After this the rise of reptilian life upon the planet appeared.
Eon after eon passed before him. Mammalian life came into being and developed, but the terrible elder gods, who had lived even before the Old Ones came, continued to walk the earth, plaguing the crude, semi-anthropoid creatures who had begun to stand erect. Time passed and the earth swarmed with two-legged beings, now definitely men and definitely beginning to subjugate nature. Whitney watched their evolution, their wars and cultures and scientific progress. He saw the civilizations of Atlantis and Mu and Lemuria and scores of others of which no faintest memory has descended to the modern world; and realized in a flash of astounded comprehension to what heights of power and learning they attained before the rushing seas, barbaric onslaughts, or inevitable decadence, swallowed them up. He thrilled to the deeds of the Grecian heroes of the Golden Age and followed the path of Aeneas to the founding of Rome. The destinies of mighty Egypt and the conquests of the dark hordes of Assyria and Babylonia unfolded before his eyes; and he passed on down the years of history, knowing all, seeing all, understanding all the happenings of the world he lived in. The obscure and misunderstood events of the past and the disputed points of history became clear.
At length his own age passed in review, and he smiled contentedly as the immense minutiae of world learning was absorbed by his mind. Then, leisurely, inexorably, he passed on into time, thrilling to behold, one after another, the solution of the great problems towards which science had been turning. One by one he beheld the secrets of the universe captured and harnessed and their fundamental simplicity made clear. Through endless eons to an aged world, rolling cold and desert-like beneath a dying sun, to the ultimate black frigidity of interstellar space and final annihilation, he followed.
In the last darkness, enveloped in the cosmic cold, his senses reeled and the whirling nausea again engulfed him.
He opened his eyes to find himself suspended high in the air by the great tentacle still wrapt around his waist. And his gaze opened full on the cold, inhuman stare of the green eyes.
There was something magnetic yet revolting, something utterly alien yet supremely fascinating in those long, green eyes. He could not swerve his head nor wrench his gaze away from that effortlessly hypnotic stare. As he struggled in helpless panic, the thought of the strangely symmetrical mutilation of the nineteenth shard and the spell of exorcism he had never had an opportunity to memorize flashed across his mind…. He sensed the tentacle gradually and inexorably drawing him closer and closer. The weird, unmentionably deformed face loomed nearer and nearer. The eyes seemed growing, great lakes of mystic green, shot with tiny, dancing sparks. Whitney felt the fainting sensation of one swaying on a precipice. Then he was hurtling down into a vast seething sea of cold green fire where his intellect and ego would be absorbed and become one with their host.
The sun shone and a crisp wind blew bracingly over a new- washed world the next morning when Gordon Whitney’s housekeeper found the professor’s bedroom door locked and the inmate unresponsive to her knocks. In her growing concern she called certain faculty members who were crossing the campus, and together they finally broke down the bedroom door.
Whitney was quite dead, although an autopsy failed to establish any cause. He would have seemed asleep had it not been for that shocking expression of horrified despair — which, as Professor Turkoff privately observed afterwards, harmonized so strangely with the realization of a life’s dream.
The Scourge of B’Moth
BERTRAM RUSSELL
The first inkling that I had of the gigantic abomination that was soon to smother the world with its saprophytic obscenity in 192-, was obtained almost by accident.
My friend Dr. Prendergast, a gentleman eminent in his own particular branch of medicine, which included all sorts of brain specializations, operations, trephining, and so on, called me personally by telephone from his own residence late one night.
It struck me as surprising that he should not have had his secretary or nurse call me during office hours. I was not in error when I thought his mission an urgent one.
“Randall,” he said to me, “I’ve never seen the like of this in all my years of experience, and I am pretty sure you never did in yours either.”
“A mental case?” I asked with quickening interest.
“Yes. And more. It’s got me almost beaten to a standstill. I confess I’m pretty nearly stumped. I’ve gone over him thoroughly — X-rayed him and so on — but still I can’t find any evidence whatsoever of organic disturbance.”
“Well — can’t it be a functional neurosis?” I asked in some surprise.
“If it is, I never saw another like it. The fellow seems to be actually possessed. He acts without knowing why he does so. I’ve given him a rough psychoanalysis, but it reveals nothing more than the repressions and inhibitions that every average person has. His unconscious contents show absolute ignorance of the awful obsession by which his waking hours are beset.”
“There must be a reason for it,” I said. “If a man has an obsession, there are unconscious associations to exorcise it with. It can only be the symbol for something else…
“The symbol for something else. You’re right there. But if I can’t find out what this something else really is, and pretty soon at that, this patient is going to join his Master before long.”
“His Master?” I queried, surprised at what I thought to be a Biblical allusion by Prendergast.
“Yes. Whoever that is. He talks about nothing else. This Master represents the thing that is dominating him, stretching out its tentacles from the darkest depths of unfathomable abysses to strangle the desire to live within him. He says now that he is eager to die, and you don’t need me to tell you what that means in the neurotic.”
“I’ll come over immediately,” I said.
“German-American Hospital, ward 3, psychiatric,” he said giving me the final instructions.
I hurriedly donned my clothes — I had been reading Goethe in a dressing-gown before retiring — and unlocking the garage I started the coupe. Soon I was on my way to the hospital where my friend had arranged to meet me.
The night was exceptionally dark, and a thin, clammy drizzle had commenced to fall — not a cold rain, but a viscid, penetrating darkness like the breath of some Stygian fury. The car was quite closed, yet I felt the clammy thrill of it inside. I even noticed that the instrument board was covered with drops of fluid and the wheel became wet and unruly under my touch. I almost allowed it to slip out of my hands as the car rounded a sharp curve. I jammed the brakes on. The wheels skidded on the slithery ground. I had been just in time to prevent the coupe from careening over the edge, where a dark abyss fell away from the road as if a giant had scooped a track through the heart of the hills.