The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

The Mine on Yuggoth

Edward Taylor was twenty-four years old when he first became interested in the metal mined on Yuggoth.

He had led a strange life up to that point. He was born, normally enough, of Protestant parents in Brichester Central Hospital in 1899. From an early age he preferred to sit reading in his room rather than play with the neighborhood children, but such a preference is not remarkable. Most of the books he read were normal, too, though he tended to concentrate on the more unusual sections; after reading the Bible, for instance, he startled his father by asking: "How did the witch of Endor call the spirit?” Besides, as his mother remarked, surely no normal eight-year-old would read Dracula and The Beetle with such avidity as Edward.

In 1918 Taylor left school and enrolled at Brichester University. Here the stranger section of his life began; his tutors soon discovered that his academic studies frequently gave way to less orthodox practices. He led a witch-cult, centering round a stone slab in the woods off the Severnford road. The members of the cult included such people as the artist, Nevil Craughan, and the occultist, Henry Fisher; all members being subsequently exposed and expelled. Some of them gave up sorcery, but Taylor only became more interested. His parents were dead, his inheritance made work unnecessary, and he could spend all the time he wished in research.

But although he had enough normal possessions, Taylor was still not satisfied. He had borrowed the Revelations Of Glaaki from another cultist, and had visited the British Museum twice to copy passages from the Necronomicon. His library included the horrible untitled Johannes Henricus Pott book which the Jena publishers rejected, and this was the book which gave him his final interest. That repulsive immortality formula which Pott wrote was more than half true, and when Taylor compared certain of the necessary ingredients with references by Alhazred, he put together a hitherto unconnected series of hints.

On Tond, Yuggoth, and occasionally on Earth, immortality has been attained by an obscure process. The brain of the immortal is transplanted from body to body at thirty-five-year intervals; this otherwise impossible operation being carried out using a tok’l container, in which the naked brain is placed between bodies. Tok’l is a metal mined extensively on Yuggoth, but neither exists nor can be created on Earth.

"The lizard-crustaceans arrive on Earth through their towers,” Alhazred tells us; not in their towers, Taylor noted, but through them, using the method of turning space in on itself which has been lost to men since Joiry. It was dangerous, but Taylor only had to find an outpost of the Yuggoth-spawn and pass through the barrier in the transport tower there. The danger did not lie in the journey to Yuggoth; the barrier must change the organs of bodies passing through it, or else the lizard-crustaceans could never live in their outposts on Earth, where they mine those metals not to be had on their planet. But Taylor disliked the miners; he had once seen an engraving in the Revelations Of Glaaki and been repelled by it. It was unlike anything he had seen before; the body was not really that of a lizard, nor did its head too closely resemble that of a lobster, but those were the only comparisons he could make.

For some time Taylor could not have gone among the Yuggoth- spawn, even if he had found one of their outposts. But a page reference in the Revelations led him to the following in the Necronomicon:

"As Azathoth rules now as he did in his bivalvular shape, his name subdues all, from the incubi which haunt Tond to the servants of Y’golonac. Few can resist the power of the name Azathoth, and even the haunters of the blackest night of Yuggoth cannot battle the power of N-, his other name.”

So Taylor’s interest in travel to Yuggoth was renewed. The lizard-crustaceans were no longer dangerous, but occasionally Taylor felt twinges of unease when he thought of certain hints in the Revelations. There were occasional references to a pit which lay near one of the cities — a pit whose contents few lizard-crustaceans cared to view, and which was avoided during certain periods of the year by all. No description of what lay in the pit was included, but Taylor came across the words: "at those times of the year the lizard-crustaceans are glad of the lightlessness of Yuggoth.” But the hints were so vague that he usually ignored them.

Unfortunately, the "other name” of Azathoth was not given in the Necronomicon, and by the time he needed to know it, the exposure of the cult had placed the Revelations Of Glaaki beyond his reach. In 1924 he began a search for some person with the complete edition. By chance he met Michael Hinds, one of the former cultists, who did not have a copy but suggested a visit to a farmhouse off the Goats wood road.

"That’s Daniel Norton’s place,” Hinds told him. "He’s got the complete edition, and a lot more items of interest. He’s not very bright, though — he remembers all the Tagh-Clatur angles, but he’s content to live the way he does and worship rather than use his knowledge to better himself. I don’t like him particularly. He’s too stupid to harm you, of course, but all that knowledge going to waste annoys me.”

Thus it was that Taylor called on Daniel Norton. The man lived with his two sons in an old farmhouse, where they managed to exist off a small herd of sheep and a few poultry. Norton was halfdeaf and, as Hinds had mentioned, not too intelligent, so that Taylor irritated himself by speaking slowly and loudly. The other had begun to look disquieted during Taylor’s speech, and remained uneasy as he answered:

"Listen, young zur, ’teant as if I haven’t bin mixed up in terrible doin’s. I had a friend once as would go down to the Devil’s Steps, an’ he swore as he’d zoon have them Yuggoth ones about him, ministerin’ at every word he zpoke. He thought he had words as would overcome them on the Steps. But one day they found him in’t woods, and ’twas so horrible that them who carried him warn’t the same ever agin. His chest an’ throat wuz bust open, an’ his face wuz all blue. Those as knew, they do zay those up the Steps grabbed him an’ flew off with ’im into space, where ’is lungs bust.

"Wait a minute, zur. ’Tis dangerous up them Devil’s Steps. But there’s zumthin’ out in’t woods by the Zevernford Road that could give you wot you want, maybe, and it don’t hate men zo much as them from Yuggoth. You’ve maybe bin to it—’tis under a slab o’ rock, an’ the Voola ritual brings it — but did you think of askin’ for what you need? ’Tis easier t’ hold — you don’t even need Alhazred fer the right words, an’ it might get to them from Yuggoth fer you.”

"You say they have an outpost on the Devil’s Steps?” Taylor persisted.

"No, zur,” the farmer replied, "that’s all I’ll zay till you’ve bin an’ tried me advice.”

Taylor left, dissatisfied, and some nights later visited the titan slab in the woods west of the Severnford Road. But the ritual needed more than one participant; he heard something vast stirring below his feet, but nothing more.

The next day he drove again to the farmhouse off the Goatswood road. Norton did not conceal his displeasure on opening the door, but allowed the visitor to enter. Taylor’s shadow flickered across the seated farmer as he spoke. "You didn’t think I’d leave you alone when it didn’t awaken, did you?”

"What’d be the use if I come with you to it? If one don’t raise it, nor will two. An’ anyway, maybe you like t’ mess about wit’ them from Yuggoth, but I don’t. They zay they carry you off to Yuggoth an’ give you t’ what they’re afraid of. I don’t want to come near sumthin’ that might go t’ them. In fact, I want t’ give it all up fer good.”

"Something which they’re afraid of?” repeated Taylor, not remembering.

"It’s in the Revelations of Glaaki,” explained the other. "You saw mine—”

"Yes, that’s a point,” Taylor interrupted. "If you’re really going to give up witchcraft, you won’t be needing that book. My God, I’d forgotten all about it! Give me that and maybe I won’t ever bother you again!”

"You can have it an’ welcome,” said Norton. "But you mean that? You’ll keep away an’ let me stop playin’ round with things from Outside?”

"Yes, yes,” Taylor assured him, took the pile of dusty volumes which the farmer toppled into his arms, and struggled with them to the car. He drove home and there discovered that the book contained what he sought. It contained other relevant passages also, and he reread one which ran:

"Beyond the Zone of the Thirteen Faveolate Colossi lies Yuggoth, where dwell the denizens of many extraterrestrial realms. Yuggoth’s black streets have known the tread of malformed paws and the touch of misshapen appendages, and unviseagable shapes creep among its lightless towers. But few of the creatures of the rim-world are as feared as that survival from Yuggoth’s youth which remains in a pit beyond one of the cities. This survival few have seen, but the legend of the crustaceans tells of a city of green pyramids which hangs over a ledge far down in the dark. It is said that no mind can stand the sight of what occurs on that ledge at certain seasons.”

(But nothing can battle the power of the other name of Azathoth.)

So Taylor ignored this; and two days later he drove with climbing tools to the rock formation beyond Brichester. It stretched fully two hundred feet up in a series of steps to a plateau; from some way off the illusion of a giant staircase was complete, and legend had it that Satan came from the sky to walk the earth by way of those steps. But when Taylor parked in the road of which they formed one side, he saw how rough they were and how easy ascent would be. He left the car, stood staring up for a moment, and began to chip footholds.

The climb was tedious and precarious. Sometimes he slipped and hung for a minute over nothing. Once, a hundred feet up, he glanced down at the car, and for the rest of the climb tried to forget the speck of metal far below. Finally he hooked his hand over the edge, pulled himself up and over. Then he looked up.

In the center of the plateau stood three stone towers, joined by narrow catwalks of black metal between the roofs. They were surrounded by fungus — an alien species, a grey stem covered with twining leaves. It could not have been completely vegetable, either, for as Taylor stood up, the stems leaned in his direction and the leaves uncurled toward him.

He began to pick his way through the avenues of fungus, shrinking away when the clammy leaves stroked him, and at last hurrying into the cleared space around the central steeple. The tower was about thirty feet high, windowless and with a strangely angled doorway opening on stairs leading into blackness. However, Taylor had brought a torch, and shone it up the stairs as he entered. He did not like the way the darkness seemed to move beyond the torchlight, and would have preferred an occasional window, if only to remind him that he had not already reached Yuggoth. But the thought of the tok'l-bought immortality drove him on.

He had been ascending for some time when he noticed the hieroglyphics on the walls — all apparently indicating something around the bend in the passage. He turned the bend, and saw that the steps ended some feet above — not at a wall or solid barrier, but the torch-beam would not penetrate beyond. This must be where the lizard-crustaceans connected Earth with Yuggoth; and the other side was Yuggoth itself.

He threw himself at the barrier, plunged through, cried out and fell. It was as if his body had been torn into atoms and recombined; only a memory remained of something he had no conviction of undergoing. He lay for a few minutes before he was able to stand up and look about.

He was on a tower roof above a city. He directed the torch-beam downward, and realized that there was no way down the smooth wall; but, remembering the catwalks, he guessed that the building at the end of each row would afford some means of descent. This seemed the only way the crustaceans could descend, for the Revelations engravings had shown no method of flight. He was unnerved by the abyss below the catwalk, but could not relieve it by his torch.

There were five narrow metal walks to be traversed. Taylor did not notice their odd shape until he was out on the first. It was slightly convex in section, and at intervals there protruded outward corrugated sections at an angle. He found it very difficult to change from equilibrium on the convex portions to balance on the angled stretches, and often slid to one side, but he reached the end finally, rounded the gaping blackness in the center of the roof and set out on the next walk. He had got the knack by now, and slipped less.

One thing disquieted him; the total silence of the nighted city. The clang of his footsteps broke the silence like pebbles dropped into some subterranean sea. Not even distant noises were audible, yet it seemed impossible that such a densely-populated world should be so silent. Even if, improbably, all the citizens were on Earth, surely some sound should occasionally drift from the distance. It was almost as if the inhabitants had fled some nightmare invasion of the city.

As he reached the center of the fifth catwalk, a raucous croaking rang out behind him. He tottered and slammed down on the metal, clawed and scrabbled to the last roof and looked back.

The noise came from a speaker vibrating atop a grey metal pylon. It seemed purposeless, unless it were a warning, or an announcement of his own arrival. He ignored it as a warning, not wishing to return to Earth after coming so far; and even if they realized his presence, they would flee before the name of Azathoth. He walked to the roof’s edge and peered for a way down.

It consisted of an unprotected stairway which led around the outer wall of the tower, spiraling steeply to the street. He started down as the shrieking speaker quietened, and realized that the steps were set at a definitely obtuse angle to the wall, so that only their pitted surface prevented him from plunging to the street below. Ten feet down a piece of stone slid away under his foot, and had he not clutched the step above he would have toppled into the darkness. He made the remainder of the streetward journey more slowly, his heart pounding.

So he finally came to that pavement of octahedral, concave black stones. He shone the slightly-dimmed torch beam down the thoroughfare. Ebon steeples stretched away on both sides into night, and on Taylor’s left was a right-angle intersection. The buildings were all set in the centers of individual ten-yard squares, through which cut paths of a blackly translucent mineral, and in which grew accurately-positioned lines of that half-animal fungi which he had seen on the plateau. As he left the tower his torch illuminated a fork in the road, at the intersection of which stood a squat black building shaped like a frustum, and he decided to take the left branch of this fork.

The metal which he sought was so brittle that it was not used for construction in the city. To gather specimens he would have to visit the actual mines, which were habitually set close to the crustaceans’ settlements. But he was unsure of the city’s layout. Nothing could be seen from the roofs, for his torch-beam did not reach far, nor did he know how far the settled area extended. Not even the Revelations Of Glaaki gave maps of the cities on Yuggoth, so that his only plan was to follow some street at random. However, it was usual for such cities to be encircled by mines at quarter- mile intervals, so that once he reached the city’s edge he would be fairly near a mine. These mines mainly produced the black stone used for building, but a certain percentage of the ore was extracted from the stone and refined in factories around the mine-pits.

Five hundred yards along the left fork he noticed a change in the surroundings. While the towers still occupied one side of the street, the right side’s steeples now gave way to an open space, extending along the street for fully two hundred yards and inward fifty yards, which was filled with oddly-shaped objects of semi- resilient deep-blue plastic. Despite their curious shape, he could see they were intended as seats; but he could not understand the discshaped attachments which rose on metal rods on each side of each seat. He had never read of such a place, and guessed that it might be the crustaceans’ equivalent of a cinema. He saw that the space was littered with thin hexagonal sheets of blue metal covered with raised varicolored symbols, which he took for documents. It looked as if the space had recently been hurriedly vacated. This, coupled with that warning siren, might have hinted something to him; but he only began to continue down the street.

The open space, however, interested him. The discs might be some form of receiver, in which case the transmission might give him an idea of the direction of the mines. Perhaps the crustaceans were able to transmit mental images, for some of the legends about their outposts on Earth spoke of their using long-range hypnosis. If the discs worked on a variant of this principle, the power ought not to harm him, for since passing through the barrier he should have the metabolism of a crustacean. At any rate, he had three batteries left for his torch, and could afford to waste a little time, for he could protect himself with the feared name if any of the citizens came upon him.

He sank into the plastic of one of the deep-blue seats. He leaned back in it, placing the torch on the ground beside one of the batteries which had fallen out of a pocket. He sat up a little in the chair, and his head came between the metal discs. A deafening whine came from these, and before he could move a bright orange spark flashed from one disc to the other, passing through his brain.

Taylor leaped up, and the orange ray faded. A metallic odor came from his left pocket, where he had placed the other two batteries. He slid in his hand, and withdrew it covered with a dull- grey fluid which was plainly all that remained of the batteries. The torch and one battery, which had not been in contact with his body, still stood nearby, and the bulb was still lit. But in spite of what the ray had done to the batteries, he was untouched; and he wanted very much to return to the chair, so that he turned off the torch to conserve the battery and sat back on the plastic. For that ray had the property of forming images in the mind; and in that moment between the discs Taylor had seen fleetingly a strange vision of a metal-grilled gateway, rusted and standing alone in the middle of a desert, lit by a setting green moon. What it had been he did not know, but it had an air of distinct and unknowable purpose.

The ray began to pass even before he came between the discs, and an image formed, only to fade and be replaced by another. A series of unconnected visions paraded and blurred the surrounding darkness. A snakelike being flew across a coppery sky, its head and tail hanging limply down from its midsection, where a single bat- wing rotated. Great cobwebbed objects rolled from noisome caverns in the center of a phosphorescent morass, their mouths opening wetly as they hastened toward where a figure screamed and struggled in the mud. A range of mountains, their peaks ice-covered, reached almost to the sky; and as he watched, a whole line of peaks exploded upward and a leprously white, faceless head rose into view.

Rather disturbed, Taylor thought defensively, "What a waste of time!” and began to stand up.

Immediately on the word "waste,” a new picture formed. A close-up of one of the crustaceans appeared, and what it was doing was nauseatingly obvious, even with its unaccustomed shape. What was unusual was that it was performing this act in the garden of one of the towers, by a specimen of the ever-present fungus. When the crustacean had finished, it stood up and moved away, while Taylor received a close view of what it had left behind. As he watched in horrified fascination, the leaves of the nearby fungus bent and covered the offal; and when it rose from this position, the ground was bare at that spot. He now saw the purpose 0f the lines of fungi.

More important, however, he realized that he had just discovered the method of referring to the knowledge stored in this library. He must think of some key word — that was how "waste” had evoked such an unfortunate vision. Now, swallowing his nausea, Taylor thought: "mines connected with this city.”

The vista which now appeared to him was an aerial view of the city. It was totally lightless, but in some way he sensed the outlines of the buildings. Then the point of view descended until he was looking down from directly above the library; and it gave him an odd vertigo to see, in the seat from which he was viewing, a figure seated. Whatever was transmitting the images began to move along the street bordering the library, traversed a straight toad directly to a widening of the road, and showed him the mitie-pit a few yards further on.

The transmitter, however, now seemed to be working independent of his will. Now it tracked back six hundred yards or so up the road, to a junction with a wider street at the right. Taylor realized that something important was to follow. It moved up the branching street, and he saw that the buildings ended a few yards further on; from there a rougher path stretched to the edge of a pit, much larger than the first. The transmitter moved forward, stopping at the edge of the buildings. He willed it to go closer, but it remained in that position. When he persisted, a loud noise made him start; it was only part of the transmission — not like a voice, it resembled glass surfaces vibrating together, but forming definite patterns. Perhaps it was a voice, but its message was meaningless — what did xada-hgla soron signify? Whatever it meant, the phrase was repeated seven times, then the image disappeared.

BafHed, he rose. He had been unable to glean any further information from the discs. The larger pit was further, but it would contain more mineral; and the buildings did not crowd so close to it, hence the danger of interruption was less likely. He decided to head for it.

When he reached the junction, he hesitated briefly, then remembering the squat black towers which had encircled the nearer mine, he turned off to the right. His shoes clanked on the black pavement and crunched on the rocks of the continuing path. The beam of the torch trembled on the crumbling rim, and then he stood on the edge of the pit. He looked down.

At first he saw nothing. Dust-motes rising from below tinted the beam a translucent green, but it showed nothing except a wavering disc of black rock on the opposite wall. The disc grew and dimmed as it descended, but dim as it was it finally outlined the ledge outcropping from the rock, and what stood upon it.

There is nothing horrible about a group of tall deserted pyramids, even when those pyramids are constructed of a pale green material which glitters and seems to move in the half-light. Something else caused Taylor to stare in fascination; the way the emerald cones were drinking in the light from his torch, while the bulb dimmed visibly. He peered downward, awaiting something which he felt must come.

The torch-bulb flickered and went out, leaving him in total darkness.

In the blackness he unscrewed the end of the torch and let the dead battery clatter far down the rock surface. Drawing the last battery from his pocket, he fumbled blindly with the pieces of metal, squinting into the darkness, and saw the torch in his hands. It was faintly limned by the glow from beneath, growing clearer as he watched. He could see the distant side of the pit now, and, noting the grating metallic sound which had begun below him, he looked down into the green light.

Something was climbing toward him up the rock face; something which slithered up from the rock ledge, glowing greenly. It was vast and covered with green surfaces which ground together, but it had a shape — and that was what made Taylor flee from the miles-deep pit, clattering down the ebon pavements, not switching on the torch until he collided with a black spire beyond the widening radius of the green light, not stopping until he reached the frustum-shaped building he remembered and the tower near it. He threw himself up the outer steps recklessly, crawled on all fours and swung from the catwalks, and reached the last roof.

He glanced across the tower roofs once, then heaved open the trapdoor and plunged down the unlit steps, through the searing barrier across the passage and clattered down into the blinding daylight, half-fell down the Devil’s Steps and reached the car. Somewhere what he had glimpsed at the last was still moving — that green-radiating shape which heaved and pulsed above the steeples, toppling them and putting forth glowing arms to engulf fleeing dwarved forms…

When passers-by telephoned the Brichester police after hearing unusual sounds from a house on South Abbey Avenue, few of the documents in that house had not been destroyed by Taylor. The police called in the Mercy Hill doctors, who could only take him to the hospital. He became violent when they refused to explore the Devil’s Steps, but when they tried to reassure him with promises of exploration he protested so demonstratively that he was removed to the Camside Home for the Mentally Disturbed. There he could only lie repeating feverishly:

"You fools, why don’t you stop them going up the Steps? They’ll be dragged into space — lungs burst — blue faces… And suppose It didn’t destroy the city entirely — suppose It was intelligent? If It knew about the towers into other parts of space, It might find its way through onto the Steps—It’s coming down the stairs through the barrier now—It’ll push through the forest and into the town. Outside the window! It’s rising above the houses!”

Edward Taylor’s case yet stirs controversy among doctors, and is a subject for exaggerated speculation in Sunday newspaper features. Of course the writers of the latter do not know all the facts; if they did their tone would certainly be different, but the doctors felt it unwise to reveal all that had happened to Taylor.

That is why the X-ray photographs taken of Taylor’s body are carefully restricted to a hospital file. At first glance they would seem normal, and the layman might not notice any abnormality even upon close examination. It takes a doctor to see that the lungs, although they function perfectly, do not resemble in any respect the lungs of a human being.