, they trickled in. But soon they were a steady stream of immigrants. They were all Indians. Observation of them was a shocking revelation. The growing assemblage, now over four times the original village population, represented every great Nahuatl-speaking peoples extant, such as the Aztecs, Mixtecs, Chichimecs, Zapotecs, and others. But even tribes from below the Amazon, such as the stoic Incas and the mild-spoken Aymara, had arrived. Moreover, they all were clad for war.
The Chickaban fell on Ehcatl, the Night of the Wind. The moon was full and Venus, the symbol of Kukulcan, was visible in the east. For the first time in my stay, the people marched into ruined Uxmal. Normally, the Mayans stayed away from the grim abode of their ancestors.
The torchlight procession halted in the great crack-flagged plaza of Uxmal, where it encircled a huge truncated pyramid. I had trailed the march on foot, but at a cautious distance. I had to witness whatever was to be done.
The ornate façade of the Temple of the Dwarf faced the pyramid about which the Indians encircled. I crouched in the doorway of this low stone structure, called such because it appeared built for––or by––a stenomorph. If they were aware of my presence, the Indians gave no sign, although I half suspected they knew that I had followed them.
I stood in the shadows, observing everything. Before me stretched a timeless and bizarre prospect.
On the other side of the great plaza of Uxmal, torches held high and casting fitfully wavering witch-fires and shadows on the pyramid before them, stood the forgotten people. In the background, priests in black beat upon the tlascalan, their sacred drums, intoning words even I could not understand. The people took up the chant.
A more barbaric-looking throng was unimaginable. Even though I had known some of them intimately, they now seemed alien and detached. I knew them no longer. Resplendent in exotic feather ornament, some were dressed in native costume of cotton sash and doublet. Many wore the tilmàtli, a cloak of cotton fiber.
Sprinkled among this company, I spied spotted strutting jaguar and eagle knights from Montezuma’s time, brandishing studded clubs and ornate wooden shields.
The cool night air seemed to stir a grim sense of foreboding in me as I watched four shadowy forms ascend one flight of broken stone steps to the flat summit of that great teocalli.
Nohkukum, apparent leader of these proceedings and splendorous in his finery, mounted the stairs ahead of the others. His eagle feather headdress waved gently with each step he took. Behind him followed two priests, their bodies painted black and each cloaked in a sable mantle of cotton. Both held the forearm of the person between them. I saw it was a young, raven-haired girl, clad in a simple robe of white. Even from where I stood, I could see her bare arms trembling.
All four moved at a stately, majestic pace. The whole aspect of the scene began to disturb me greatly. It was only when my gaze sought the lofty summit of the truncated pyramid and beheld the silhouette of a dark, rounded hump that was the only construction marking that platform, that I realized the abhorrent intent of these people. The hump was a great basalt altar fashioned in the shape of a human skull. Behind it was a cenote––a dry well where, in classical times, the bodies of those sacrificed to the gods were cast away like so much exhausted cordwood.
I do not consider myself a brave man, so I cannot explain what led me to try a foolish, if chivalrous, attempt to succor the young girl. Nonetheless, I rushed from my place of concealment and strove to hurl myself bodily through the tight ring of worshippers in order to gain the staircase.
But my plan was foredoomed to failure. As I moved forward, the sound of my rushing charge alerted a cluster of armed warriors. They fell upon me in unison, as if by some dull telepathy sensing my motives. And although I am not athletically inclined, nor am I trained in any of the martial disciplines, I managed to give a good account of myself by rendering unconscious three of those who sought to stop me.
Taxed by my efforts, I could not break the grip of the two who then seized me. As I stood thus in their dual unbreakable grips, a third, one whom I had known, approached. A corn farmer named Kax. His brazen features were now enshadowed by the predatory yellow beak of an eagle knight’s helmet.
“Why are you doing this thing?” I demanded.
“Her soul’s flight shall be the pathway through which Kukulcan will return,” he responded. “It is so proscribed in the books of Chilam Balam.” So saying, he lifted a smoldering censer to my face. Smoldering copal incense curled bluely to my nostrils, draining my remaining strength. I was now completely paralyzed, still held fast in the grip of two bronze warriors. My mightiest exertions could not break this spell.
All eyes now turned to the drama above.
Black silhouettes, the four stood insular atop that great monolith of rock. At the direction of their chieftain, the two black-clad priests laid the girl on her back, on the crown of the great skull of intratelluric basalt. I still remember how she stared rigid and immobile at the pale electrum moon, which looked down indifferently upon that pagan rite.
Like lost souls, blue copal smoke arose from numerous censers, lending a spectral atmosphere to the ritual. The incense was beginning sicken me, but no more so than the chilly knowledge of what was to come.
The chieftain held down the girl’s arms, one priest restraining her ankles. Th e second votary lifted an obsidian knife and brought it down in a savage arc, slashing the snow white robe open in front, exposing her dark quaking breastlets.
Desperately, I fought to regain control of my motor nerves, but to no avail, nor could I will my staring eyes to avert themselves.
Fear, hate, revulsion, thrashed and squirmed within me like a serpent writhing on a bed of burning coals.
A second, more surgical, incision opened a neat gash in the flesh above the heart, which I knew must now be pounding the last frantic beats allotted for it.
My futile exertions caused sparks to dance in front of my eyes; I felt as if I were on the edge of a yawning abyss.
The votary made quick, deft strokes within the surgical opening, severing all connecting arteries, and withdrawing the sanguine instrument, inserted his hand. Then he withdrew and held high the glistening and still palpitating organ, signaling the end of the grisly rite. The night sky was like the face of a cyclops, the moon, its silver-blue orb set in a lowery and stelliferous black visage.
