“You seem all right now, and certainly you never gave me the impression of being neurotic.”
“That’s just it. I ought to be the very last person to crack, but though I am as sane as it is possible for a man to be at this time, in a few minutes that Thing may have me in its clutch, and I shall be a raving lunatic. It’s funny, Randall, to be able to analyze your own particular form of lunacy — if such it is. I can remember quite well what happened to me last night. It is much more real than the usual dream associations. And I dread its return more profoundly because of this. If this is lunacy, it is a form never before seen. But I don’t think it is lunacy at all.”
“Tell me about it,” I urged. “Perhaps two minds can do what one can not.”
“There’s not much to tell. I had been reading Freud until a late hour last night — his last book, you know. Thoughts that were assuredly not born of earth came to me. I began to feel an immense distaste for life — the life that we live today, I mean. I thought of the days of the jungle, and those primordial memories that lie dormant within every man came back to me. The artificiality of the world with its commercial systems, its codes of conduct, its gigantic material things, that after all have done little else besides making life harder to live, and shorter — all these appeared as the flimsiest futility.
“It seemed to me that man was not made to live in this fashion. I thought that the giant primeval forest with its fierce combat of man against man and beast against beast was the fitting habitat of life. I thought of those monsters of the deep, glimpsed occasionally by passing vessels — huge beyond the conception of man. Once life had been lived altogether on a gigantic scale like that. I felt, I can’t say just why, a deep kinship, an affinity with those bloated colossi of the sea — the carrion that feed upon the bodies of the dead. They seemed to me to represent the farthest step that could be taken in a retrogressive direction — back from civilization, you see — back from the painfully acquired things that we count so valuable.
“And — here is the strange part — it seemed to me that this thought did not come wholly from myself. It was almost as if something had whispered into my ear that abomination of regression. I felt that at the same moment, not I alone, but thousands and thousands, rather millions, were dreaming of the time when the cycle should have been completed. We always learned that things are cyclical, you know. Rome rose; was great; fell. So on with the other civilizations, all of them. So undoubtedly will be our own great civilization. It will be the mythical end of the world that seers have predicted for centuries. There will be no starry cataclysm, but a return of all life to the jungle.
“Competent authorities state that if something is not done to stop this approaching catastrophe, we shall be literally eaten alive by insects — ants, for instance. There seems to be plenty of scientific basis for this suggestion. But who has thought of the awful possibilities that may arise if those unknown creatures, bloated to foul enormity, shall in concerted array overrun the civilized world?”
“It’s an awful thought, but there’s no foundation for it,” I said.
“I’m not so sure that there’s no basis for it. I’ve had a feeling, lately, that there is a tremendous movement under way that has as its sole object the overthrow of civilization and re-establishment of the life of the jungle.
“And here’s what appears to be the reason for selecting us. We can exercise an enormous control over the minds of men; you agree? This unspeakable Thing has seized upon us, is trying to enmesh us in its net, to enlist us in the cause, because with the influence that we can exert we should be enormously valuable. Do you follow? We are to be apostles of this creed!”
“What an appalling idea! I’d rather be dead,” I said with a shudder.
“Dead! Who knows what might happen to you then? You might join the Master….”
“You, too!” I cried.
A spasm of fear crossed my friend’s face as the full import of his words bore in upon him. His muscles were twisted in an agony of internal strife, as he fought the influence.
“They haven’t got me yet, Randall. But they are after me! I’ll fight them. I pray that my lucid intervals may be frequent enough to enable me to unravel this foul mystery. Good God! — I’m in a cold sweat all over. Tremors!”
I started across the room to the table, and pouring a glass of water, handed it to my friend.
He shuddered convulsively, and recoiled from it as from a living horror.
“Away!” he shouted. “Take that contagion away! It’s after me! It’s alive! I won’t drink it. It means madness!”
With a frantic effort he dashed the glass and its contents upon the floor.
I stared at my friend, aghast. Suddenly a thought came to me — a recollection of that night when a certain glass of water had glowed with iridescent fire; when, through the baneful influence of the fog, my own mind had skirted the borderland of lunacy. I began to understand.
My colleague was calming himself again. Presently he spoke.
“It’s going to be a fight for me,” he said. “But I’ll battle to the last gasp. Your part will be to watch, and, if possible, learn more of this awful Thing that menaces the sanity of the world. There must be some way to destroy it.”
“How shall I start?” I muttered in puzzled bewilderment. I had only the slightest of clues to work upon. The newspaper cutting did little more than confirm what I already suspected.
“Your key is the word of the Master: ‘B’Moth.’ Don’t forget — B’Moth. What it means, I can’t say. But the word has been ringing in my ears for days. That’s the Master — that’s the name of this cankerous rottenness that you must destroy!”
I left the hospital in a daze. How was I to destroy this Thing? I was already half in its clutches. I could do little but flounder in the dark. If, as Dr. Prendergast and that dead man had asserted, there were millions of followers, they kept their doings secret. “B’Moth” — the word was like a voice from another world — without meaning.
I thought, and thought, in an agony of apprehension. I knew not where to turn for information. I spent hours in my library, greatly to the detriment of my practice. I exhausted most of the books of mythology and of anthropology, but still I could find nothing that seemed to have any bearing upon the matter.
One day, when I was going through an ancient volume of Kane’s Magic and the Black Arts, bound with a heavy bronze clasp, and closed with lock and key, I came upon the following:
There be many who revere the Devourer, though few have seen the full stature of this great power. It is a vision fraught with eldritch horror, and much sought by wizards of early times. One, Johannes of Magdeburg, wise in the lore of the ages, hath met success greatly in his efforts. He asserteth that the Devourer liveth in the Deep, and is not to be reached by any means, yet he hath been able to feel his breath and know his will. The secret is in a vaporous effluvium. For the Devourer hath power to manifest himself where there is moisture.
His breath is the fog and the rain. Wherefore, many do account water the elemental, and do worship it in divers ways.
This Johannes hath told in his book of medicine how he did conjure from a heavy vapor in his efforts the very Essence itself upon occasion. The phosphorous light of dead things did swell into a great brightness and fill the chamber, and withal came the spirit of the Devourer. And Johannes hath learned that he liveth in the deepest Ocean, where he awaiteth only a time auspicious for his return to earth. Many there be who joyfully believe the time approacheth yet Johannes saith that many centuries shall pass ere the Master returneth to claim his own.