AS HOWARD AND LOVECRAFT sat hunched over on their low stools, sipping bitter black coffee, Imanito sat with legs crossed on the floor of the hogan and began his tale. As he spoke, he reached for a series of small containers at his side; he dipped his hands into these and began trickling colored sand onto the flat part of the earthen floor by the fire. He was speaking some of the lore of the Old Ones, recounting the meanings behind various Kachina figures, reading their stories in a series of small sand sketches as he went on. Soon the square contours of the painting took shape, and then the outlines were elaborated with a key of designs in contrasting colors. Red, white, blue, green, yellow. Lovecraft and Howard were both amazed at how concisely the old man could draw with the sand that trickled from the crease in his palm. If they had been told that it was magic, they would not have hesitated to dismiss it as some trick, but Imanito went on matter-of-factly, the complex lines and shapes appearing under his palm so quickly it seemed he was following patterns already there on the floor. But the floor was bare.
Now Imanito told the great myth of the Emergence, the origin of the Southwest Indian peoples, and part of the story was a long litany of names: Navajo, Zuni, Lipan, Jicarilla, Laguna, Tiwa, Keresan, and Hopi; part a cataloging of living communities like Walpi, Sichomovi, and Oraibi, which had come down from ancient times.
“Long ago when the world was still new the old ones and the old creatures lived under the earth. Everything was dark because there was no light there. Even above the earth, there was no light.
“It was the time of four worlds. This world, where we live, and the three cave worlds below, one on top of the other. The old ones and the old creatures multiplied so fast that they filled the lower cave world and overcrowded it. It became so crowded that they jostled each other when they tried to move, and the cave was filled with their filth and their shit. The people complained and groaned, and said it was not good to live that way, but no one knew what to do about it.
“Then the Two Brothers came forth from among the people, and they broke holes in the roofs of the cave and climbed down into the lowest cave world where other people were living. The Two Brothers planted many plants, one after the other, until finally one of them grew tall and strong and jointed like the plant we know as a cane plant. It grew so high it went through the hole in the roof of the cave. It was strong enough for the people and creatures to climb, and the joints were like the rungs of a ladder, and that is how they got to the second cave world.
“When some of the people had climbed out, they realized it was dark and there was no way to tell how large it was, and so they were afraid it would be too small. They shook the ladder and made the slow ones fall back down.
“It took a long time, but the second cave world also grew full and as crowded as the first, and so once again they used the cane ladder to go through the ceiling into another world. And once again they shook down the ones who took too long.
“The third world was as dark as the second world, but it was larger, and in this one the Two Brothers discovered fire. That changed everything, because now the people could light torches and carry them around. They could travel, and they could build their houses and kivas, but the easiness of life with fire also made the people change.
“It was while the people and creatures lived in the third cave world that the times of evil came. Women grew crazed and behaved like men, dancing and neglecting their babies, and men behaved like women, taking care of the babies. Still, there was no day, only the blackest night lit by the people’s torches.
“To get away from their troubles, the people climbed up into the fourth world, which is the one we live in now. But at that time, this world, too, was in total darkness. In the light of their torches, the people found tracks. They were the tracks of Death, the Corpse Demon, the one we call Masawu. They followed the tracks to the east, but the world was wet, and the tracks led out into the black waters.
“The people tried to make light in order to illuminate this world. They had the help of the five beings who had come up with them, and one after the other, they tried. It was the five beings that made the lights that became the sun, the moon, and the stars.
“And now that they had light, the people could see the tracks of Masawu and follow them to new lands in the east. Masawu was the only one who awaited us in this world when it was the world of water. When the waters dried, it left the earth damp and fertile, and it was Death that taught people how to plant and grow things.
“Now let me tell you the important thing, the thing that you came here to listen to. When the world dried, it became hard like stone, and many strange tracks were left in it. From men, and animals, and the strange creatures that no man knows anymore. These tracks could be seen stretching westward from where the people came out of the cave worlds into this one, and among them were certain tracks that had been left there by the Old Ones who had been in the world of water.
“Long, slithery tracks that looked like giant things had been dragged. These Old Ones were the beings that had dwelled in the dark world of water before the coming of men, and when the world dried, they had to escape into the deepest and darkest waters or be trapped in the drying stone. Most of the Old Ones escaped away from the land, but a few of them were too slow, like the slow people from the lower cave worlds, and they were trapped in the stone caves that formed when the waters bubbled out and went to the oceans.
“There is an Old One still trapped nearby. It has been calling for a long, long time, and the Corpse Demon, Masawu, told the ancestors of the Hopi to look out for the three who would answer that call. We were to tell them this story so that they would know if their duty was to men or to the Old Ones, because if the Old Ones return to the dry land, then they will bring the black waters with them once again, and this world will end in water and not in flames, as it should.
“This is the story. It is finished. And now I must tell you the tale of how to rid the world of monsters like the Old Ones, the ones who had no voices because they lived in water. The ones with names like K’thul’hu.” He recounted the stories of the Monster-ridding cycle and explained that it is not just they, the North American Indians, who told this, but that it originated with the older, more advanced civilizations that built the Mayan and Aztec pyramids, the civilizations that traced their roots to the now sunken Azatlan or Ixtlan, or-as Lovecraft and Howard well knew its myth-Atlantis.
In the sand paintings that accompanied the stories, Howard and Lovecraft recognized angular icons that were vaguely reminiscent of the figure on the Artifact. Though they had not shown it to him, the shaman painted an uncanny representation of the Kachina in its dancelike pose with its cylindrical headdress, which, in the flat painting, was rectangular. Then, next to the Kachina, in a line connected from one of the zigzag lines of scalloping around its neck, Imanito drew the Artifact itself. He explained how it was an unholy power that was supposed to be left behind in the lowermost Black World, but which promised, again and again, to break through to the surface and rule those who had formerly escaped its power.