The Madness of Cthulhu Anthology (Volume One): 1 (3 page)

That Lovecraft’s Antarctic novella, with its cosmic backdrop and its distinctive multi-species cast of humans, Old Ones, and shoggoths (with bit parts played by Cthulhu and other monsters), has been an inspiration to generations of weird and science fiction writers is evident by the tales in this volume. One of the first who was so inspired was John W. Campbell, Jr., celebrated editor of
Unknown
and of
Astounding.
His novella “Who Goes There?” appeared in the August 1938 issue of
Astounding
, under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart. Campbell did not generally approve of Lovecraft’s lush prose style, and this novella is clearly an attempt to utilize the basic plot of the story in a manner that Campbell felt more suitable to the subject-matter. It was adapted as the classic B movie
The Thing from Another World
(1951). John Carpenter’s remake,
The Thing
(1982), brings us full circle in that it re-infuses elements from
At the Mountains of Madness
into the scenario.

In 1940, the young Arthur C. Clarke produced the affectionate parody “At the Mountains of Murkiness.” Science fiction writers have long held ambivalent views of Lovecraft. On the one hand, they have admired his later work, including “The Colour out of Space” (1927) and “The Shadow out of Time,” for its transformation of supernatural horror into cosmic wonder and awe; but they have found his dense, antiquated prose contrary to their spare realism, and his bleak view of a human race as the weak victims of incalculably superior cosmic entities conflicts with their view of the cosmos as a field open to infinite human exploration. Clarke plays upon some of these elements in his parody; but in his autobiography,
Astounding Days
(1989), he makes no secret of how much he enjoyed both
At the Mountains of Madness
and “The Shadow out of Time” when they appeared in 1936 issues of
Astounding
.

This volume is not restricted to imaginative riffs on Lovecraft’s Antarctic novella; other Lovecraftian themes and tales are used as the springboards for ventures into the weird. But the element unifying all these stories is that they are far more than mere pastiches. Ranging widely in tone and subject-matter from humor and self-parody to plangent domestic conflict to chilling terror, they all reveal how Lovecraftian motifs can be used to generate tales that reflect each individual author’s vision of the world and of our fragile place within it.

W
ITH THE RECENT DEATH OF
P
ROFESSOR
N
UTTY IN THE
S
CRAGGEM
Mental Hospital I am left the only survivor of the ill-fated expedition he led to the Antarctic barely five years ago. The true history of that expedition has never until now been related, and only the report that another attempt is being made to investigate the unholy mysteries of Mount Morgue has prompted me to write this warning, even at the risk of shattering such sanity as I still possess.

It was in the early summer of 1940 that our expedition, which had been sponsored by the Worshipful Company of Potato Peelers, of Murphy Mansions, in the City of London, arrived at the desolate shores of Limburger Land. We were equipped with planes, radio, motor sleighs, and everything necessary for our work and comfort, and every one of us felt eager to begin our work at once—even Dr. Slump, the Professor of Contagious Neuroses.

I vividly recollect the day we set out toward the mountains. The polar sun was shining low over the ice fields when our line of tractor-sleighs started off inland. Soon we had lost sight of the sea, though we were still in radio communication with our base, and before long were passing over regions which no man had ever visited, nor, I trust, will ever visit again. The coast had seemed desolate and dreary enough, but the wilderness of snow and ice through which we were passing was a nightmare of jagged, frozen spires and bottomless crevasses. As we pressed onward a vague malaise crept over every one of us. A feeling of uneasiness, of strange disquiet, began to make itself felt, apparently radiating from the very rocks and crags that lay buried beneath their immemorial covering of ice. It was such a sensation as one might have felt on entering a deserted building where some all-but-forgotten horror had long ago occurred.

On the fourth day we sighted the mountains, still many miles away. When we pitched our camp at the end of the day there were only twenty miles between us and the nearer summits, and more than once in the night we were awakened by sudden tremors in the ground and the distant thunder of mighty explosions from still-active volcanoes.

It took us two days to cover the remaining twenty miles, for the terrain was contorted into a frightful series of chasms and beetling crags, resembling the more contorted regions of the Moon rather than any portion of this Earth. Presently, however, the ground became less convulsed, and we pushed on with renewed vigor. Before long we found ourselves in a narrow valley running straight toward the mountains, now only four or five miles away. I was hurrying along at the head of the party when suddenly there was a sharp crackling noise together with a violent tremor of the Earth, and the ground just ahead of me dropped out of sight. To my horror, I found myself standing on the edge of a frightful precipice looking down into a chasm thousands of feet deep, filled with the steam and smoke of a hundred geysers and bubbling lava pools. Surely, I thought, the mad Arab, Abdul Hashish, must have had such a spot in mind when he wrote of the hellish valley of Oopadoop in that frightful book the forbidden
Pentechnicon
.

We did not remain long at the edge of the valley, for at any instant the treacherous ground might subside once more. The next day one of the planes arrived and landed on the snows nearby. A small party was chosen to make the first flight, and we took off toward the mountains. My companions were Dr. Slump, Professor Palsy, and Major McTwirp, who was piloting the machine.

We soon reached the chasm, and flew along its length for many miles. Here and there in the depths were suggestive formations, partly veiled by steam, that puzzled us greatly, but the treacherous winds made it impossible to descend into the valley. I am certain, however, that once I saw something moving down in those hellish depths—something large and black, that disappeared before I could focus my glasses on it.

Shortly afterward we landed on a vast field of snow at the foot of Mount Morgue itself. As we shut off the engines an uncanny silence descended upon us. The only sound was the crashing of avalanches, the hissing of gigantic geysers in the valley, and the distant concussions of erupting volcanoes.

We descended from the plane and surveyed the desolate scene. The mountains towered before us, and a mile further up the slopes the ground was strangely bare of snow. It seemed, moreover, that the tumbled shapes had more than a suggestion of order about them, and suddenly we realized that we were looking at the ruins our expedition had come so many thousands of miles to investigate. In half an hour we had reached the nearest of them, and saw what some of us had already surmised, that this architecture was not the work of any race of men …

We paused for a moment at the all but ruined entrance and the sight of those hideous carvings on the fallen lintel all but drove us back. Low bas-reliefs, they reminded us of some nightmare surrealist creation of Dali or Dobbi—save that they gave the impression that they were not the representations of dreams but of horrible reality.

After a few steps, the feeble Antarctic light had dimmed to absolute darkness, and we switched on our torches hastily. We had gone at least a mile from the entrance when we decided that we had better return. We had taken the precaution of blazing our trail by means of chalk marks on the walls, so that we had no doubt that (if nothing stopped us) we could find our way back to the surface. However, Dr. Slump was adamant.

“I insist,” he cackled, “that we progress at least another mile. After all, we have a plentiful supply of torches, and we have not yet discovered anything of exceptional archaeological importance—though I, personally, am finding your reactions of the greatest interest. Poor McTwirp here has become positively green about the gills in the last ten minutes. Do you mind if I measure your pulse? Oh, well, you needn’t be rude about it. I am also amused by the way Palsy and Firkin keep looking over their shoulders and shining their torches into corners. Really, for a group of distinguished scientists you are behaving in a most primitive manner! Your reactions under these unusual but by no means unprecedented conditions will certainly be included in the appendix to my forthcoming ‘Hysteria and its Pathological Manifestations.’ I wonder what you would do if I were to—”

At this point, Dr. Slump let rip with the most piercing scream it has been my misfortune to hear since the last revival of
King Kong
. It echoed from wall to wall, left the chamber through the holes in the floor, and wandered for minutes through subterranean passages far below. When it finally returned, with a monstrous progeny of echoes, Professor Palsy was lying in a coma on the floor and Major McTwirp had disguised himself as a bas-relief and was propped up in one corner.

“You blithering idiot!” I cried, when the infernal row had screeched out of the chamber for the second time. But Dr. Slump was too busy taking notes to answer me.

At last silence, and a few bits of ceiling, fell. Slowly the other two revived and with difficulty I restrained them from slaughtering the doctor. Finally, Professor Palsy started the return to the surface, with the rest of us following close behind. We had gone a few hundred yards when from far away came a sound, faint but clear. It was a slimy, slithering noise that froze us to the marrow—and it came from ahead. With a low moan, Dr. Slump sagged to the ground like a desiccated jellyfish.

“Wh-what is it?” whispered McTwirp.

“Ss-sshush!” replied Palsy, giving creditable imitation of the Death of St. Vitus. “It may hear you!”

“Get into a side passage, quickly!” I whispered.

“There isn’t one!” quavered the Major.

Dragging Dr. Slump in after us, for it would have revealed our presence had we left him behind, we crept out of the chamber, extinguishing our torches. The crevice McTwirp had scratched hastily, at the cost of two fingernails, in the solid rock, was rather small for the four of us, but it was our only hope.

Nearer and nearer came the awful sound until at last it reached the chamber. We crouched in the darkness hardly daring to breathe. There was a long silence; then, after an eternity of waiting, we heard the sound of a heavy, sluggish body being dragged across the ground and out into the corridor. For a moment we waited until the horror had passed out of hearing; then we fled.

That we fled the wrong way was, under the circumstances, nobody’s fault. So great had the shock been that we had completely lost our sense of direction, and before we realized what had happened we suddenly found ourselves confronted by the Thing from which we had been trying to escape.

I cannot describe it: featureless, amorphous, and utterly evil, it lay across our path, seeming to watch us balefully. For a moment we stood there in paralyzed fright, unable to move a muscle. Then, out of nothingness, echoed a mournful voice.

“Hello, where did you come from?”

“Lllllllll—,” quavered Palsy.

“Talk sense. There’s no such place.”

“He means London,” I said, taking charge of the conversation, as none of my colleagues seemed capable of dealing with it. “What are you, if it isn’t a rude question? You know you gave us quite a start.”

“Gave you a start! I like that! Who was responsible for that excruciating cacophony that came from this direction five minutes ago? It nearly gave the Elder Ones heart failure and took at least a million years off their lives.”

“Er—I think Dr. Slump can explain that,” I said, indicating the still semicomatose psychologist. “He was trying to sing ‘Softly Awakes My Heart’ but we put a stop to it.”

“It sounded more like Mossolow’s ‘Sabotage in the Steel Foundry,’” said the Thing, sarcastically, “but whatever it was, we don’t like it. You had better come and explain yourselves to their Inscrutable Intelligences, and the Ancient Ones—if they’ve come round yet,” it added,
sotto voce
. “Step this way.”

With a strange, flowing motion it set off through the passageway, covering what seemed miles until the tunnel opened out into an immense hall, and we were face to face with the rulers of this ancient world. I say face to face, but actually we were the only ones with faces. Even more incredible and appalling than the Thing we had first encountered were the shapes which met our horrified eyes as we entered that vast chamber. The spawn of alien galaxies, outlawed nightmares from worlds beyond space and time, entities that had filtered down from the stars when the Earth was young—all these crowded upon our vision.

At the sight my mind reeled. Dazedly, I found myself answering questions put to me by some vast creature who must have been the leader of that congress of titans.

“How did you get in?” I was asked.

“Through the ruins on the mountain slope,” I answered.

“Ruins! Where is Slog-Wallop?”

“Here,” said a plaintive voice, and a mouselike creature with a walrus mustache drooped into view.

“When did you last inspect the main entrance?” said the Supreme Mind sternly.

“Not more than thirty thousand years ago last pancake Tuesday.”

“Well, have it seen to at once. As Inspector of Outhouses and Public Conveniences it is your duty to see that the premises are kept in good repair. Now that the matter has been brought up, I distinctly recollect that during the last Ice Age but two a distinguished extragalactic visitor was severely damaged by the collapse of the ceiling directly he entered our establishment. Really, this sort of thing will not improve our reputation for hospitality, nor is it at all dignified. Don’t let it happen again.”

“I can’t say I liked the decorations, either,” I ventured.