Finally, some time after every possible variant of stupid crab, coconut, breadfruit and papaya had been tried, but shortly before culinary boredom sent him after the pigs, the rope was completed to his reasonable, if not absolute, satisfaction.
Cabal allowed himself a night’s rest before embarking on the descent. He dropped a bundle of torches into the depths, crude items of wood with coconut matting heads moist with crab grease that he knew would burn for a disgustingly stenchfilled half an hour when lit. Ercusides on a stick was certainly more reliable and less odoriferous, but also more voluble and inclined to testiness; Cabal would make do with his crab-fat torches instead. The bundle was wrapped around some food, although he doubted the little tetrahedral cage he had formed from the torches would survive impact. He knew the area he was descending to was reasonably flat, having cast several burning torches down in a survey the previous week, so that was one less thing to worry about. Muttering irritably under his breath, he fed the secured rope down into the darkness and then, muttering stilled, began the climb downwards.
Very aware of the old mountaineers’ maxim that if one is going to fall off a rope, it is usually better to do so near the bottom, he made the best time he could without resorting to abseiling, which might put too much strain on the plaited creepers. Quickly he slid down into a thick, tangible darkness that closed in around him like oil. Above him, the glimmering light from the permanently alight – and very permanently fixed, as he had discovered – flambeaux grew attenuated and then seemed to flicker out altogether. Soon, the only way he had to gauge his progress was the number of times he had moved his hands down the rope, and that was a rough approximation at best. Then, with about forty feet to go, the rope parted.
He fell in silence, but inwardly he was thinking, Typical.
He awoke with no idea of how long he had been unconscious. This was low on his list of priorities at the time, it is true, lagging a long way behind a warranted sense of elation at not being dead and an equally justifiable sense of relief that his skeleton still seemed to be in the correct number of pieces. This miraculous escape was rendered less miraculous by the discovery that he was lying in a deep bed of some fibrous hairlike material that must have cushioned him on impact. While grateful for its serendipitous placement, he was less happy at what it might turn out to be. The image that leaped first to mind was a massive form of mucor, the threadlike mould often found on rotting vegetable matter, but this impression passed quickly when he realised that the threads were dry and not standing vertically but curled and balled. There was the smell, too: dry and musty, with a faint but distinct scent redolent of old crypts.
A suspicion began to form and he rolled slowly from the strange mound, ignoring the discomfort of the bruising he had suffered in his fall. He cast around on the rocky floor, finding only gravel and grit for several long minutes until his hand brushed against a piece of wood, and he realised it was one of his torches. The head of wiry coconut coir was greasy with crab fat and he realised that it must be one of the new torches from his provisions cache. That it was there by itself didn’t raise hopes for the state of the cache, but he would worry about that in a moment.
He took out his silver matchbox and struck a light, allowing the flame to settle and grow in the still air before applying it to the torch. The grease melted and bubbled before the flame took and spread across the matting head, and finally he was able to look around.
The first thing he saw was the provisions bundle. It was not nearly as badly damaged as he had first anticipated. In fact, the only thing different about its state from the moment he had dropped it into the abyss was that one torch had become detached, and that was the torch with which he was now examining it. Serendipity again, it seemed.
The next thing he saw was what he had fallen on to. His second supposition as to its constitution was, he was very sorry to say, the correct one. It was hair – vast, vast quantities of hair, formed into an untidy pile. Moreover, it was human hair. Its length, colouration and, here and there, signs of dyeing and highlights gave no other possible origin. The fact that quite a few bits of desiccated scalp were still attached clinched the identification. Its presence posed two major questions. Where had such a huge multi-hued hairball come from, and why was it here now? Unless some sort of demon trichologist was haunting this dark passageway, Cabal was forced to admit to himself that he had no idea.
Then, when he raised his torch high to look around, the third thing he saw was the great ring of perhaps a hundred or so ghouls that encircled him, down on their haunches, silently watching. Once again Johannes Cabal thought, Typical.
He considered the wisdom of reaching for his sword and found it wanting. Besides, they could have killed him in any second since his undignified arrival into this darkness and had not done so. He had been, and remained, it seemed, an object of fascination among the ghouls. They just seemed to follow him around to see what amusing misadventure he might become embroiled within next. When one’s career consists of haunting graveyards and eating human corpses of varied freshness, Cabal conceded, one has to find one’s entertainment where one can.
‘Well,’ he said, clear and unwavering, ‘how may I help you, ladies and gentlemen?’ They all looked very similar with no obvious sexually dimorphic features, but he knew that every one of them had once been as human as he. Such niceties as showing basic politeness might make the difference between life and lunch.
The ghouls did not reply to him, but meeped and glibbered among themselves, as was their depraved wont. Neither, however, did they come any closer or retreat from the uncertain light of his torch. Cabal wondered just how long they would keep this up. It was like being threatened by wolves dressed as sheep, who had sunk so deep into their method acting that they were now unclear about the whole ‘being dangerous’ thing. Experimentally he took a step forward. The ghouls before him scuttled back a step, while those beside and behind him scuttled sideways and forwards accordingly to maintain the cordon. Marvellous, he thought. I have my very own halo of ghouls. Oh, happy day.
He was just considering, perhaps unwisely, the possible results of leaping forward, arms held high, and bellowing, ‘Boo!’ at them, when there was a disturbance in the circle off to his right. He turned as the line opened a gap and allowed through another ghoul. Physically, there was little to delineate it from its fellows, but there was a spark of recognition, psychic and certain, in Cabal’s mind that this was the same specimen he had spoken to in Arkham and in the nameless city on the bank of the Lake of Yath.
‘We meet again,’ Cabal said, ‘I’m fairly sure. What cryptic truths have you come to bore me with this time?’
The ghoul settled down on the grimy rock, crossing its legs with practised ease despite the way its knees bent back like a dog’s. ‘The last but one, Johannes Cabal.’ It fell silent, watching Cabal with its head cocked to one side.
‘Well?’ said Cabal. ‘If you could buck up and illuminate my ignorance I should be very grateful. Actually, if you want me to be very, very grateful, I would appreciate being led from here to the waking world. This darkness is clearly with your territories, so it shouldn’t be very difficult for . . .’
But the ghoul was slowly shaking its head. It was hard to tell if it was grinning: the line of its muzzle and the flickering light made things uncertain. ‘It is not for me to tell Johannes Cabal what the truth is. Johannes Cabal will see for himself very soon.’
‘What? What do you mean? Am I intended to deduce it? Play Twenty Questions? This is ridiculous.’
And it was ridiculous. The more he thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. Here he was, in the depths of an abyss, within the bowels of an uncharted island, in an alien sea, on a different plane of existence, surrounded by monsters, playing guessing games. It was ridiculous, and soon he couldn’t see anything else but how ridiculous it was, and that was when he started laughing. The laughing started with giggling, then full-mouthed guffawing, and it grew louder and more hysterical as the ghouls watched in silence and, perhaps, in sadness.