The Xothic Legend Cycle

Perchance to Dream by Lin Carter

THE cab drove past Fourteenth Street and continued south, driving between Chinatown and the river. This part of town was shadowy and disreputable—the streets grew narrow, crooked, the corner lamps dim, the shadows deeper, the people fewer and more furtive. There were Levantines and Turks, Portuguese, Lascars: the gutter-scrapings of half a hundred Eastern ports. The shops became smaller and their signs and windows bore inscriptions in queer Oriental letters. Heaven alone knew what crimes were plotted in these black alleys, these crumbling tenements ....

Of all these matters, Parker Winfield was all too uncomfortably aware, and with every block his taxi bore him deeper into a tangled maze of decaying slums, his discomfiture grew. Damn that nosy Muriel van Velt for goading him into making the appointment, which made him come into parts of the city that he had always instinctively avoided, far from the luxurious clubs and fashionable, expensive restaurants that were his usual habitat! And damn the mystery man, this seeker into strange lore and forbidden places, for daring to dwell in such a hellish neighborhood!

Fog was drifting in from the riverfront as the cab drew up to the yawning mouth of one black alley, whose gloom was feebly dispelled by a lone lamp that shone above a doorway off Levant Street.

"That's it, buddy, Number Thirteen China Alley," announced the cab driver. Parker peered at the narrow cobbled way with strong emotions of misgiving.

"You’re quite sure?" he quavered. The driver nodded curtly.

“Sure. Number Thirteen China Alley, between River Street and Levant. That’ll be six seventy-five."

Winfield tossed him a crisp ten-dollar bill and got out of the cab.

“How the hell do I get back?" he demanded petulantly. The driver shrugged and pressed a card into his hand.

"Call the garage—if they got a phone in there,” he muttered, with a dubious glance at the one dim light that glowed above the door. Then he drove off, mist swirling in gray tendrils in his wake. Hesitantly, Parker Winfield drew his expensive topcoat more closely about him to ward off the damp and chill and entered the alley’s yawning mouth. The glow of a streetlight illuminated his features, revealing a spoiled young man with lines of dissipation under watery eyes and a weak, indecisive mouth which a costly Bermuda tan did little to disguise.

The house was narrow and small, two stories in height, shouldered to either side by taller brick tenements. The door, surprisingly, was a heavy slab of polished oak with stout hinges. A small brass plaque above the doorbell bore the single word Zarnak. The visitor thumbed the bell and waited, wishing he had never let Muriel van Velt talk him into coming.

The door was opened by a tall man in a turban, lean and rangy, his aquiline features swarthy, hawk-like. Keen eyes sharp as dagger points scrutinized Winfield from top to toe.

"You will be Mr. Winfield," said the turbaned man in flawless English. "Pray enter; the sahib is expecting you."

As the door was shut behind him and steel bolts slid home, Winfield gave the servant his hat and topcoat. staring about him with vague astonishment. He had not known quite what to expect, but certainly nothing like this. The small foyer bore an immense bronze incense burner on a teakwood stand; Tibetan scroll paintings hung on walls covered with silk brocade; lush Persian carpets were soft underfoot.

He was ushered into a small study.

"Pray make yourself comfortable, sir; the sahib will attend you in one moment,” said the Indian servant. Left alone, Winfield glanced with dazed eyes about the room. Furniture, evidently of antique workmanship, stood here and there, all of heavy, polished teak inlaid with ivory or mother of pearl. Damask-hung walls displayed illuminated cabinets crowded with curiosities, among them Etruscan, Hittite, Egyptian, Greek artifacts. The carpeting underfoot was ancient Ispahan, faded bur still glorious. A subtle fragrance sweetened the air, rising in lazy blue whorls from the grinning jaws of a brass idol.

Bookshelves held hundreds of scholarly looking tomes; Winfield scanned them absently but they were in Latin, German, French, with titles unknown to him—Unaussprechlichen Kulten, Livre d'Ivonis, Cultes des Goules.

A desk, also of old, carved teak, was covered with a clutter of papers, notebooks, leather-bound volumes. Egyptian tomb-figurines of blue faience, heavy scarabs of schist, Sumerian tablets inscribed with cuneiform inscriptions, served as paperweights. Above the desk a leering devil-mask, painted scarlet, black, and gold, snarled down from the wall, symbolic gold flames coiling from fanged mouth and dilated nostrils. Winfield gaped at it.

"Tibetan," said a quiet voice from behind him. "It represents Yama, King of Demons; in prehistoric Lemuria he was worshiped as Yamath, Lord of Fire."

Winfield flinched at the unexpected voice and turned to view his host, a lean saturnine individual of indeterminate age, wrapped in a gold and purple dressing-gown. His skin was sallow, his eyes dark and hooded, his black hair seal-slick, with a dramatic streak of pure silver that zigzagged from his right temple.

"You're Zarnak, I guess," blustered Winfield rudely. His host gave a slight smile. Seating himself behind the long, cluttered desk, he gestured toward a marble-topped table where decanters of cut crystal reposed.

"To quote an old adversary rather imprecisely, I have a doctorate in medicine from Edinburgh University, a doctorate in theology from Heidelberg, a doctorate in psychology from Vienna, and a doctorate in metaphysics from Miskatonic; my guests usually address me as Doctor Zarnak. Please help yourself to some brandy, and tell me of what service I can be."

Probably some damnable spic or dago rotgut, thought Winfield, taking up a bell-shaped glass. But from the first gulp, Winfield felt as though he were drinking liquid gold.

"Imperial Tokay," murmured Zarnak, opening a notebook and selecting a pen. “From the cellars of the late Emperor Franz-Joseph. Now: How can I help you?”

"IT’S these damned dreams, you know," began Parker Winfield, settling into a chair. "Always the same damned dream, night after night ... I’m sinking under the sea: At first, the water’s light green, like muttonfat jade, then darker, like turquoise, then malachite. Finally, it’s a green so dark it’s almost black. I ... I see huge stone blocks, thick with seaweed, slimy with mud. There’s a central building, a temple of some sort; virulent green light shines through the portal, luring me toward it—"

"Does this city have a name in your dream?" inquired Doctor Zarnak. Winfield’s weak mouth twisted sneeringly.

“Sure does! Nonsense, though ... 'Arlyah.' "

Zarnak made a note in a small, precise hand. “Please continue,” he said softly. Winfield shrugged uncomfortably.

"That’s really all there is," he admitted. "Except that in the dream. I'm damnably afraid! And every night I get nearer and nearer to that green-lit portal ... before I wake, drenched in cold perspiration. And then, there’s the chanting, you know ... some damnable Eastern gobbledygook ... sheer mumbo-jumbo ...."

“Can you recite any of it?” asked Zarnak. The other nodded, with a small shudder.

“Certainly can: I’ve heard the nonsensical words often enough ... sounds like 'fuh, nug, louis, muggle, waffle, klool, yu, arlyah, waggle, naggle, fong.' "

He broke off, eves defensive. "You must think I’m nuts! Everybody does. Tell me to see an analyst, but they’re just a bunch of witch-doctors after your wallet!"

"Have you consulted a physician of any kind concerning these dreams of yours?"

Winfield nodded. "Dr. Cartwright on Park Avenue; family physician, you know."

"An excellent man," murmured Zarnak. “What was his conclusion?”

Winfield laughed harshly. "Too much champagne, too late hours, not enough exercise, rich diet ... that sort of thing."

“I believe that when you phoned you mentioned that it was Miss van Velt who suggested that you consult me?” Zarnak murmured meditatively.

"Yes, it was Muriel," Winfield muttered. "I thought you'd be some fancy, high-priced nerve specialist on Fifth Avenue or Sutton Place ... why in the world do you live down in this filthy neighborhood?" Winfield suddenly asked.

Zarnak smiled. "The denizens of River Street and its environs know how to mind their own business, since many of them hide guilty secrets in their hearts and a lack of curiosity about their neighbors is an excellent means of preserving their own lives. Also, I have many scholarly colleagues among the Asian populace down here, and thus access to obscure and arcane information ... but let me change the subject, if I may. You mentioned muttonfat jade and gemstones a moment or so earlier; may I assume that you collect antiquities or rare minerals?"

Parker Winfield smirked. "Not me! Know next to nothing about that sort of stuff. But my grandfather, now, he collected all sorts of oddities, from all over."

"Indeed. Was your grandfather born to wealth, or did he establish the family income?" asked Zarnak.

"Gramps? He was in the China trade; all over the Pacific—Indonesia, the Carolines—”

“Ponape?” hazarded Doctor Zarnak.

"Most likely. Not sure where they are, the Carolines, but if they’re in the Pacific, Gramps was there. Brought home a load of junk, Gramps did. Been in storage for years and years, since we closed the country estate and sold it off. Odd you should mention Gramps and his collection; I’ve been unpacking some of it, now that I’ve opened my new apartment. Got an extra room I've fitted out for his collection; nothing else to put in there."

"How very interesting! I should like to visit, just to compare: one antiquarian collection with another. May I call tomorrow morning?"

Winfield looked uneasy. "Thought you'd have some surefire way to get rid of my bad dreams," he complained. “Muriel said—"

Zarnak spoke soothingly. "There are one or two things I could try, but I need more information. There is nothing that I can do at this late hour, and, besides, I am expecting another visitor. But permit me to call on you tomorrow morning, and explore your new residence. There may be something about the apartment that has been causing you to have these dreams of a city in the sea."

"Ghosts, you mean!" demanded Winfield scornfully. "Think the place is haunted, do you?"

Zarnak spread his hands. “Who can say what psychic residue may have been left by former residents? I am sensitive to atmospheres; give me a chance to help you.”

He rose, touched a bell. “My servant will see you out.”

"Hindu, ain't he?" asked Winfield.

"Ram Singh is a Rajput," replied Zarnak. "They are a princely race of noble warriors."

“Where do you find a servant like that? My man Rufus is all right, but I'd give plenty for a fellow like the one you’ve got working for you—”

Zarnak asked, without expression: “Have you ever heard much of werewolves?"

Winfield stared at him. "Like in those old Lon Chaney movies, you mean? Certainly! Bur what's that got to do with India?"

“In India, they have were-tigers," said Zarnak tunelessly. “I was able to save Ram Singh from one. To reply to your question, you cannot hire a Rajput servant, but you can earn their lifelong gratitude and service. A Rajput chooses his own master, and not the other way around.”

"Your hat and coat, sir.” said Ram Singh from the doorway.

When Parker Winfield had left. Zarnak sat down at his desk to look at his notes.

After a moment, under the line of “gibberish" his visitor had heard from the chanting in his dreams, Zarnak wrote in a precise hand: Ph’nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.

Under the name of the sea-drowned city, which Winfield had given him, phonetically, as "Arlyah", he wrote a single name: R'lyeh.

Ram Singh appeared in the doorway.

"Sahib, the Doctor de Grandin is arriving."

An expression of pleasure crossed the saturnine features as Zarnak rose to greet his very old friend.

AT ten o’clock in the morning of the next day, a car pulled up before a fashionable condominium off Filth Avenue, and Zarnak, carrying a black leather briefcase that seldom left his side, emerged.

At the door of Winfield’s apartment, he was greeted by a young black man nearly attired in a somber gray suit, white shirt, and narrow black tie.

"I am Doctor Anton Zarnak. I believe Mr. Winfield is expecting me."

The black man smiled and opened the door wider. “Surely! Mr. Winfield is having breakfast now, but if you’d like to join him?—”

The apartment was discreetly furnished in good modern taste, obviously by an expensive interior decorator and not the resident. The furniture was of blond wood in Swedish Modern, and the carpet was an excellent Rya. The bric-a-brac was polished aluminum and the pictures were signed lithographs.

Rufus—for that must have been his name—led Zarnak into a sunny breakfast nook where he found Parker Winfield, his face more pouched than before, with bleary, red-rimmed eyes, hunched over a table. Apparently, the younger man had indulged in a bit of alcoholic beverage alter leaving China Alley. He waved a feeble hand.

“Good to see you. Doc! Help yourself ... I don’t have much appetite this morning."

Zarnak inspected the sideboard: selected a rasher of Canadian bacon, an English muffin dripping with Devonshire butter and clover honey, eggs Florentine, and asked the servant for a cup of black coffee.

“More of those dreams hist night?" Zarnak asked of his host, who nodded dejectedly.

“Worse than ever, Doc; I got closer to that hellish portal than ever before. Don't know how much more of this I can take before my nerves are entirely shot. Think you can help?"

“I will try." said Zarnak.

After breakfast, he asked Winfield to show him around. The apartment was a sumptuous one composed of eight rooms, of which two held the cook and Rufus. A terrace gave a sunny view of Central Park. In none of the rooms did Zarnak experience that chill frisson along the nerves that would have signaled, to a sensitive, the presence of malign forces. The building, it appeared, was too newly erected to have had time to acquire the psychic residue that ordinary people call "ghosts."

Nothing that Zarnak experienced alarmed or disturbed him, until his host led him into a side room where reposed Grandfather Winfield’s relics of his South Sea voyages. The room was crowded with uncouth artworks, chiseled from stone or carved from wood. Most of these were obviously antiques and worth considerable sums of money. Zarnak examined them with thoughtful care.

There were pieces of tapa cloth from the Tonga Islands, charged with an odd motif like repeated five-pointed stars; curiously frog-like idols of wood or stone from the Cook Islanders; a Sepik River Valley figure from New Guinea with an odd, kraken-like fringe of waving tentacles; pendants of carved shell from Papua shaped into octopoidal heads: wooden masks from the New Hebrides with a mane of writhing serpents instead of hair; a basalt image from Easter Island depicting a peculiarly loathsome combination of frog and fish; and the fragment of a lava bas-relief from South Indochina upon which Zarnak's eyes did not linger.

His very worst suspicions were confirmed. Grimly, he went on, examining exhibit after exhibit, until he found one which arrested him in his tracks. He lingered before it, staring unwinkingly.

"Ugly creature, isn’t it?" asked Parker Winfield at his elbow. “Maybe I should donate the whole lot somewhere; some of ’em give me the creeps."

"I suggest that you do." murmured Zarnak distractedly. "And I could recommend the Sanbourne Institute in Santiago, California; they have an admirable collection of this kind of ... art."

The piece upon which Anton Zarnak’s attention was fixed seemed to have been hewn from jadeite. It was about eleven inches tall, and depicted a bipedal monstrosity whose hind legs resembled those of a batrachian, with forelimbs uplifted almost as if in menace, sucker-ripped, webbed hands extended toward the viewer. The head of the image was a seething mass of pseudopods or tentacles, amid which a single glaring eye could be discerned.

The symbols carved in the idol's base were in a language long vanished from human knowledge; few human beings on earth could have read them. Zarnak was one of the few.

"Ythogtha," he breathed.

"That’s the thing’s name?" inquired Winfield cheerfully.

Zarnak nodded somberly. "I don’t suppose you have ever happened to look into any of the late Professor Copeland’s books about the prehistoric Pacific civilizations?"

Winfield chuckled. "Not me! Not much of a reader. I'm afraid. What is it about this bugger that interests you?"

"It is quite unique. I should like to study it at length. May I borrow it for a time?”

"Well ... valuable, is it?"

"Priceless, I should say. It is probably the only piece of its kind on earth—fortunately for us. In my opinion, you will sleep much more soundly without it on the premises, and enjoy much more wholesome dreams." said Zarnak.

Winfield looked skeptical; nevertheless he insisted that Doctor Zarnak take the piece with him and keep it as long as he wished.

"Grandfather said that thing was found by a native diver somewhere in the waters off Easter Island," he remarked. "Maybe it would have been a lot better if it had stayed down below, eh?"

"Quite so," said Zarnak fervently. He had never spoken more sincerely in his life.

ONCE back in China Alley. Zarnak examined the stony image more closely. It was made of a greasy gray stone, mottled with dark green splotches like fungus or lichen. He weighed the image, and it was abnormally heavy—heavier than lead, far heavier than any terrene mineral was supposed to be. The phrase "star-quarried stone" passed through his mind briefly.

Zarnak consulted the books in his library. First he looked into a slim, cheaply produced pamphlet which bore the title The Zanthu Tablets and read of Great Ythogtha, the Abomination in the Abyss, imprisoned by the Elder Gods in Yhe. Then he consulted von Junzt, and found the following passage of interest:

Of the Spawn of Cthulhu, only Ythogtha lies prisoned in regions contiguous to sunken R’lyeh, for Yhe was once a province of Mu, and R'lych is not far off the submerged shores of that riven, drowned continent; and Yhe and R’lyeh are close nigh unto each other, along dimensions not numbered among the three we know.

Zarnak studied the stony image with some of the scientific instruments in his laboratory. It seemed to possess a powerful electromagnetic charge—at least, contact with the image wilted the gold leaves of the electroscope. Zarnak meditated: Such images, he knew, brought down from the stars when the earth was young, may be fashioned of an unearthly and abnormal amalgam of stone and metal, which would account for the unusual weight of the object. That such figurines may be impregnated with thought waves, even as a strip of magnetic tape can be recorded with sound waves, was also known to him from his researches. Was that the secret of the image, or did it somehow serve as the transmitter of thought waves from the lair of Ythogtha's awful Sire?

All the while, the frog-like image squatted on the laboratory table, regarding him unwinkingly with that one Medusa-like eye of cold malignancy.

The thing seemed virtually alive in some uncanny way. Almost, it seemed, the gray-green mineral surged with vitality and the writhing tendrils that mercifully masked its hideous visage seemed almost to flicker with furtive motion, when glimpsed from the corners of his eye.

At length, completing his notes, Zarnak rose and went to a steel cabinet against one wall, whose topmost drawer he unlocked with a small key. He drew forth a tray lined with black velvet whereupon reposed a number of curious objects shaped like five-pointed stars. Some had been carved from a stony mineral, either slate gray or dull green. The bottom row were of ceramic, taffy-colored, baked in a kiln and heavily glazed. These last had been manufactured for Zarnak by a sculptor friend in Seattle, and Zarnak himself had consecrated them, had energized them with power, according to an old formula he had discovered in Clithanus.

Thoughtfully, he weighed the star-shaped amulet of the Elder Gods in the palm of one hand, while his gaze brooded upon the stone image. It would be interesting to discover whether the statuette of Ythogtha had so impregnated the mind of Parker Winfield with its malign and sinister influence that the dreams continued even without the eidolon being present as a sort of “conductor."

It would also be interesting to learn what happened when one of the star stones came in physical contact with the image from Outside ....

THE dream began as all the dreams began: He was sinking slowly down through luminous water that dimmed and darkened around him into blackest gloom, lit only with that eerie emerald radiance from the ruin. He was vaguely conscious of stifling pressure from the many tons of water above him, of wet cold, of utter helplessness ....

Parker Winfield felt his body drift without volition over the murky vista of tumbled stone blocks that were matted with pallid weed and thick with slime ... the broken stone ruin came closer, ever closer. The weird green luminance waxed in strength, pulsing like the beating of some enormous heart ....

Now his dream-form was floating up the mossy, mud-thick stone steps; now the very portal of the ruin filled his vision, immense, of unthinkable antiquity, concealing God alone knew what horrible abnormality, what monstrous dweller in the depths ....

The portal opened: Throbbing green radiance smote Parker Winfield full in the face, blinding, dazzling him—then his dreamer’s vision adjusted to the unwholesome light, and he strove to see the source of that lambent glow, which seemed throned in some vast and oddly angled chair

Then a flash of clear, pure, golden light wiped the dreamscape away!

Winfield awoke, gasping, saturated with cold perspiration, hands shaking like willows in a wind. He stared about him with wild and haunted gaze, seeing only his own darkened bedroom, nothing more. A wave of sheer relief sluiced through him, washing away the residue of night-fear—

The telephone rang. With nerveless hands, Winfield snatched up the instrument.

"Yes?"

"Doctor Zarnak here," said the familiar voice. "Have you had another of those sea-dreams?"

"I certainly have, and worse than the ones before, although it ended differently from the others—"

Zarnak listened carefully to his client’s description of the nightmare. From time to time he made small, precise notes in the book on his desk before him. When the other was finished with his recital:

"Very good. I believe I have isolated and eradicated the source of the infection, as you might call it. You shall dream no more; or, rather, such dreams as you experience from henceforward will be only the healthy dreams of normal sleep ... ah, one thing more. I regret to tell you that the jadeite image from your grandfather's collection of artifacts met with severe damage during the testing process, and I will be unable to return it. Yes; very good. And you are shipping the remainder of the collection to the Institute? Very satisfactory. Good day to you."

Zarnak replaced the instrument in its cradle, made a final note in his book, rose, and stepped silently from the room.

On the asbestos mat atop the small steel and porcelain table which had borne the jadeite image and the star-stone now reposed only a heap of fine-gray ash. The sharp stench of ozone hovered in the air.

It was much better so ... and the case was one that had had, after all, a happy ending.