supposed to be an old Flemish sorcerer, who had learned forbidden lore and evil magic — and who wrote the book while he was in prison awaiting trial for witchcraft. The volume’s been suppressed by the authorities in every country in which it’s been issued. In it I found the formula for this drug.”
He rattled the pellets in his hand. “It’s — I may as well tell you — it’s the source of my weird stories. It has a powerfully stimulating effect on the imagination.”
“What are its effects?” I asked.
“It’s a time drug,” Hayward said, and watched us.
We stared back at him.
“I don’t mean that the drug will enable the user to move in tjme — no. Not physically, at any rate. But by taking this drug I have been able to remember certain things that I have never experienced in this life.
“The drug enables one to recall his ancestral memories,” he went on swiftly, earnestly. “What’s so strange about that? I am able to remember past lives, previous reincarnations. You’ve heard of transmigration of souls — over one-half the population of the world believes in it. It’s the doctrine that the soul leaves the body at death to enter another — like the hermit crab, moving from one shell to another.”
“Impossible,” I said. But I was remembering my strange flash of memory while I was examining one of the pellets.
“And why?” Hayward demanded. “Surely the soul, the living essence, has a memory. And if that hidden, submerged memory can be dragged from the subconscious into the conscious — the old mystics had strange powers and stranger knowledge, Gene. Don’t forget that I’ve taken the drug.”
“What was it like?” Mason wanted to know.
“It was — well, like a flood of memory being poured into my mind — like a moving picture being unfolded — I can’t make it clearer than that.
“It brought me to Italy, the first time. It was during the Borgia reign. I can remember it vividly — plots and counterplots, and finally a flight to France, where I — or rather this ancestor of mine — died in a tavern brawl. It was very vivid, very real.
“I’ve kept taking the drug ever since, although it isn’t habit- forming. After I wake up from my dream-state — it takes from two to four hours, generally — my mind feels clear, free, unleashed. That’s when I do my writing.
“You have no idea how far back these ancestral memories go. Generations, ages, inconceivable eons! Back to Genghis Khan, back to Egypt and Babylon — and further than that, back to the fabulous sunken lands of Mu and Atlantis. It was in those first primal memories, in a land which exists today only as a memory and a myth, that I first encountered those things — the horror you saw tonight. They existed on Earth then, uncounted millennia ago. And I — ”
Again the skirling, shrill cry shrieked out. This time it sounded as if it came from directly above the cottage. I felt a sudden pang of cold, as though the temperature had taken an abrupt drop. There was a heavy, ominous hush in which the crashing of the surf sounded like the thunder of great drums.
Sweat was standing out in beads on Hayward’s forehead.
“I’ve called them to Earth,” he muttered dully, his shoulders drooping. “
“But I–I neglected finally to safeguard myself. I didn’t foresee — I thought I might get a stronger effect from the drug if I didn’t take the directed precautions, improve my stories. I unbarred the gateway, and called them to Earth again.”
He stared into space, his eyes blank and unseeing. “I have committed terrible sin by my neglect,” he muttered, it seemed to himself.
Mason was suddenly on his feet, his whole body shaking. “I can’t stay here! It’ll drive us all mad. It’s only an hour’s drive to Santa Barbara — I can’t stand this waiting, waiting, with that thing outside gloating over us!”
Was Mason, too, losing his nerve? His mind? In the face of this unseen menace, whatever it was?
Sea birds, a mirage of spray — men, perhaps — were responsible for Mason’s fear — I tried to tell myself that.
But deep in my heart I knew that no ordinary fear could have driven my two companions to the verge of craven hysteria. And I knew that I felt a strange reluctance to go out into that brooding, silent darkness on the beach.
“No,” Hayward said. “We can’t — that’d be walking right into the thing. We’ll be all right in here — ”
But there was no reassurance in his voice.
“I can’t stay here doing nothing!” Mason shouted. “I tell you, we’ll all go crazy. Whatever that thing is — I’ve got my gun. And I’ll stake bullets against it any time. I’m not staying here!”
He was beside himself. A short time ago the thought of venturing outside the cottage had seemed horrible to him; now he welcomed it as an escape from nerve-racking inaction. He pulled a vicious, flat automatic from his pocket, strode to the door.
Hayward was on his feet, stark horror in his eyes. “For the love of God, don’t open that door!” he shouted.
But Mason flung open the door, ignoring him. A gust of icy wind blew in upon us. Outside fog was creeping in, sending greasy tendrils coiling like tentacles toward the doorway.
“Shut the door!” Hayward screamed as he lunged across the room. I made a hasty move forward as Mason sprang out into the darkness. I collided with Hayward, went reeling. I heard the gritty crunch of Mason’s footsteps on the sand — and something else.
A shrill, mewing cry. Somehow — fierce, exultant. And it was answered from the distance by other cries, as though dozens of sea birds were wheeling high above us, unseen in the fog.
I heard another strange little sound — I couldn’t classify it. It sounded vaguely like a shout that had been clipped off abruptly. There was a rushing howl of winds and I saw Hayward clinging to the door, staring out as though stupefied.
In a moment I saw why. Mason had vanished — utterly and completely, as though he had been borne off by a bird of prey. There was the empty beach, the low dunes to the left — but not a sign of Bill Mason.
I was dazed. He couldn’t have sprinted from sight during the brief time my eyes had been turned away. Nor could he have hidden beneath the house, for it was boarded down to the sand.
Hayward turned a white, lined face to me. “They’ve got him,' he whispered. “He wouldn’t listen to me. Their first victim — God knows what will happen now.”
Nevertheless we searched. It was in vain. Bill Mason had vanished. We went as far as his car, but he wasn’t there.
If the keys of the car had been in the dashboard, I might have urged Hayward to get into the car with me, to race from that haunted beach. I was growing afraid, but I dared not admit my fear even to myself.
We went back to the cottage slowly.
“It’s only a few hours ‘til dawn,” I said after we had sat and stared at each other for a while. “Mason — we can find him then.”
'We’ll never find him,” Hayward said dully. “He’s in some hellish world we can’t even imagine. He may even be in another dimension.”
I shook my head stubbornly. I couldn’t, wouldn’t believe. There must be some logical explanation, and I dared not lower my defenses of skepticism and disbelief.
After a time we heard a shrill mewing from outside. It came again, and then several sharp cries at once. I lit a cigarette with trembling fingers, got up and paced the room nervously.
“That damned drug,” I heard Hayward muttering. “It’s opened the gateway — I have committed sin — ”
I paused, my attention caught by a word, a sentence, on a sheet of paper in Hayward’s typewriter. I ripped it from the platen.
“Material for a story,” Hayward said bitterly, glancing up at the sound. “I wrote that two nights ago, when I first got the memory of the things. I’ve told you how those damnable pills work. I got the — the memory in the afternoon, and sat down to hammer out a story from it that night. I was — interrupted.”
I didn’t answer. I was reading, fascinated, that half-page of type. And as I read, an eerie spell of horror
