The lightning flashed and I saw his face. The skin was loose and pale about his skull, bloated and crisscrossed with blue veins. Black weeds hung tangled in his hair, and his clothing was nothing more than muddy rags. His eyeballs had fallen too far back in their sockets, and it was clear now that the rotting smell was him.
Johnny was dead after all, but somehow still walking and talking.
“Old Man Carter struck an underground river,” Johnny said. Dark foam streamed from his shriveled lips as his lower jaw clacked. “The deep water pulled him right down and the current washed him all the way to K’n-yan. That’s where they found his body — on the shore of the sunless sea.”
I told Johnny to shut up. Tears streamed from my eyes even as the rain washed them away. His dead mouth kept on moving, and his words burned into my memories.
“They raised him up,” Johnny said. “Now he serves them. There is no greater honor.”
“I don’t want to hear any more—”
“He came for me,” Johnny said. “So they could raise me up too. Oh, you should see it. The towers of blue crystal, the domes bright as gold, alive with atomic fires. They move like angels in globes of light, drifting and flying and making love…they made us their slaves and now we’ll never have to fear death again. What’s there to be afraid of when you’ve already died? They raised us up, Ted! Come with me before it’s too late! Let them raise you up!”
Johnny’s hand came closer and I slammed the window shut. I must have screamed because Ma and Pa came rushing into my room. Ma told me later they found me crying and drenched on the floor by the window, but I don’t remember that. They put me to bed and I lay in a fever for the next three days. I never told them about Johnny, or the things he said to me. I guess I figured nobody would believe me.
I never finished Johnny’s Opar book. I couldn’t touch it anymore. Every time I tried, I’d see his swollen, rotting face on the page. “They raised him up!” He say it again in my dreams, or during moments of quiet contemplation. I started sneaking whiskey from my old man’s stash to dull my dreams and still my racing thoughts. I think Ma knew I was drinking, but she didn’t say a thing about it. The booze kept me calm.
A month later I dug through the attic and found that old copy of Weird Tales. I found the story that mentioned Tsathoggua. Supposedly it was a massive, toad-like entity who dwelled in a deep cavern beneath the earth during prehistoric ages. There was no description in that story of a fantastic underground city known as Tsath, but it did mention various pre-human races who worshipped the toad-god with sacrifices of living flesh. But this was just a story in a pulp magazine — the kind of publication my parents called “ungodly trash,” and would throw into the fireplace if they got half a chance.
By winter I had convinced myself that Johnny’s visit had been only a nightmare. I walked by the pond and it was frozen over, as it always was during the cold months. It seemed harmless under all that ice. I tried again but still couldn’t finish the Tarzan book Johnny had given me. Eventually I dropped it into the fireplace, along with that copy of Weird Tales. I thought maybe burning them both would end my nightmares, and it worked for a while.
On the day I turned eighteen the local draft board let me know I was going to fight Nazis in Europe. The States had joined the war two years previous, and things weren’t going too well over there. Sixteen young men from Ellot County entered the service that month, although some had volunteered for duty. It didn’t matter — willingly or unwillingly — we shipped off to basic training, then to the battlefields of France.
The endless fear and trauma that comes with fighting a war kept me from thinking about Old Man Carter, his pond, or Johnny. At times I completely forgot about them. Sometimes, though, we’d march by a quiet little pond in the French countryside, and it all came back like a case of mental indigestion. Unlike the other fellas in my unit, I wouldn’t swim in or drink from any ponds. I had no problem with honest, free-flowing rivers, but I kept away from standing bodies of water as much as possible.
I remember sitting in camp one night, eating stew out of my helmet, imagining that every pond in the world was linked by a network of subterranean rivers, and that all of these rivers led to a sunless ocean that carried bones, jewels, and the bodies of dead men to the shore of K’n-yan. There, on sands bright as crushed sapphires, busy skeletons and restless mummies roamed about picking up useful and fascinating refuse for the Masters of Tsath. In the back of my mind, I saw the walking dead march from the sunless sea to the glittering spires of the toad-god’s city. Among those diligent corpses I recognized the faces of Johnny Haxton and Old Man Carter, although how I recognized them in such a decayed state, I couldn’t begin to say.
A buddy woke me up. I’d fallen asleep near the campfire while the rest of the unit bathed and splashed in a pond next to a burned-out French farmhouse. They teased me for a while about my fear of ponds, a terror so great it gave me mumbling nightmares. But I wasn’t so sure my vision of Tsath had been a nightmare at all. It seemed as real as the war itself: A manifestation of impossible horrors made real. I didn’t say anything like that out loud. I didn’t want to get kicked out of the army as a nut-case.
One morning near Toulon a division of German forces ambushed us and killed half the unit. I took a bullet in the leg that left me lame, so I’d get out of the service honorably, not by virtue of insanity. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to go back to Ellot County and Old Man Carter’s pond. Still the power of that dark water pulled on me like a magnet. There was no escaping it.
“I know you want to stay here and see this out with your buddies,” Captain Ross told me. “But it’s time for you to go home. You’re no good to us with a busted leg. Count your blessings, Ted. You did your part. Now go home and rest.” I thought about the men who had died next to me. I thought about the men I’d killed, either long-range or face-to-face. There were so many of them, I had lost count. I heard their screams again, the boom of the artillery. I cried in that hospital bed like I’d cried the night dead Johnny came to my window. The captain held onto my shoulders like a father would. He was a good man. The next day I began a series of flights that would take me back to the States. On that same day, Captain Ross went back to the front, where he took a German bullet in the head and died instantly. I found out about it when I opened a letter that had passed me on the way home.
Ma was sick with the cancer and wouldn’t last much longer. Pa was taking it hard, hitting the bottle. My little sister was just old enough to care for them both. They were happy for a little while to have me home again, but they could tell I wasn’t the same. I didn’t talk much anymore, and when I did they cringed at the things I shared. Nobody wanted to hear about the war — not the bloody details, the spilled brains, the slaughtered children, the constant staring into the face of death until you were numb and half-dead yourself.
I’d been back for three days when I found myself limping by the old Carter place. It was high summer, hot and humid. The pond was still the same size, but its waters were darker now. The sunlight couldn’t penetrate its surface at all. The old Carter house had fallen to rubble, half of it lying underwater. The cries of bullfrogs and toads filled the air, and I sat there until dark.
The moon rose full and round. I remembered looking at it from a battlefield five thousand miles away. Stand anywhere in the world and you’ll see the same moon as everyone else. The moon is a constant, like Carter’s pond. Now I saw the moon’s reflection gleaming on the surface of the pond, and a sudden understanding washed over me. It all made sense. Before me lay the gateway to an eternal world where change was a myth and death a distant memory. I bent down to drink the cool water, and my tears added a pinch of salt to its sweetness. I waded in and floated on my back atop the water, the moon fixed in my vision like the answer to an unasked question.