Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

and I noticed him dwell long over a certain line.

'This man dipped so deeply into forbidden things,' said he, 'I can not wonder that his fate was so strange and mysterious. He must have had some foreboding of his end-here he warns men not to disturb sleeping things.'

Tussmann seemed lost in thought for some moments.

'Aye, sleeping things,' he muttered, 'that seem dead, but only lie waiting for some blind fool to awake them-I should have read further in the Black Book-and I should have shut the door when I left the crypt-but I have the key and I'll keep it in spite of hell.'

He roused himself from his reveries and was about to speak when he stopped short. From somewhere upstairs had come a peculiar sound.

'What was that?' He glared at me. I shook my head and he ran to the door and shouted for a servant.

The man entered a few moments later and he was rather pale.

'You were upstairs?' growled Tussmann.

'Yes, sir.'

'Did you hear anything?' asked Tussmann harshly and in a manner almost threatening and accusing.

'I did, sir,' the man answered with a puzzled look on his face.

'What did you hear?' The question was fairly snarled.

'Well, sir,' the man laughed apologetically, 'you'll say I'm a bit off, I fear, but to tell you the truth, sir, it sounded like a horse stamping around on the roof!'

A blaze of absolute madness leaped into Tussmann's eyes.

'You fool!' he screamed. 'Get out of here!' The man shrank back in amazement and Tussmann snatched up the gleaming toad-carved jewel.

'I've been a fool!' he raved. 'I didn't read far enough-and I should have shut the door-but by heaven, the key is mine and I'll keep it in spite of man or devil.'

And with these strange words he turned and fled upstairs. A moment later his door slammed heavily and a servant, knocking timidly, brought forth only a blasphemous order to retire and a luridly worded threat to shoot any one who tried to obtain entrance into the room.

Had it not been so late I would have left the house, for I was certain that Tussmann was stark mad. As it was, I retired to the room a frightened servant showed me, but I did not go to bed. I opened the pages of the Black Book at the place where Tussmann had been reading.

This much was evident, unless the man was utterly insane: he had stumbled upon something unexpected in the Temple of the Toad. Something unnatural about the opening of the altar door had frightened his men, and in the subterraneous crypt Tussmann had found something that he had not thought to find. And I believed that he had been followed from Central America, and that the reason for his persecution was the jewel he called the Key.

Seeking some clue in Von Junzt's volume, I read again of the Temple of the Toad, of the strange pre-Indian people who worshipped there, and of the huge, tittering, tentacled, hoofed monstrosity that they worshipped.

Tussmann had said that he had not read far enough when he had first seen the book. Puzzling over this cryptic phrase I came upon the line he had pored over-marked by his thumb nail. It seemed to me to be another of Von Junzt's many ambiguities, for it merely stated that a temple's god was the temple's treasure. Then the dark implication of the hint struck me and cold sweat beaded my forehead.

The Key to the Treasure! And the temple's treasure was the temple's god! And sleeping Things might awaken on the opening of their prison door! I sprang up, unnerved by the intolerable suggestion, and at that moment something crashed in the stillness and the death-scream of a human being burst upon my ears.

In an instant I was out of the room, and as I dashed up the stairs I heard sounds that have made me doubt my sanity ever since. At Tussmann's door I halted, essaying with shaking hand to turn the knob.

The door was locked, and as I hesitated I heard from within a hideous high-pitched tittering and then the disgusting squashy sound as if a great, jelly-like bulk was being forced through the window. The sound ceased and I could have sworn I heard a faint swish of gigantic wings. Then silence.

Gathering my shattered nerves, I broke down the door. A foul and overpowering stench billowed out like a yellow mist. Gasping in nausea I entered. The room was in ruins, but nothing was missing except that crimson toad-carved jewel Tussmann called the Key, and that was never found. A foul, unspeakable slime smeared the window-sill, and in the center of the room lay Tussmann, his head crushed and flattened; and on the red ruin of skull and face, the plain print of an enormous hoof.

The Fire of Asshurbanipal (Adventure version)[1] ROBERT E. HOWARD

Yar Ali squinted carefully down the blue barrel of his Lee-Enfield, called on Allah and sent a bullet through the brain of a flying rider.

“Allaho akbar!” the big Afghan shouted in glee, waving his weapon above his head. “God is great! By Allah, sahib, I have sent one of the dogs to Hell!”

His companion peered cautiously over the rim of the sand pit they had scooped with their hands. He was a lean and wiry American, Steve Clarney by name.

“Good work, old horse,” said this person. “Four left. Look — they’re drawin’ off.”

The white-robed horsemen were indeed reining away, clustering together just out of accurate rifle-range, as if in council. There had been seven when they had first swooped down on the comrades, but the fire from the two rifles in the sand pit had been deadly.

“Look, sahib — they abandon the fray!”

Yar Ali stood up boldly and shouted taunts at the departing riders, one of whom whirled and sent a bullet that kicked up sand thirty feet in front of the pit.

“They shoot like sons of dogs,” said Yar Ali in complacent self-esteem. “By Allah, did you see that rogue plunge from his saddle as my shot went home? Up, sahib, let us run after them and cut them down!”

Paying no attention to this outrageous proposal — for he knew it was but one of the gestures Afghan nature continually demands — Steve rose, dusted off his breeches, and gazing after the riders, who were now white specks on the desert, said musingly: “Those fellows ride like they had some set purpose in their minds — not a lot like men runnin’ from a lickin’.”

“Aye,” agreed Yar Ali promptly and seeing nothing inconsistent with his present attitude and recent bloodthirsty suggestion. “They ride after more of their kind — they are hawks who give up their prey not quickly. We had best move our position quickly, Steve sahib. They will come back — maybe in a few hours — maybe in a few days — it all depends on how far away lies the oasis of their tribe. But they will be back. We have guns and lives — they want both.

“And behold.”

The Afghan levered out his last empty shell and slipped a single cartridge into the breech of his rifle.

“My last bullet, sahib.”

Steve nodded. “I’ve got three left.”

He lifted his canteen and shook it. Not much water remained. He knew that Yar Ali had a little more than he. The big Afghan, bred himself in a barren land, needed less water than did the American, though the latter, judged from a white man’s standards, was hard and tough as a wolf. As he unscrewed the canteen cap and drank very sparingly, Steve mentally reviewed the chain of events that had led them to their present position.

Wanderers, soldiers of fortune, thrown together by chance and attracted to each other by mutual admiration, he and Yar Ali had wandered from India up through Turkestan and down through Persia, an oddly assorted but highly capable pair. Driven by the restless urge of the inherent wanderlust, their avowed purpose — which they swore to and sometimes believed themselves — was the accumulation of some vague and undiscovered treasure — some pot of gold at the foot of some unborn rainbow.