The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

The next day he drove again to the farmhouse off the Goatswood road. Norton did not conceal his displeasure on opening the door, but allowed the visitor to enter. Taylor’s shadow flickered across the seated farmer as he spoke. 'You didn’t think I’d leave you alone when it didn’t awaken, did you?”

'What’d be the use if I come with you to it? If one don’t raise it, nor will two. An’ anyway, maybe you like t’ mess about wit’ them from Yuggoth, but I don’t. They zay they carry you off to Yuggoth an’ give you t’ what they’re afraid of. I don’t want to come near sumthin’ that might go t’ them. In fact, I want t’ give it all up fer good.”

'Something which they’re afraid of?” repeated Taylor, not remembering.

'It’s in the Revelations of Glaaki,” explained the other. 'You saw mine—”

'Yes, that’s a point,” Taylor interrupted. 'If you’re really going to give up witchcraft, you won’t be needing that book. My God, I’d forgotten all about it! Give me that and maybe I won’t ever bother you again!”

'You can have it an’ welcome,” said Norton. 'But you mean that? You’ll keep away an’ let me stop playin’ round with things from Outside?”

'Yes, yes,” Taylor assured him, took the pile of dusty volumes which the farmer toppled into his arms, and struggled with them to the car. He drove home and there discovered that the book contained what he sought. It contained other relevant passages also, and he reread one which ran:

'Beyond the Zone of the Thirteen Faveolate Colossi lies Yuggoth, where dwell the denizens of many extraterrestrial realms. Yuggoth’s black streets have known the tread of malformed paws and the touch of misshapen appendages, and unviseagable shapes creep among its lightless towers. But few of the creatures of the rim-world are as feared as that survival from Yuggoth’s youth which remains in a pit beyond one of the cities. This survival few have seen, but the legend of the crustaceans tells of a city of green pyramids which hangs over a ledge far down in the dark. It is said that no mind can stand the sight of what occurs on that ledge at certain seasons.”

(But nothing can battle the power of the other name of Azathoth.)

So Taylor ignored this; and two days later he drove with climbing tools to the rock formation beyond Brichester. It stretched fully two hundred feet up in a series of steps to a plateau; from some way off the illusion of a giant staircase was complete, and legend had it that Satan came from the sky to walk the earth by way of those steps. But when Taylor parked in the road of which they formed one side, he saw how rough they were and how easy ascent would be. He left the car, stood staring up for a moment, and began to chip footholds.

The climb was tedious and precarious. Sometimes he slipped and hung for a minute over nothing. Once, a hundred feet up, he glanced down at the car, and for the rest of the climb tried to forget the speck of metal far below. Finally he hooked his hand over the edge, pulled himself up and over. Then he looked up.

In the center of the plateau stood three stone towers, joined by narrow catwalks of black metal between the roofs. They were surrounded by fungus — an alien species, a grey stem covered with twining leaves. It could not have been completely vegetable, either, for as Taylor stood up, the stems leaned in his direction and the leaves uncurled toward him.

He began to pick his way through the avenues of fungus, shrinking away when the clammy leaves stroked him, and at last hurrying into the cleared space around the central steeple. The tower was about thirty feet high, windowless and with a strangely angled doorway opening on stairs leading into blackness. However, Taylor had brought a torch, and shone it up the stairs as he entered. He did not like the way the darkness seemed to move beyond the torchlight, and would have preferred an occasional window, if only to remind him that he had not already reached Yuggoth. But the thought of the tok'l-bought immortality drove him on.

He had been ascending for some time when he noticed the hieroglyphics on the walls — all apparently indicating something around the bend in the passage. He turned the bend, and saw that the steps ended some feet above — not at a wall or solid barrier, but the torch-beam would not penetrate beyond. This must be where the lizard-crustaceans connected Earth with Yuggoth; and the other side was Yuggoth itself.

He threw himself at the barrier, plunged through, cried out and fell. It was as if his body had been torn into atoms and recombined; only a memory remained of something he had no conviction of undergoing. He lay for a few minutes before he was able to stand up and look about.

He was on a tower roof above a city. He directed the torch-beam downward, and realized that there was no way down the smooth wall; but, remembering the catwalks, he guessed that the building at the end of each row would afford some means of descent. This seemed the only way the crustaceans could descend, for the Revelations engravings had shown no method of flight. He was unnerved by the abyss below the catwalk, but could not relieve it by his torch.

There were five narrow metal walks to be traversed. Taylor did not notice their odd shape until he was out on the first. It was slightly convex in section, and at intervals there protruded outward corrugated sections at an angle. He found it very difficult to change from equilibrium on the convex portions to balance on the angled stretches, and often slid to one side, but he reached the end finally, rounded the gaping blackness in the center of the roof and set out on the next walk. He had got the knack by now, and slipped less.

One thing disquieted him; the total silence of the nighted city. The clang of his footsteps broke the silence like pebbles dropped into some subterranean sea. Not even distant noises were audible, yet it seemed impossible that such a densely-populated world should be so silent. Even if, improbably, all the citizens were on Earth, surely some sound should occasionally drift from the distance. It was almost as if the inhabitants had fled some nightmare invasion of the city.

As he reached the center of the fifth catwalk, a raucous croaking rang out behind him. He tottered and slammed down on the metal, clawed and scrabbled to the last roof and looked back.

The noise came from a speaker vibrating atop a grey metal pylon. It seemed purposeless, unless it were a warning, or an announcement of his own arrival. He ignored it as a warning, not wishing to return to Earth after coming so far; and even if they realized his presence, they would flee before the name of Azathoth. He walked to the roof’s edge and peered for a way down.

It consisted of an unprotected stairway which led around the outer wall of the tower, spiraling steeply to the street. He started down as the shrieking speaker quietened, and realized that the steps were set at a definitely obtuse angle to the wall, so that only their pitted surface prevented him from plunging to the street below. Ten feet down a piece of stone slid away under his foot, and had he not clutched the step above he would have toppled into the darkness. He made the remainder of the streetward journey more slowly, his heart pounding.

So he finally came to that pavement of octahedral, concave black stones. He shone the slightly-dimmed torch beam down the thoroughfare. Ebon steeples stretched away on both sides into night, and on Taylor’s left was a right-angle intersection. The buildings were all set in the centers of individual ten-yard squares, through which cut paths of a blackly translucent mineral, and in which grew accurately-positioned lines of that half-animal fungi which he had seen on the plateau. As he left the tower his torch illuminated a fork in the road, at the intersection of which stood a squat black building shaped like a frustum, and he decided to take the left branch of this fork.

The metal which he sought was so brittle that it was not used for construction in the city. To gather specimens he would have to visit the actual mines, which were habitually set close to the crustaceans’ settlements. But he was unsure of the city’s layout. Nothing could be seen from the roofs, for his torch-beam did not reach far, nor did he know how far the settled area extended. Not even the Revelations Of Glaaki gave maps of the cities on Yuggoth, so that his only plan was to follow some street at random. However, it was usual for such cities to be encircled by mines at quarter- mile intervals, so that once he reached the city’s edge he would be fairly near a mine. These mines mainly produced the black stone used for building, but a certain percentage of the ore was extracted from the stone and refined in factories around the mine-pits.

Five hundred yards along the left fork he noticed a change in the surroundings. While the towers still occupied one side of the street, the right side’s steeples now gave way to an open space, extending along the street for fully two hundred yards and inward fifty yards, which was filled with oddly-shaped objects of semi- resilient deep-blue plastic. Despite their curious shape, he could see they were intended as seats; but he could not understand the discshaped attachments which rose on metal rods on each side of each seat. He had never read of such a place, and guessed that it might be the crustaceans’ equivalent of a cinema. He saw that the space was littered with thin hexagonal sheets of blue metal covered with raised varicolored symbols, which he took for documents. It looked as if the space had recently been hurriedly vacated. This, coupled with that warning siren, might have hinted something to him; but he only began to continue down the street.

The open space, however, interested him. The discs might be some form of receiver, in which case the