Haggopian and Other Stories

And having marvelled I listened most attentively to all that my ancestor had to say of Cthulhu and the other Great Ones, for since their nature was in the main obscure, and being myself a sorcerer with a sorcerer’s appetite for mysteries, I was most desirous of learning more of them.

“Aye, Teh Atht,” Mylakhrion continued, “Cthulhu and his brethren: they must surely know the answer, for they are—”

“Immortal?”

For answer he shrugged, then said: “Their genesis lies in unthinkable abysses of the past, their end nowhere in sight. Like the cockroach they were here before men, and they will supersede man. Why, they were oozing like vile ichor between the stars before the sun spewed out her molten children, of which this world is one; and they will live on when Sol is the merest cinder. Do not attempt to measure their life-spans in terms of human life, nor even geologically. Measure them rather in the births and deaths of planets, which to them are like the tickings of vast clocks. Immortal? As near immortal as matters not. From them I could either beg, borrow or steal the secret—but how to go about approaching them?”

I waited for the ghost of my dead ancestor to proceed, and when he did not immediately do so cried out: “Say on then, forebear mine! Say on and be done with beguiling me!”

He sighed for reply and answered very low: “As you command…

“At length I sought me out a man rumoured to be well versed in the ways of the Great Ones; a hermit, dwelling in the peaks of the Eastern Range, whose visions and dreams were such as were best dreamed far removed from his fellow men. For he was wont to run amuck in the passion of his nightmares, and was reckoned by many to have bathed in the blood of numerous innocents, ‘to the greater glory of Loathly Lord Cthulhu!’

“I sought him out and questioned him in his high cave, and he showed me the herbs I must eat and whispered the words I must howl from the peaks into the storm. And he told me when I must do these things, that I might then sleep and meet with Cthulhu in my dreams. Thus he instructed me…

“But as night drew nigh in this lonely place my host became drowsy and fell into a fitful sleep. Aye, and his ravings soon became such, and his strugglings so wild, that I stayed not but ventured back out into the steep slopes and thus made away from him. Descending those perilous crags only by the silver light of the Moon, I spied the madman above me, asleep yet rushing to and fro, howling like a dog and slashing with a great knife in the darkness of the shadows. And I was glad I had not stayed!

“Thus I returned to Tharmoon, taking a winding route and gathering of the herbs whereof the hermit had spoken, until upon my arrival I had with me all the elements required for the invocation, while locked in my mind I carried the Words of Power. And lo!—I called up a great storm and went out onto the balcony of my highest tower; and there I howled into the wind the Words, and I ate of the herbs mixed so and so, and a swoon came upon me so that I fell as though dead into a sleep deeper by far than the arms of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers. Ah, but deep though this sleep was, it was by no means still!

“No, that sleep was—unquiet! I saw the sepulchre of Cthulhu in the Isle of Arlyeh, and I passed through the massive and oddly-angled walls of that alien stronghold into the presence of the Great One Himself!”

Here the outlines of my ancestor’s ghost became strangely agitated, as if its owner trembled uncontrollably, and even the voice of Mylakhrion wavered and lost much of its doomful portent. I waited for a moment before crying: “Yes, go on—what did the awful Lord of Arlyeh tell you?”

“…Many things, Teh Atht. He told me the secrets of space and time; the legends of lost universes out beyond the limits of man’s imagination; he outlined the hideous truths behind the N’tang Tapestries, the lore of dimensions other than the familiar three. And at last he told me the secret of immortality!

“But the latter he would not reveal until I had made a pact with him. And this pact was that I would be his priest ever and ever, even until his coming. And believing that I might later break free of any strictures Cthulhu could place upon me, I agreed to the pact and swore upon it. In this my fate was sealed, my doom ordained, for no man may escape the curse of Cthulhu once its seal is upon him…

“And lo, when I wakened, I did all as I had been instructed to attain the promised immortality; and on the third night Cthulhu visited me in dreams, for he knew me now and how to find me, and commanded me as his servant and priest to set about certain tasks. Ah, but these were tasks which would assist the Great One and his prisoned brethren in breaking free of the chains placed upon them in aeons past by the wondrous Gods of Eld, and what use to be immortal forever more in the unholy service of Cthulhu?