The House of the Worm

CHAPTER IX The Four Sealed Jars

There are things in the shop of Getech that they bring in by the back door and do not display openly. On that counter loll many curious gods of wood and jade and gold, having benign smiles; and there are chests of camphor wood; and that very crystal once spoken of in connection with a name grown mythical, exorbitantly priced for showing things no crystal ought to show; and the beautiful iridescent silks of that which some name the spider and some the worm, and some say neither of these. The selection of their spices is unmatched even in song. In a locked room near the back are kept the several poisons that shop has for sale, and certain exotic powders they will not sell you elsewhere, save perhaps the Moon, and whose use is punished strangely.

One dreams sometimes of how the stars light the squat cottages where the green hill of Nithey-Vash falls away. The thatches of those cottages go all silver with the starlight, and the lamps they light within turn the lozenge panes one by one into jewels, they are more beautiful than the silent houses whose windows overlook the edge of the World. On this night Wesh saw them from his own window, and conceived a longing: Wesh longed in his soul to see what the Night was like in those pleasant little streets between the cottages… The watchmen opened their dark lanterns and did not smile when Wesh walked past the gate the watchmen watch.

And perhaps the streets conspired against him as he walked, for too quickly the star-lit cottages were hidden behind high walls of ugly brick, and the paths twisted and would not go in any of the proper directions. The bleak warehouses on either side of him confined the Night to a narrow channel overhead — even the stars were changed — and Wesh despaired of ever finding the little cottages. But turning a corner he spied a dim light far off in the dark before him, and hurried on.

That shop bearing Getech’s mark on its iron lintel is very lean and high, and set between two tottering old houses with no lamps in their windows, that wear an evil look. But there was little comfort in certain menacing shapes in the shop-window either. Only one twinkling eye of a quaint little jade god recalled the stars Wesh had seen from his own window… A bell rang when Wesh opened the door. He had already examined three wonderful dusty tomes bound all in copper (whose pages were closely writ in bestial characters he was unable to decipher), and nodded as he passed the amethyst cups, and was picking up from the counter an ivory daemon, when someone behind him uttered a cough. And the proprietor peered up into the face of Wesh with watery little eyes and made him eagerly welcome.

Only those sinful eyes and the top of a nasty bald head showed above those black wrappings many sizes too large for him; but seeing them made Wesh remember an appointment he did not have, and turn to go. Then that gnomish being plucked at his sleeve and smiled.* There was really no reason to be nervous, the proprietor only wished to see that Wesh’s curiosity was wholly satisfied. Would he not examine the wares of that shop more closely? But when Wesh would have inquired after the price of the quaint little jade god he had seen in the window, the proprietor only hurried him through the dim aisles to a dark little room near the back, which he unlocked, and urged Wesh through the door.

*Some wrinkles in the wrappings curled up at the ends.

This room was empty but for four jars and the long, lidded wooden box propped in a corner. To that suspicious box the proprietor hopped, and began to fumble the iron padlocks. And even before the first lock fell Wesh noticed something very peculiar about those jars: three of those bulging earthenware jars were making tiny noises, disturbingly like bats or the tapping of somebody’s fingernails; but the fourth jar was empty, and Wesh did not entertain his idle fancies about the proprietor and the suggestive emptiness of that jar for long. And when the second lock fell he asked what the sealed jars might contain; but the proprietor would only say, cryptically, “Better not ask,” and laugh at some private jest. Then the third lock fell, the lid opened noiselessly, and Wesh saw the golden mask which the occupant of the box was wearing. One gravely doubted whether either could be described gracefully. The proprietor snatched the mask from the mouldering face and held it so that Wesh might see more clearly, and thrust a finger at him through one of the narrow eyes. This article, the proprietor averred, was rumoured by some to have certain properties which might be of interest to philosophers, and had been invoked upon only four occasions since that evil One who made it gave it unto the World. He knew nothing of the first three owners, save that the third had died insane two centuries ago; the fourth had been a poet and flung the mask away in an alley in Celephais and sliced both his wrists. And always the mask returned to the Guardian that One had set over it, the Occupant of the Box. He would not tell how it came into his shop. But the properties which rumour attributes to the golden mask are nothing less than to reveal to men the shapes of their own souls.

The look in the proprietor’s watery little eyes was not pleasant as Wesh counted out the price into that eager palm, or left that shop with a parcel under his arm. He found his way back to the streets he knew without further incident. But once he heard a soft scuttling noise on the cobbles behind him, as something black with bandages on its wrists laughed and slipped down a storm drain.

But now a greyness was in the East, and dawn like a pale smoke rose to eclipse the stars. It was the hour when the watchmen put out their lamps and steal home in the shadows, and the things whose home is Night go secretly to hide by day in cupboards and unlighted places, and wholesomer persons rise to open their shops and go about their business. But there would be no morning for Wesh, who was already beginning to notice strange things about the streets he knew. He should have been in the neighbourhood of that temple wherein Nath-Horthath is glorified in Nithy-Vash, almost he heard Night muttering in the temple’s shadowy portico; but the patter of his footsteps seemed oddly misplaced. Now rows and rows of bleak warehouses peculiarly altered, the ways grew darker, and into those narrow aisles between not even the stars peeped. Wesh hurried on with his parcel, all the while mumbling to himself, “What if—?” and cursing because the alleys were pinching shut behind him. Such occurances, as Wesh well knew, are not wholly sane; but when he considered the only alternative to his own madness, he fervently hoped he was going mad. Bricks should not smell of leather and mould, bricks should never arrange themselves with such damnable suggestiveness, until they cannot be discerned from rows and rows of dusty books whose bestial characters Wesh now was very glad he could not read. An ivory daemon on the counter leered at him…

That same morning, four sealed jars from the shop of Getech came into the possession of a prominent merchant of Celephais who fancied himself a connoisseur of old wines and hoped by this purchase to add something diverting to his cellars. There was some unpleasantness when his servants effected an opening of one of the jars.