The old man mumbled affrightedly at the sight of his visitor, and tried to turn him away with pleas of something to be done that night which was very pressing. But he had promised Armitage that he would accompany him, and his visitor held him to that promise though it had been made over a year before. He escorted Pierce out to the waiting sports car, in which they drove off across the grim, primeval landscape. All too soon they turned off to reach the Aylesbury Road. The drive down it was a nightmarish affair of close half-demolished lichenous brick walls, grassy verges with huge darkly-coloured pools, and stunted trees, twisted into grotesque shapes which creaked in the screaming wind and leaned terrifyingly toward the road. But however morbid the drive may have seemed, it could have been no consolation to Pierce when the car drew off the road near an especially dense belt of forest.
The trip down the pathway between the towering trees may only be imagined. But the walk through the fungoid-phosphorescent boles and pathblocking twisted roots soon widened out into a clearing—the clearing of that horrible survival from aeons before humanity occurred. Armitage waited impatiently as the moon's thin rays began to trickle across the boundary of the clearing. He had insisted that Pierce stand near the slab of vast mineral, and that person now shuddered as he watched the accursed sliver of moon creep up toward the zenith.
Finally, as the first beam of pallid light struck the circular stone, the searcher began to shriek those mercifully forbidden words in the Aklo language, the terrified farmer joining in the responses. At first, no sound could be heard except certain movements far off among the trees; but as the moonbeams progressed across the pitted grey expanse both Armitage and his disturbed companion began to hear a sound far below in the earth, as of some Cyclopean body crawling from unremembered abysses. The thing scrabbled monstrously in some black pit under the earth, and so greatly was the sound muffled that it was not until the slab began to creak upward hideously that the watchers realised the nearness of the alien horror. Enoch Pierce turned as if to flee, but Armitage screamed that he should hold his ground, and he turned back to face whatever monstrosity might rise from the pit. First of all came the claws and arms, and when Pierce saw the number of arms he almost screamed outright. Then, as these dug into the soil around that hole into nether deeps, the thing raised itself almost out of the hole, and its head came into sight, pressing up the impossibly heavy slab of unknown material. That bloated, scaly head, with its obscenely wide mouth and one staring orb, was in view for but an instant; for then the arm of the hideousness shot out into the moonlight, swept up the hapless Pierce, and whipped back into the blackness. The stone slab crashed back into place, and a ghastly shriek from the victim yelled out beneath the stone, to be cut off horribly a second later.
Then, however, Armitage, shaken by the horror he had seen but still mindful of his mission, pronounced the final invocation of the Sabaoth. A terrible croaking rang out in the clearing, seeming to come across incredible gulfs of space. It spoke in no human tongue, but the hearer understood only too perfectly. He added a potent list of the powers which he had called out of space and time, and began to explain the mission on which he had sought the abomination's aid.
It is at this point in the notes of Edward Wingate Armitage that an air of puzzlement is remarked by all commentators. He recounts, with a growing air of disbelief and definite unease, that he explained to the lurker below the slab that he wished to learn the long invocation of the powers of Azathoth. On the mention of that monstrous and alien name, the shambler in the concealed pit began to stir as if disturbed, and chanted hideously in cosmic rhythms, as if to ward off some danger or malefic power. Armitage, startled at the demonstration of the potency of that terrific name, continued that his reason for wishing to learn this chant was to protect himself in traffic with the crustacean beings from black Yuggoth on the rim. But at the reference to these rumoured entities, a positive shriek of terror rang out from below the earth, and a vast scrabbling and slithering, fast dying away, became apparent. Then there was silence in the clearing, except for the flapping and crying of an inexplicable flock of whippoorwills, passing overhead at that moment.
III
One can learn little more about the ways of Edward Wingate Armitage for the next few years. There are notes concerning a passage to Asia in 1922; the seeker apparently visited an ancient castle, much avoided by the neighbouring peasantry, for the seemingly deserted stronghold was reputed to be on the edge of a certain abnormal Central Asian plateau. He speaks of a certain tower room in which something had been prisoned, and of an awakening of that which still sat in a curiously carved throne facing the door. To this certain commentators link references to something carried on the homeward passage in a stout tightly-sealed box, the odour of which was so repulsive that it had to be kept in the owner's cabin at the request of other passengers. But nothing could be gleaned from whatever he brought home in the box, and it can only be conjectured what was done with the box and its contents; though there may be some connection with what a party of men from Miskatonic, summoned by an uneasy surgeon at St Mary's, found in Armitage's house and transported out to a lonely spot beyond Arkham, after which they poured kerosene over it and made certain that nothing remained afterward.
In early 1923 Armitage journeyed to Australia, there being certain legends of survivals there that he wished to verify. The notes are few at this point, but it seems likely that he discovered nothing beyond legends of a shunned desert stretch where a buried alien city was said to lie. Upon making a journey to the avoided terrain, he remarked that frequent spirals of dust arose in the place for no visible reason, and often twisted into very peculiar and vaguely disturbing shapes. Often, also, a singular ululation—a fluted whistling which seemed almost coherent—resounded out of empty space; but no amount of invocation would make anything appear beyond the eldritchly twining clouds of dust.
In the summer of 1924 Armitage removed from the High Street residence to an extensive place at the less-inhabited end of the Aylesbury Road. Perhaps he had grown to hate the pressing crowds in the city; more likely, however, he wished to follow certain pursuits that must not be seen by anyone. Frequent trips to that abnormality beneath the stone in the woods are recorded; but presumably the lack of participants made the ritual useless, for no response could be elicited. Once or twice there is a rise of defiance, noticeable in the tenor of the notes, but before he actually visited the Devil's Steps and its monstrous secrets, he would always repent his foolhardiness. Even so, he was becoming desperate with the lack of that unearthly mineral that he needed. It is better not to think of what his actions and fate might have been, had he not finally discovered a route to learning that long-sought and forbidden incantation.
But it was soon after, in March of the memorable year 1925, that Armitage recollected words of Enoch Pierce before that last horrible April night in the haunted clearing. Perhaps he had been rereading his notes; at any rate, he remembered Pierce's plea that he might be able to tell him where to procure the incantation, one day in 1918. At the time he had believed that this was merely a lie to defer the awful moonlight ritual; but now he wondered if it might not have had some foundation in reality, for the rustic had known a number of people possessing rare occult knowledge. One of these might conceivably know that incantation.
The next day he drove to the homestead, which was even more decayed and tottering than he remembered. Pierce's wife was dead, and the two sons now lived there alone, eking out a meagre income from the pitiful herd of cattle and few poultry. They were extremely displeased to see him, suspecting that their father's inexplicable disappearance had been effected by something which Armitage had "called aout of space"; but their fear overcame their hatred, so that they invited him into the parlour, albeit with unintelligible whisperings to each other. One, the younger, excused himself to tend the herd; the other listened uneasily to the visitor's questions. Who were the friends of his father who might have been connected with witchcraft, black magic and the like? Which, if any, were alive today? Where did they live? And, most important, which would be likely to know more than had Enoch Pierce?