It took me some seconds to regain my composure enough to reply. “If you mean the one near the central square—yes, I know it.”
“It isn’t used—as a church, now,” Clothier went on. “But there were certain rites practiced there long ago. They left their mark. Perhaps Young wrote you about the legend of the temple existing in the same place as the church, but in another dimension? Yes, I see by your expression that he did. But do you know that rites can still be used at the proper season to open the gates and let throughthose from the other side? It’s true. I’ve stood in that church myself and watched the gates open in the center of empty air to show visions that made me shriek in horror. I’ve taken part in acts of worship that would drive the uninitiated insane. You see, Mr. Dodd, the majority of the people in Temphill still visit the church on the right nights.”
More than half convinced that Clothier’s mind was affected, I asked impatiently, “What does all this have to do with Young’s whereabouts?”
“It has everything to do with it,” Clothier continued. “I warned him not to go to the church, but he went one night in the same year when the Yule rite had been consummated, andThey must have been watching when he got there. He was held in Temphill after that. They have a way of turning space back to a point—I can’t explain it. He couldn’t get away. He waited in that house for days before They came. I heard his screams—and saw the color of the sky over the roof. They took him. That’s why you’ll never find him. And that’s why you’d better leave town altogether while there’s still time.”
“Did you look for him at the house?” I asked, incredulous.
“I wouldn’t go into that house for any reason whatever,” confessed Clothier. “Nor would anyone else. The house has become theirs now.They have taken him Outside—and who knows what hideous things may still lurk there?”
He got up to indicate that he had no more to say. I got to my feet, too, glad to escape the dimly-lit room and the house itself. Clothier ushered me to the door, and stood briefly at the threshold glancing fearfully up and down the street, as if he expected some dreadful visitation. Then he vanished inside his house without waiting to see where I went.
I crossed to Number 11. As I entered the curiously-shadowed hall, I remembered my friend’s account of his life here. It was in the lower part of the house that Young had been wont to peruse certain archaic and terrible volumes, to set down his notes concerning his discoveries, and to pursue sundry other researches. I found the room which had been his study without trouble; the desk covered with sheets of notepaper— the bookcases filled with leather- and skin-bound volumes—the incongruous desk lamp—all these bespoke the room’s onetime use.
I brushed the thick dust from the desk and the chair beside it, and turned on the light. The glow was reassuring. I sat down and took up my friend’s papers. The stack which first fell under my eye bore the headingCorroborative Evidence, and the very first page was typical of the lot, as I soon discovered. It consisted of what seemed to be unrelated notes referring to the Mayan culture of Central America. The notes, unfortunately, seemed to be random and meaningless. “Rain gods (water elementals?) Trunk-proboscis (ref. Old Ones). Kukulkan (Cthulhu?)” —Such was their general tenor. Nevertheless, I persisted, and presently a hideously suggestive pattern became evident.
It began to appear that Young had been attempting to unify and correlate various cycles of legend with one central cycle, which was, if recurrent references were to be believed, far older than the human race. Whence Young’s information had been gathered if not from the antique volumes set around the walls of the room, I did not venture to guess. I pored for hours over Young’s synopsis of the monstrous and alien myth-cycle—the legends of how Cthulhu came from an indescribable milieu beyond the furthest bounds of this universe—of the polar civilizations and abominably unhuman races from black Yuggoth on the rim— of hideous Leng and its monastery-prisoned high priest who had to cover what should be its face—and of a multitude of blasphemies only rumored to exist, save in certain forgotten places of the world. I read what Azathoth had resembledbefore that monstrous nuclear chaos had been bereft of mind and will—of many-featured Nyarlathotep—of shapes which the crawling chaos could assume, shapes which men have never before dared to relate—of how one might glimpse a dhole, and what one would see.
I was shocked to think that such hideous beliefs could be thought true in any corner of a sane world. Yet Young’s treatment of his material hinted that he, too, was not entirely skeptical concerning them. I pushed aside a bulky stack of papers. In so doing, I dislodged the desk blotter, revealing a thin sheaf of notes headedOn the legend of the High Street Church. Recalling Clothier’s warning, I drew it forth.
Two photographs were stapled to the first page. One was captionedSection of tesselated Roman pavement, Goatswood, the other Reproduction engraving p. 594 “Necronomicon” The former represented a group of what seemed to be acolytes or hooded priests depositing a body before a squatting monster; the latter a representation of that creature in somewhat greater detail. The being itself was so hysterically alien as to be indescribable; it was a glistening, pallid oval, with no facial features whatsoever, except for a vertical, slitlike mouth, surrounded by a horny ridge. There were no visible members, but there was that which suggested that the creature could shape any organ at will. The creature was certainly only a product of some morbid artist’s diseased mind—but the pictures were nevertheless oddly disturbing.
The second page set forth in Young’s all too familiar script a local legend to the effect that Romans who had laid the Goatswood pavement had, in fact, practiced decadent worship of some kind, and hinting that certain rites lingered in the customs of the more primitive present-day inhabitants of the area. There followed a paragraph translated from theNecronomicon.“The tomb-herd confer no benefits upon their worshipers. Their powers are few, for they can but disarrange space in small regions and make tangible that which cometh forth from the dead in other dimensions. They have power wherever the chants of Yog-Sothoth have been cried out at their seasons, and can draw to them those who will open their gates in the charnel-houses. They have no substance in this dimension, but enter earthly tenants to feed through them while they await the time when the stars become fixed and the gate of infinite sides opens to free That Which Claws at the Barrier.” To this Young had appended some cryptic notes of his own— “Cf. legends in Hungary, among aborigines Australia. —Clothier on High Church, Dec. 17,” which impelled me to turn to Young’s diary, pushed aside in my eagerness to examine Young’s papers.
I turned the pages, glancing at entries which seemed to be unrelated to the subject I sought, until I came to the entry for December 17. “More about the High Street Church legend from Clothier. He spoke of past days when it was a meeting-place for worshipers of morbid, alien gods. Subterranean tunnels supposedly burrowed down to onyx temples, etc. Rumors that all who crawled down those tunnels to worship were not human. References to passages to other spheres.” So much, no more. This was scarcely illuminating. I pressed on through the diary.
Under date of December 23,1 found a further reference: “Christmas brought more legends to Clothier’s memory today. He said something about a curious Yule rite practiced in the High Street Church—something to do with evoked beings in the buried necropolis beneath the church. Said it still happened on the eve of Christmas, but he had never actually seen it.”