Haggopian and Other Stories

Gedney was standing between the table and the door, and as he finished speaking he threw up his hands and commenced bellowing, in a cracked, droning tone, an invocation of such evil inference that merely hearing it would have been sufficient to mortify souls only slightly more timid than mine. I had never heard this particular chant before, though I have heard others, but as the crescendo died away, its purpose became immediately apparent. During the invocation I had been frozen, literally paralysed by the sound of the thing, and I could fully understand how it was that Symonds had been forced to listen to it over his ’phone. From the first word Symonds would have stood like a statue with the receiver pressed to his ear, unable to move as his death-certificate was signed over the wire.

As the echoes of that hideous droning died away Gedney lowered his hands and smiled. He had seen the envelope at my fingertips—and as his awful laugh began to fill the room I discovered the meaning of “The Black”…

No witch-doctor’s curse this but an aeon-old fragment of sorcery handed down through nameless centuries. This came from a time in Earth’s abysmal past when unthinkable creatures from an alien and unknown universe spawned weird things in the primeval slime. The horror of it…

A black snowflake landed on me! That is what the thing looked like. A cold, black snowflake which spread like a stain on my left wrist. But before I had time to examine that abnormality another fell onto my forehead. And then, rapidly, from all directions they came, ever faster, settling on me from out of the nether-regions. Horror-flakes that blinded and choked me.

Blinded?…Choked?

Before my mind’s eye, in shrieking letters, flashed those passages from Geoffrey, the Necronomicon and the Ibigib. “Thief of Light—Thief of Air…” The inscriptions at Geph, “…The spell of running water…” Alhazred— “That which is in water drowneth not…”

The bait was taken; all that remained was to spring the trap. And if I were mistaken?

Quickly, while I was still able, I drew the curtains at my left to one side and flicked the still-unopened envelope towards Gedney’s feet. Shedding my dressing-gown I stepped naked onto the tiles behind the curtains, tiles which were now partly visible to the fiend before me. Frantic, for a gibbering terror now held me in its icy grip, I clawed at the tap. The second or so the water took to circulate through the plumbing seemed an eternity, in which thousands more of those blasphemous flakes flew at me, forming a dull, black layer on any body.

And then, mercifully, as the water poured over me, “The Black” was gone! The stuff did not wash from me—it simply vanished. No, that is not quite true—for it instantly reappeared elsewhere!

Gedney had been laughing, baying like some great hound, but as I stepped into the shower and as the water started to run, he stopped. His mouth fell open and his eyes bugged horribly. He gurgled something

unrecognisable and made ghastly, protesting gestures with his hands. He could not take in what had happened, for it had all been too fast for him. His victim was snatched from the snare and he could not believe his eyes. But believe he had to as the first black flakes began to fall upon him! The shadows darkened under his suddenly comprehending eyes and his aspect turned an awful grey as I spoke these words from the safety of the shower:

“Let him who calls The Black,

Be aware of the danger

His victim may be protected

by the spell of running water

And turn the called-up darkness

Against the very caller…”

Nor did this alone satisfy me. I wanted Gedney to remember me in whichever hell he was bound for; and so, after repeating that warning of the elder Ptetholites, I said:

“Good evening, Mr. Gedney—and goodbye…”

Cruel? Ah! You may call me cruel—but had not Gedney planned the same fate for me? And how many others, along with Symonds and Chambers, had died from the incredible sorceries of this fiend?

He had started to scream. Taken by surprise, he was almost completely covered by the stuff before he could move but now, as the horrible truth sank in, he tried to make it across the room to the shower. It was his only possible means of salvation and he stumbled clumsily round the table towards me. But if Gedney was a fiend so, in my own right, was I—and I had taken precautions. In the shower recess I had previously placed a windowpole, and snatching it up I now put it to use fending off the shrilly shrieking object before me.