Haggopian and Other Stories

It is doubtful whether Bart or Nuttall could ever have recalled the jumble of alien vowels, syllables and discordants that rolled in seemingly chaotic disorder off Millwright’s tongue in that dimly lit room. Certainly, it would have been impossible for any mere mortal, unversed in those arts with which Millwright had made himself familiar, to repeat that hideously jarring, incredible sequence of sounds. To utter the thing backwards, then—“in reverse order,” as Millwright had had it—must plainly be out of the question. This thought, if not the uppermost in their minds, undoubtedly occurred to the two initiates as the occultist came to the end of his performance and the echoes of his hellish liturgy died away…but, within the space of seconds, this and all other thoughts were driven from their minds by sheer terror!

Even Millwright believed, at first, that he had made some terrible mistake, for now there fell upon the three men in the chalked circle a tangible weight of horror and impending doom! Bart screamed and would have fled the circle and the room at once—doubtless to his death—but the occultist grabbed him and held him firmly.

Slowly but surely, the candles dimmed as their flames inexplicably lowered. Then, one by one, they began to flicker out, apparently self-extinguished. Bart’s struggles and screaming became such that Nuttall, too, had to hold on to him to prevent his rushing from the circle. Suddenly, there came to the ears of the three—as if from a thousand miles away—the merest whisper at first, a susurration, as heard in a sounding shell. The rustling chitterings of what could only be…a presence!

Bart promptly fainted. Millwright and Nuttall lowered him to the floor and crouched beside his unconscious form, still holding him tightly in their terror, staring into the surrounding shadows. The hideously evil chitterings, madly musical in an indefinable alien manner, grew louder. And then…something slimy and wet moved gelatinously in the darker shadows of the room’s corners!

“Millwright!” Nuttall’s voice cracked on that one exclamation. The word had been an almost inarticulate utterance, such as a child might make, crying out for its mother in the middle of a particularly frightening nightmare.

“Stay still! And be quiet!” Millwright commanded, his own voice no less cracked and high-pitched.

Only two candles burned now, so low and dim that they merely pushed back the immediate shadows. As the occultist reached out a tremulous hand to draw one of these into the circle…so the other blinked out, leaving only a spiral of grey smoke hanging in the near-complete darkness.

At this, the abominable chittering grew louder still. It surrounded the circle completely now and, for the first time, the two conscious men clearly saw that which the single, tiny remaining flame held at bay. Creeping up on all sides, to the very line of the chalked circle, the Thing came; a glistening, shuddering wall of jelly-like ooze in which many mouths gaped and just as many eyes monstrously ogled! This was Bugg-Shash the Drowner, The Black One, The Filler of Space. Indeed, the bulk of this…Being?…did seem to fill the entire study! All bar the blessed sanctuary of the circle.

The eyes were…beyond words, but worse still were those mouths. Sucking and whistling with thickly viscous lips, the mouths glistened and slobbered and, from out of those gluttonous orifices poured the lunatic chitterings of alien song—the Song of Bugg-Shash—as His substance towered up and leaned inwards to form a slimy ceiling over their very heads!

Nuttall closed his eyes and began to pray out loud, while Millwright simply moaned and groaned in his terror, unable to voice prayers to a God he had long forsaken; but though it seemed that all was lost, the Third Sathlatta had not failed them. Even as the ceiling of jelly began an apparently inexorable descent, so the remaining candle flared up and, at that, the bulk of Bugg-Shash broke and ran like water through a shattered dam. The wall and ceiling of quivering protoplasm with its loathsome eyes and mouths seemed to waver and shrink before Millwright’s eyes as the awful Black One drew back to the darker shadows.

Then, miraculously, the many extinct candles flared up, returning to life one by one and no less mysteriously than they had snuffed themselves out. The occultist knew then that what he had seen had merely been an immaterial visitation, a vision of what might have been, but for the power of the Third Sathlatta.

Simultaneously with Bart’s return to consciousness, Millwright shouted: “We’ve won!”