Haggopian and Other Stories

But Zar-thule rounded on one who stood close to him muttering thus, crying, “Coward!—Out on you!” Whereupon he lifted up his sword and hacked the trembling reaver in two parts, so that the sundered man screamed once before falling with twin thuds to the black earth. But now Zar-thule perceived that indeed many of his men were sore afraid, and so he had him torches lighted and brought up, and they pressed on quickly into the island.

There, beyond low dark hills, they came to a great gathering of queerly carved and monolithic edifices, all of the same confused angles and surfaces and all with the stench of the pit, even the fetor of the very pit about them. And in the centre of these malodorous megaliths there stood the greatest tower of them all, a massive menhir that loomed and leaned windowless to a great height, about which at its base squat pedestals bore likenesses of blackly carven krakens of terrifying aspect.

“Hah!” quoth Zar-thule. “Plainly is this the House of Cthulhu, and see—its guards and priests have fled them all before us to escape the reaving!”

But a tremulous voice, odd and mazed, answered from the shadows at the base of one great pedestal, saying, “No one has fled, O reaver, for there are none here to flee, save me—and I cannot flee for I guard the gate against those who may utter The Words.”

At the sound of this old voice in the stillness the reavers started and peered nervously about at the leaping torch-cast shadows, but one stout captain stepped forward to drag from out of the dark an old, old man. And lo, seeing the mien of this mage, all the reavers fell back at once. For he bore upon his face and hands, aye, and upon all visible parts of him, a grey and furry lichen that seemed to crawl upon him even as he stood crooked and trembling in his great age!

“Who are you?” demanded Zar-thule, aghast at the sight of so hideous a spectacle of afflicted infirmity; even Zar-thule, aghast!

“I am Hath Vehm, brother-priest of Voth Vehm who serves the gods in the temples of Yaht-Haal; I am Hath Vehm, Keeper of the Gate at the House of Cthulhu, and I warn you that it is forbidden to touch me.” And he gloomed with rheumy eyes at the captain who held him, until that raider took away his hands.

“And I am Zar-thule the Conqueror,” quoth Zar-thule, less in awe now. “Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities. I have plundered Yaht-Haal, aye, plundered the Silver City and burned it low. And I have tortured Voth Vehm unto death. But in his dying, even with hot coals eating at his belly; he cried out a name. And it was your name! And he was truly a brother unto you, Hath Vehm, for he warned me of the terrible god Cthulhu and of this ‘forbidden’ isle of Arlyeh. But I knew he lied, that he sought him only to protect a great and holy treasure and the brother-priest who guards it, doubtless with strange runes to frighten away the superstitious reavers! But Zar-thule is neither afraid nor credulous, old one. Here I stand, and I say to you on your life that I’ll know the way into this treasure house within the hour!”

And now, hearing their chief speak thus to the ancient priest of the island, and noting the old man’s trembling infirmity and hideous disfigurement, Zar-thule’s captains and men had taken heart. Some of them had gone about and about the beetling tower of obscure angles until they found a door. Now this door was great, tall, solid and in no way hidden from view; and yet at times it seemed very indistinct, as though misted and distant. It stood straight up in the wall of the House of Cthulhu, and yet looked as if to lean to one side…and then in one and the same moment to lean to the other! It bore leering, inhuman faces and horrid hieroglyphs, all carved into its surface, and these unknown characters seemed to writhe about the gorgon faces; and aye, those faces too moved and grimaced in the light of the flickering torches.

The ancient Hath Vehm came to them where they gathered in wonder of the great door, saying: “That is the gate of the House of Cthulhu, and I am its guardian.”

“So,” spake Zar-thule, who was also come there, “and is there a key to this gate? I see no means of entry.”

“Aye, there is a key; but none such as you might readily imagine. It is not a key of metal, but of words.”

“Magic?” asked Zar-thule, undaunted. He had heard aforetime of similar thaumaturgies.

Zar-thule put the point of his sword to the old man’s throat, observing as he did so the furry grey growth moving upon the elder’s face and scrawny neck, saying: “Then say those words now and let’s have done!”

“Nay, I cannot say The Words—I am sworn to guard the gate that The Words are never spoken, neither by myself nor by any other who would foolishly or mistakenly open the House of Cthulhu. You may kill me—even take my life with that very blade you now hold to my throat—but I will not utter The Words…”