Haggopian and Other Stories

I had been here only two days when the police delivered to me a dirty, soil-stained envelope. It had been found in the ruins of the cottage—near the lip of that curious hole—and was addressed to me. It contained those notes I have already copied and a letter from Sir Amery which, if its awful ending is anything to go on, he must have still been writing when the horror came for him. When I consider, it is not surprising that the envelope survived the collapse. They would not have known what it was, and so would have had no interest in it. Nothing in the cottage was purposely damaged—nothing inanimate, that is—and so far as I have been able to discover the only missing items are those terrible spheres, or what remained of them… But I must hurry. I cannot escape and all the time the tremors are increasing in strength and frequency… No! I will not have time. No time to write all I wanted to say… The shocks are too heavy… To o hea vy… Int erfer in g with m y t yping…I will finis h this i n th e only way rem ain ing to me and staple S ir Amer y’s lette r to this man usc ript…now…

Dear Paul,

In the event of this letter ever getting to you, there are certain things I must ask you to do for the safety and sanity of the world. It is absolutely necessary that these things be explored and dealt with—though how that may be done I am at a loss to say. It was my intention, for the sake of my own sanity, to forget what happened at G’harne. I was wrong to try to hide it. At this very moment there are men digging in strange, forbidden places and who knows what they may unearth? Certainly all these horrors must be tracked down and rooted out—but not by bumbling amateurs. It must be done by men who are ready for the ultimate in hideous, cosmic horror. Men with weapons. Perhaps flame-throwers would do the trick… Certainly a scientific knowledge of war would be a necessity… Devices could be made to track the enemy…I mean specialized seismological instruments… If I had the time I would prepare a dossier, detailed and explicit, but it appears that this letter will have to suffice as a guide to tomorrow’s horror hunters. You see, I now know for sure that they are after me! And there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s too late! At first even I, just like so many others, believed myself to be just a little bit mad. I refused to admit to myself that what I had seen happen had ever happened at all! To admit that was to admit lunacy! But it’s real all right… It did happen—and will again!

Heaven only knows what’s been wrong with my seismograph but the damn thing’s let me down in the worst possible way! Oh, they would have got me eventually, but I might at least have had time to prepare a proper warning… I ask you to think, Paul… Think of what has happened at the cottage… I can write of it as though it had already happened; because I know it must! It will! It is Shudde-M’ell, come for his spheres… Paul, look at the manner of my death, for if you are reading this then I am either dead or disappeared—which means the same thing. Read the enclosed notes carefully, I beg you. I haven’t the time to be more explicit but these old notes of mine should be of some help… If you are only half so enquiring as I believe you to be, you will surely soon come to recognize a fantastic horror which, I repeat, the whole world must be made to believe in… The ground is really shaking now but, knowing it is the end, I am steady in my horror… Not that I expect my present calm state of mind to last… I think that by the time they actually come for me my mind will have snapped completely. I can imagine it now…The floor splintering, erupting, to admit them. Why! Even thinking of it my senses recoil at the terror of the thought… There will be a hideous smell, a slime, a chanting and gigantic writhing and… And then…

Unable to escape, I await the thing… I am trapped by the same hypnotic power that claimed the others at G’harne. What monstrous memories! How I awoke to see my friends and companions sucked dry of their life’s blood by wormy, vampirish things from the cesspools of time! Gods of alien dimensions… I was hypnotized then by this same terrible force, unable to move to the aid of my friends or even to save myself! Miraculously, with the passing of the moon behind some wisps of cloud, the hypnotic effect was broken. Then, screaming and sobbing, temporarily out of my mind, I fled; hearing behind me the vile and slobbering sucking sounds and the droning, demoniac chanting of Shudde-M’ell and his hordes.