it was easy to see. The twenty years that had ignored him now reached out malign fingers and took their toll. Vexation, discontent, restless broodings of the mind, all served to change him pitiably.
He came to me then, one day, and broached the thought that had been preying upon him. He could not, he said, remain silent longer. He was sick of the blind groping of men after knowledge. It lay in his power to give them the answers to cosmic secrets which they had sought out slowly for years — and things besides, of which they had never guessed. And, terrible though those secrets were, man should know all. Thoughts and memories crowding upon Kathulhn’s tortured brain screamed for outlet, and there was but one resource: he had determined to write down the history of his adventure “outside,” to tell of all the things he had experienced and learned.
As to the warning which the Entities of evil had given him, it was nothing. Years had gone by, Kathulhn reasoned, and surely They must have forgotten; we were puny, and They reckoned with universes.
I did not demur. Like Kathulhn, now that the years had passed I felt that the warning of those Outer Ones was a little thing.
Thus was the beginning of the jest….
Never can I forget that night when doom descended upon the city of Bhuulm. I had left the city but a few hours before, accompanying one of my caravans into the near neighboring town, access to which led through a tortuous passage in the encircling mountain range. The passage was made without mishap, and, my business transacted, I was hurrying homeward, alone, and was well into the mountains when that strange darkness descended so mysteriously and prematurely. Shortly thereafter I saw the long livid streamer that came flickering out of space, to hesitate a moment and then dart out of sight directly behind the range ahead of me.
I spurred hurriedly forward, already with a feeling of disaster.
When I finally pushed through the passage and came in sight of the city, the streamer was gone and everything was quiet with a stillness that seemed to shriek in agony to the pale stars peering fearfully down.
I entered the city and came upon a person groveling in the street, and when I bent to help him he seemed not to see me, but shrieked, over and over again, something about the “shape” that had come slithering down the streamer. He lapsed then into a drooling insanity, and I left him lying there and passed on into the heart of the city.
It was not long before full unhallowed horror burst upon me. The entire populace had been rendered not only gibberingly insane, but stark blind. Some lay quite still in the streets, in merciful oblivion; some still writhed and mouthed unintelligibly of the thing that had descended to blast their minds and their sight, and others groped pitifully about, dazed and whimpering.
I rushed to the house of my friend Kathulhn, but already knew I was too late. I found what I had expected: he was dead. But his body, as I gazed on it, was scarcely recognizable as the one I had known. It was entirely covered with tiny blue perforations, gruesomely suggestive. His limbs were horribly distorted and broken. His eyes had been torn from their sockets, and two great holes gaped in his face from which something oozed. And his lips were drawn back in such a frozen, exaggerated grin that I turned quickly away.
Scattered about in profusion were loose pages upon which I recognized my friend’s fine writing. Well did I know what that writing was and what it portended; and in a sudden insane frenzy I gathered them all up, stuffed them into my clothes and fled from there in precipitate horror.
I crossed the three great oceans of Vhoorl, and after many mishaps reached the Abhorred Continent of Dluuhg. I ascended the tortuous Inner Mountains and descended into the lowlands fraught with those creatures supposed to have passed from the face of Vhoorl eons ago. Slowly, relentlessly, I thrust my perilous way forward; and finally, half dead from hurt and fatigue, reached my objective; the half- mythical city of a mysterious and fanatical priestlike sect so secluded that only the veriest rumors of its existence ever reached the outer realms of Vhoorl.
I was taken in and my wounds were ministered to; for all are welcomed and none are questioned who manage to reach there.
So it was, that in the quietude of my temporary quarters in that deep-hidden city, I dared finally to delve into the secret linings of my clothes and bring out those pages which Kathulhn had written before doom descended upon him. Arranging them in their sequence, I saw that Kathulhn had been allowed to finish his treatise. And somehow this fact was more profoundly disturbing than if he had been suddenly cut off before he could finish.
Tremulously I began to read, and was immediately absorbed. But before long I encountered Kathulhn’s first few hints of the cosmic horrors to be revealed, and I began to waver. I read on… a few more pages… I became appalled and frightened…. I lost heart then, would have ceased reading, would have destroyed those pages for all time — but found to my unutterable horror that I could not! A will that was not my own compelled me to read on… all things around me ceased to exist… I was no longer bound to Vhoorl but was drawn, sensually if not bodily, into the very midst of those mad pages….
Far into the night and into the morning hours, mind reeling, soul recoiling, I perused those all-revealing pages which moved relentlessly but surely toward a final, culminating immensity which froze my brain.
A sullen dawn was looming when I finished that terrible treatise and screamed curses upon all the gods that were — for then I knew! Fool, fool that I was! Fool to have thought that the tiny globe of Vhoorl or the entire cosmic sphere itself could contain any place of hiding from Them! Fool not to have destroyed those pages utterly, unread! But it was too late; the eternal dirge of all mankind: “Too late!” I had succumbed to that deadly and avaricious arch-enemy, curiosity. I had read, and was utterly and damnably doomed!
And now, as if in answer to my imprecations there came a mocking chuckle of amusement as if from far away, and then nearer, riding down the star wind, faint and clear… a peculiar sibilance and a shifting as if every individual atom in the planet of Vhoorl had been deviated infinitesimally from its path… intense cold… a kind of livid glare that burst suddenly, filling all the room about me… and then
I think I tried to shriek, but each succeeding attempt rose to a certain point in my throat and stopped. How can I convey the soul- shattering horror of that moment when, from the nothingness before me, there emerged a thing, a sort of shapeless, writhing mass, greenish and fluorescent, tangible and sentient — indescribable because it was constantly changing, fading away at the edges as if it were but a projection reaching through from some other space or dimension. In that moment I remembered those words Kathulhn had said to me: “Because I know, Tlaviir, that They can reach in!” In that moment I knew what manner of thing confronted me… knew that this was the “shape” that had descended upon the city of Bhuulm those many months ago, to blast all intelligence….
I knew that I must shriek to save my mind; tried again and again but could not; and then as I closed my eyes against the blinding brilliance of it and felt my mind slipping slowly away, there seemed to emanate from the thing a radiance to touch my brain with a soothing coolness. The first icy wave of horror passed over me and left me calm with that utter impassivity born of hopelessness.
So it was that there in the cold dawn of that nameless city I listened to the pronouncement of the doom that was to be mine.
I say “listened,” but there was no sound. The thing was polychromatic, with an interplay of colors many of which I was certain were alien to this universe. And with every scintillating change of color, thought was sent pulsing into my brain.
The fate reserved for me [the thing scintillated] was not to be as Kathulhn’s, nor as those other unfortunates’ back in the city of Bhuulm; for I was the very keynote upon which They based their jest. Not until the person whom I knew as Kathulhn had found the way Out There, had They ever so much as suspected the existence of such animalia on the tiny spheres. Observing closely, then, They discovered that many of the spheres abounded with such creatures, and They were amused at the colossal impudence of this one. Probing Kathulhn’s mind, They discovered that it was his inherent curiosity which had made him seek for the answers to galactic secrets and finally to find the way Out There. This phenomenon of curiosity, or aspiration, They discovered, was a universally inherent quality of these animalia. Furthermore, it was a quality of good to which They, being forces of pure evil, were opposed.
Then it was that They conceived their jest.
They thrust Kathulhn back upon Vhoorl with that dire warning which he had almost whispered to me. To Them, who were timeless and therefore omnipresent, the phenomena which Kathulhn knew as “past” and “future” were as one.
They had foreseen that Kathulhn would not heed that warning!
And [the thing went on] knowing well the fate that had been his, I had had every opportunity to destroy those pages he had written. But it was foreseen, indeed fore-ordained, that I should read! And now those pages
