Haggopian and Other Stories

As the bus came round the final wooded bend which hid the cottage from sight I saw it! The place had collapsed. I simply could not take it in! Even knowing all I knew—with all my slowly accumulating evidence—it was too much for my tortured mind to comprehend; I left the bus and waited until it had threaded its way through the parked police cars before crossing the road. The fence to the cottage had been knocked down to allow an ambulance to park in the queerly tilted garden. Spotlights had been set up, for it was almost dark, and a team of rescuers were toiling frantically at the incredible ruins. As I stood there, aghast, I was approached by a police officer and having stumblingly identified myself was told the following story.

A passing motorist had actually seen the collapse and the tremors attendant to it had been felt in nearby Marske. The motorist had realised there was little he could do on his own and had speeded into Marske to report the thing. Allegedly the house had gone down like a pack of cards. The police and an ambulance had been on the scene within minutes and rescue operations had begun immediately. Up to now it appeared that my uncle had been out when the collapse occurred for as of yet there had been no trace of him. There had been a strange, poisonous odour about the place but this had vanished soon after the work had started. The rescuers had cleared the floors of all the rooms except the study and during the time it took the officer to bring me up to date even more debris was being frantically hauled away.

Suddenly there was a lull in the excited babble of voices. I saw that the gang of rescue workers were standing looking down at something. My heart gave a wild leap and I scrambled over the debris to see what they had found.

There, where the floor of the study had been, was that which I had feared and more than half expected. It was simply a hole. A gaping hole in the floor—but from the angles at which the floorboards lay, and the manner in which they were scattered about, it looked as though the ground, rather than sinking, had been pushed up from below.

VI

Nothing has since been seen or heard of Sir Amery Wendy-Smith and though he is listed as being missing I know in fact that he is dead. He is gone to worlds of ancient wonder and my only prayer is that his soul wanders on our side of the threshold. For in our ignorance we did Sir Amery a great injustice—I and all the others who thought he was out of his mind. All his queer ways—I understand them all now, but the understanding has come hard and will cost me dear. No, he was not mad. He did the things he did out of self-preservation and though his precautions came to nothing in the end, it was fear of a nameless evil and not madness which prompted them.

But the worst is still to come. I myself have yet to face a similar end. I know it, for no matter what I do the tremors haunt me. Or is it only in my mind? No! There is little wrong with my mind. My nerves are gone but my mind is intact. I know too much! They have visited me in dreams, as I believe they must have visited my uncle, and what they have read in my mind has warned them of their danger. They dare not allow me to investigate, for it is such meddling which may one day fully reveal them to men—before they are ready… God! Why has that ancient fool Wilmarth at Miskatonic not answered my telegrams? There must be a way out! Even now they dig—those dwellers in darkness…

But no! This is no good. I must get a grip of myself and finish this narrative. I have not had time to try to tell the authorities the truth but even if I had I know what the result would have been. “There’s something wrong with all the Wendy-Smith blood” they would say. But this manuscript will tell the story for me and will also stand as a warning to others. Perhaps when it is seen how my—passing—so closely parallels that of Sir Amery, people will be curious; with this manuscript to guide them perhaps men will seek out and destroy Earth’s elder madness before it destroys them…

A few days after the collapse of the cottage on the moors, I settled here in this house on the outskirts of Marske to be close at hand if—though I could see little hope of it—my uncle should turn up again. But now some dread power keeps me here. I cannot flee… At first their power was not so strong, but now…I am no longer able even to leave this desk and I know the end must be coming fast. I am rooted to this chair as if grown here and it is as much as I can do to type! But I must…I must… And the ground movements are much stronger now. That hellish, damnable, mocking stylus—leaping so crazily over the paper…