Of course, the details were never made public, but on the following day we received cablegrams from all parts of the world telling of a concerted attempt to regain power by these creatures of a dreadful past.
From India came messages telling of invasions by hordes of tigers and mammoth elephants; from Africa of lions, all the wild life of the forest; from Burma stories of huge apes that crushed the life out of men; from South America, all of the reptilian life of the Amazonian forests massed in relentless array. But thanks to our knowledge of their purpose, the attempts were frustrated.
The stories of incendiarism, of course, could not be kept out of the press. The dynamiting of the McAuliffe Building in New York is common property. The butchery of Professor Atkinson in his laboratory of experimental hygiene is well known. Throughout the civilized world, the police forces were hard put to it to cope with the threatened overthrow of civilization.
But civilization triumphed, and the forces of destruction were greatly reduced, although not destroyed; they never can be destroyed. Dr. Prendergast laughs at the fog now, and the rain has no terrors for me.
Was my surmise correct when those Things turned tail and made again for the open sea? Is B’Moth dead? I wonder!
The House of the Worm
MEARLE PROUT
For hours I had sat at my study table, trying in vain to feel and transmit to paper the sensations of a criminal in the death- house. You know how one may strive for hours — even days — to attain a desired effect, and then feel a sudden swift rhythm, and know he has found it? But how often, as though Fate herself intervened, does interruption come and mar, if not cover completely, the road which for a moment gleamed straight and white! So it was with me.
Scarcely had I lifted my hands to the keys when my fellow- roomer, who had long been bent quietly over a magazine, said, quietly enough, “That moon — I wonder if even it really exists!”
I turned sharply. Fred was standing at the window, looking with a singularly rapt attention into the darkness.
Curious, I rose and went to him, and followed his gaze into the night. There was the moon, a little past its full, but still nearly round, standing like a great red shield close above the tree-tops, real enough….
Something in the strangeness of my friend’s behavior prevented the irritation which his unfortunate interruption would ordinarily have caused.
“Just why did you say that?” I asked, after a moment’s hesitation. Shamefacedly he laughed, half apologetic. “I’m sorry I spoke aloud,” he said. “I was only thinking of a bizarre theory I ran across in a story.”
“About the moon?”
“No. Just an ordinary ghost story of the type you write. While Pan Walks is its name, and there was nothing in it about the moon.” He looked again at the ruddy globe, now lighting the darkened street below with a pale, tenuous light. Then he spoke: “You know, Art, that idea has taken hold of me; perhaps there is something to it after all…
Theories of the bizarre have always enthralled Fred, as they always hold a romantic appeal for me. And so, while he revolved his latest fancy in his mind, I waited expectantly.
“Art,” he began at last, “do you believe that old story about thoughts becoming realities? I mean, thoughts of men having a physical manifestation?”
I reflected a moment, before giving way to a slight chuckle. “Once,” I answered, “a young man said to Carlyle that he had decided to accept the material world as a reality; to which the older man only replied, ‘Egad, you’d better!’… Yes,” I continued, “I’ve often run across the theory, but ”
“You’ve missed the point,” was the quick rejoinder. “Accept your physical world, and what do you have? — Something that was created by God! And how do we know that all creation has stopped? Perhaps even we ”
He moved to a book-shelf, and in a moment returned, dusting off a thick old leather-bound volume.
“I first encountered the idea here,” he said, as he thumbed the yellowed pages, “but it was not until that bit of fiction pressed it into my mind that I thought of it seriously. Listen:
“‘The Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” From what did He create it? Obviously, it was created by thought, imagery, force of will if you please. The Bible further says: “So God created man in His own image.” Does this not mean that man has all the attributes of the Almighty, only upon a smaller scale? Surely, then, if the mind of God in its omnipotence could create the entire universe, the mind of man, being made in the image of God, and being his counterpart on earth, could in the same way, if infinitely smaller in degree, create things of its own will.
“‘For example, the old gods of the dawn-world. Who can say that they did not exist in reality, being created by man? And, once created, how can we tell whether they will not develop into something to harass and destroy, beyond all control of their creators? If this be true, then the only way to destroy them is to cease to believe. Thus it is that the old gods died when man’s faith turned from them to Christianity.’”
He was silent a moment, watching me as I stood musing. “Strange where such thoughts can lead a person,” I said. “How are we to know which things are real and which are fancies — racial fantasies, I mean, common in all of us. I think I see what you meant when you wondered if the moon were real.”
“But imagine,” said my companion, “a group of people, a cult, all thinking the same thoughts, worshipping the same imaginary figure. What might not happen, if their fanaticism were such that they thought and felt deeply? A physical manifestation, alien to those of us who did not believe….”
And so the discussion continued. And when at last we finally slept, the moon which prompted it all was hovering near the zenith, sending its cold rays upon a world of hard physical reality.
Next morning we both arose early — Fred to go back to his prosaic work as a bank clerk, I to place myself belatedly before my typewriter. After the diversion of the night before, I found that I was able to work out the bothersome scene with little difficulty, and that evening I mailed the finished and revised manuscript.
When my friend came in he spoke calmly of our conversation the night before, even admitting that he had come to consider the theory a rank bit of metaphysics.
Not quite so calmly did he speak of the hunting-trip which he suggested. Romantic fellow that he was, his job at the bank was sheer drudgery, and any escape was rare good fortune. I, too, with my work out of the way and my mind clear, was doubly delighted at the prospect.
“I’d like to shoot some squirrels,” I agreed. “And I know a good place. Can you leave tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow; my vacation starts then,” he replied. “But for a long time I’ve wanted to go back to my old stamping-grounds. It’s not so very far — only a little over a hundred miles, and” — he looked at me in apology for differing with my plans — “in Sacrament Wood there are more squirrels than you ever saw.”
And so it was agreed.
Sacrament Wood is an anomaly. Three or four miles wide and twice as long, it fills the whole of a peculiar valley, a rift, as it were, in the rugged topography of the higher Ozarks. No stream flows through it, there is nothing to suggest a normal valley; it is merely there, by sheer physical presence defying all questions. Grim, tree-flecked mountains hem it in on every side, as though seeking by their own ruggedness to compensate this spot of gentleness and serenity. And here lies the peculiarity: though the mountains around here are all inhabited — sparsely, of course, through necessity — the valley of the wood, with every indication of a wonderful fertility, has never felt the plow; and the tall, smooth forest of scented oak has never known the ax of the woodman.