But before I could say a word to John or his mother, something began to happen to my hand. It began to happen even before I realized the object was attached to a rusted metal chain and had clearly been designed to be worn as an amulet around someone’s neck.
My fingers closed over it, contracting more and more until I was holding it in as tight a grip as John had done. I couldn’t seem to open them again or hurl the object from me as I suddenly wanted to do.
Something happened then to more than just my hand. Everything about me seemed subtly to change, the contours of near objects becoming less sharply silhouetted against the sky and more distant objects not only losing their sharpness, but seeming almost to dissolve. There was a roaring in my ears, and a strange, terrifying feeling of vastness, of emptiness — I can describe it in no other way — swept over me.
Nothing actually vanished, nothing was gone, but I had the feeling that I was in two places at once — suspended in some vast abyss of emptiness wider than the universe of stars, and still on the beach beneath the wreckage, with Helen Rathbourne, John, and Susan all looking at me in alarm.
They were staring in alarm because I was moving, I felt, in some strange, almost unnatural way, as men and women were not supposed to move. Like some mindless automaton perhaps, a robot shape with no way of preserving its balance because its cybernetic brain had exploded into fragments and it could only stagger about in the grip of an utter mindlessness that was about to cause it to go crashing to the sand.
Then my perceptions steadied a little, and when I looked down over myself I saw that no change had taken place in my physical body at least. But I had swung about and was walking toward the surf line.
Nearer and nearer I came to it, and suddenly I was not alone. John had gotten to his feet, and both children were pursuing me across the sand. Their mother was following them, frantic with concern, but unable to catch up with them because they, were running so fast to join me before I started wading out into the waves that were cresting into foam a few feet from shore.
The instant they reached my side, my hand went out toward Susan and her small trembling fingers crept between mine. I could not give John my other hand, but he was not in need of support. He had become his sturdy young self again and was striding along very rapidly at my side. The water was swirling about my ankles, and Susan was stumbling a little because it had risen to her knees when I spoke the words that had not even formed in my mind, in a voice that I did not recognize as my own:
“The Deep Ones await their followers, and we must not fail to be present at the Great Awakening. It is written that all shall arise and join. We who carry the emblem and those who have looked upon it. From the ends of the earth the summons, the call has come and we must not delay.
“In watery R’lyeh Great Cthulhu is stirring. Shub-Niggurath! Yog-Sothoth! Ia! The Goat with a Thousand Young!”
“He will be all right now,” the young resident physician was saying. “I am sure he will be all right. It was your son who deserves all of the credit by prying that lost amulet from his hand just as he was about to go under, after lifting your daughter above the waves.”
I could hear the voices clearly, although my head was still in a whirl. The crisp white hospital sheets had been so stiffly starched that they cut into the flesh of my throat when I tried to raise my head. So I gave up trying, and went on listening instead.
“It’s strange,” came in a voice I would have recognized if nothing had been left of me but a hollow shell, on the darkest of days, “how quickly children can become attached to a total stranger. Susan risked her life to save him, and so did my son. When he took that hideous thing from my son’s hand and I saw it, I thought I was going to faint. I can’t begin to tell you how unnerving it was.”
“He didn’t know about—”
“How it came to be there? Apparently not. He just arrived at the inn this morning. Since it happened two weeks ago everyone had stopped talking about it. It was so horrible a thing that it doesn’t surprise me in the least.”
“The man was a member of an esoteric cult, I understand. A halfcrazed, uncouth fellow with a waist-length beard. There were eight or ten of them roaming about here at one time, but now they have all disappeared. After what happened, it’s not in the least surprising, as you say.”
“I can’t bear to think about it, even now. His body was dismembered, and horribly mangled. One of his legs was missing. He was found right where my son picked up the amulet, so it must have belonged to him. Of course everyone has a ready explanation for such horrors. Sheriff Wilcox believes that where the channel widens out by that demolished breakwater there is sufficient depth of water to provide a kind of swimming pool for a shark. And if he had stumbled and fallen—”
“Do you think he did?”
“You either have to believe that, or that he went down deliberately into the water. Are you familiar with the writings of H. P. Lovecraft? He was a genius, of a sort. He resided in Providence until his death in 1937.”
“Yes, I’ve read a few of his stories.”
“Those bearded, uncouth cult members you mention must have read them all. Perhaps that’s why they’ve disappeared. Perhaps they made the mistake of taking Lovecraft’s stories a little too seriously.”
“You can’t really believe that.”
“I don’t quite know what I believe. Just suppose — Lovecraft didn’t put everything he knew or suspected into his stories. That would have left a quite wide margin for future exploration.”
“Ah, yes,” the resident physician said. “That’s what he claimed before I gave him that second seconal injection. I’m sure he’ll feel quite differently about all of this when he wakes up.”
“I hope he doesn’t feel differently about Susan’s heroic, close to sacrificial act. Love for a total stranger. It’s curious, but do you know — I can understand just why Susan felt that way about him.”
It was what I’d been waiting to hear. I closed my eyes and started humming softly to myself, waiting for the second seconal to work.
But when it drew me down, the seconal felt like water. Something like a shriveled face came floating up from immeasurable distances, and I remembered my own words: “It is written that all shall arise and join — we who carry the emblem and those who have looked upon it…”
The Ocean Leech
I heard Boucke beating with his bare fists upon the cabin door and the wind whistling under the cracks. I objected to both and I opened the door wide. Boucke came in then, with a fierce rush of wind. He was a curious little man, with the sea and sky in his eyes, and he spoke in pantomime. He pointed towards the door and ran his fingers savagely through his reddish hair, and I knew that something had nearly finished him — I mean finished him spiritually, damaged his soul, his outlook.
I didn’t know whether to be pleased or horrified. Boucke seemed more human with his queer, vivid gestures and flaming eyes, but I couldn’t imagine what he had seen up on deck. Of course I found out soon enough.
The men were sitting about in idiotic groups of two and three and no one saluted me when I stepped out from the shadows of twisted cordage into a luminous stripe of moonlight.
“Where’s the boatswain?” I asked.
Several of the men heard my question, but they simply turned and stared at me without replying.
“It took the boatswain!” said Oscar.
Oscar seldom spoke to anyone. He was tall and lean and his jaundiced scalp was fringed with yellow hair. I distinctly recall his dark, hungry eyes and his fringe of hair glistening in the moonlight. But the rest of Oscar I can no longer visualize. He has faded into an indefinite ghost of memory. It is curious, though, how clearly I, remember every other shape and incident of that amazing night.
Oscar was standing by my elbow, and I turned suddenly and gripped his arm. It reassured me to grip his strong, muscular arm. But I knew that I had hurt him, for his shoulder jerked and he looked at me reproachfully. I presume Oscar wanted me to stand upon my own feet. But he made a sweeping motion with his arm to assure me that it didn’t matter. The wind whistled about our ears and the tattered sails flapped and wheezed. Sails can speak, you know. I have heard sails protest in chorus, each sail with a slightly different accent. You get to understand their conversation in time. On still mornings it is wonderful to come up on deck and hear the sails
