The moment delayed no longer, as fearful anticipation incarnated itself in the form of an obscenely glistening wave of corpulent viscosity, suddenly rising up before them from the underlying ooze. The thing, which held its ungainly position for several seconds unmoving, had no visible countenance. In general shape it might have borne comparison to a single severed octopus tentacle endowed with a life of its own. Great circular sucker-mouths quivered along its exposed underside, no doubt in eager throes of appetite.
All three men had crouched, bracing themselves for fight or flight, though each seemed equally futile. It was then, in the midst of the cool detachment deadly danger brings, that Jacob Maitland realized what it must mean that the disgusting creature towered motionlessly, with its presumably more vulnerable underside exposed. It was trying in the only way it might to indicate peaceful intentions. He thought of the passage from the Azif which ascribed some manner of craftiness, hence intelligence, to the servitors of Ubb. Without thinking, he blurred out his hunch to the others. Even with the echoes Maitland thus let loose, the posture of the hideous denizen did not change.
"Well done, Maitland!" cried the mud-smeared Zarnak, a ridiculous caricature of his usually impeccable appearance. "I believe our host is satisfied that you have understood him. Look, there he goes, and I’d swear he means us to follow. Come!"
The bloated maggot-thing slid slowly through the muck and slime that covered the cavern floor, apparently troubling to keep the upper portion of its segmented jelly above the surface, so they could track and follow it. Fully aware that they might well be following along like sheep to the slaughter, the three men saw little in the way of alternatives. If the yuggya, for such they must be, had sought their destruction, a sudden and fatal ambush would have been a simple matter.
Before long they began to recognize familiar-looking landmarks. They must, they now realized, have strayed far from their goal, and the beast before them had perhaps been sent to guide them to their destination. Soon the feeble glow of the waning flashlight began to magnify itself a thousandfold as its pale rays fell upon sudden heaps of ancient treasure. Here it was! The mysterious source of the wealth of Winfield Phillips, of Hiram Stokely before him, and of who knew how many corrupted souls in the ages before them?
As Zarnak had warned them, the real treasures of temptation were the promised secrets of elder blasphemy that lay beyond the veils of human ignorance. They were already getting more of those secrets than Maitland, for one, would have wished. He only hoped he might survive this adventure with a fair measure of blissful ignorance intact.
MORE than once nearly losing their footing, as their clumsy waterlogged steps landed on piles of underwater coins or fell on the open hinges of old chests that closed like toothless bear traps on their numb feet, the weary party finally arrived at the chosen destination to which their nightmare sheep dog had guided them. All alike strained and squinted to grasp the outlines of a shadowed image pressed against the rocky cave wall in front of them. Was it some sort of statue? It seemed motionless enough, bur then a low moan crept eerily from where its lips would be. Emboldened, the men came nearer, semi-circling the pathetic creature fastened to the rocks with a combination of rusty manacles and too-tight cords.
It hardly stirred, and anyone could see it had severe anemia. Half-healed scars showed that the man had been often and deeply bled. It was a marvel that any spark of life lingered. Perhaps whoever, or whatever, had done this to him knew ways of prolonging life. Or, more to the point, prolonging death. Zarnak knew that, in any case, life could not keep its toehold here for long. He bent close, gesturing for the others to do the same. The flesh-scarecrow somehow rallied. A whisper struggled forth.
“Bryan ... Winfield ... still alive ... wish I weren’t, damn them—”
Suddenly the great worm-thing rose up again, splashing noisome ooze in all directions. Again it remained upright, directly across from the crucified man, with Zarnak, Akbar Singh, and Maitland between them. As the three involuntarily turned their heads to see the thing standing behind them, the dying man spoke again, this time with a greater steadiness called forth from some unknown reserve.
"My cousin ... Winfield ... yes, that!"
Zarnak's whisper punctuated the other’s: "... fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws ...."
Maitland was turning greener. “But ... who was it I saw? Surely ...." He trailed off into dumbfoundment, passive and resigned before one paradox too many. He began to totter, and the tireless Sikh reached out to steady him. Zarnak turned to him.
“Jacob, sahib Singh, unless I miss my guess, the man living in the house somewhere above is not Winfield Phillips, though he bears his face and form. It is in fact none other than Hiram Stokely!"
The wasted form manacled to the nitrous wall nodded with its much emphasis as it could manage.
“He had read the Necronomicon and must have reasoned that he could cheat death by willing himself to linger in his decaying physical form till the maggots got to him. He must have arranged to let his ’impending’ death be known, left instructions not to embalm him, and mandated an immediate burial. The sooner he reached the moist and tainted earth of Hubble's Field the better. He had already begun to change in a hideous way, hence the closed coffin ceremony. He exerted his fading will on the loathsome carrion-eaters, till they had consumed him. Somehow”—(here Zarnak indicated the swaying bulk of the yugg-creature)—"somehow this was the result. But who could abide the thought of living on in such a form? This is where the ill-fated Winfield Phillips and his cousin Bryan came in.”
Maitland, ringing wet and already chilled to the bone, nonetheless discovered his spine was capable of even deeper freezes. Zarnak went on.
"As young relatives and strangers to him, they could be assumed not to harbor the old family grudges, nor to know the reasons behind them. Old Hiram had chosen them as his heirs for no other reason, hoping to lure them to the old hacienda. His logic was flawless, I must admit. He trusted that they would not be long in discovering the secret of the cavern below the house, probably reasoning that sheer greed, if not curiosity, would impel them on a thorough search of the place for hidden caches of the old man’s fortune. The thing that had been Hiram Stokely simply resolved to wait at the foot of the stairway till the boys should sooner or later discover the secret closet in the library, and he would seize the first that came within his reach.
"This was the ‘Red Offering’, the blood his new body needed to maintain it. The first doomed interloper turned out to be poor Bryan here. The Stokely-thing expected to be able to establish a telepathic link with whichever cousin remained, counting on a certain psychic predisposition that ran in their witchcraft-blighted line. It worked, and under the guise of promising him Faustian knowledge and wealth untold, he lured the immature Phillips to his damnation. In the end, he worked the wonder of supplanting Phillips’ very consciousness, trapping it forever in his own slime-coated body. His plan worked perfectly—until now. We must see to it that the old wizard does not live on to bring his terrible schemes to ultimate fruition, or the whole earth will become one vast Hubble’s Field."
"That, as you know, would be only the start." This was a new voice, and it came from above, no doubt from further up the same staircase the two cousins had perilously descended many months before. It was Winfield Phillips' voice, though again it was not. None of them knew what Hiram Stokely’s voice had sounded like, but if they had, there would be no mistaking it now.