“To ye contract elsewhere recorded, I, John Grymlann, herebye sweare by ye Name of ye Nameless One to keep goode faithe. Wherefore do I now write in blood these wordes spoken to me in thys grim & silent chamber in ye dedde citie of Koth, whereto no mortal manne hath attained but mee. These same wordes now writ down by mee to be rede over my bodie at ye appointed tyme to fulfill my parte of ye bargain which I entered intoe of mine own free will & knowledge beinge of rite mynd & fiftie years of age this yeare of 1680, A. D. Here begynneth ye incantation:
“Before manne was, ye Elder ones were, & even yet their lord dwelleth amonge ye shadows to which if a manne sette his foote he maye not turn upon his track.”
The words merged into a barbaric gibberish as Conrad stumbled through an unfamiliar language—a language faintly suggesting the Phoenician, but shuddery with the touch of a hideous antiquity beyond any remembered earthly tongue. One of the candles flickered and went out. I made a move to relight it, but a motion from the silent Oriental stayed me. His eyes burned into mine, then shifted back to the still form on the table.
The manuscript had shifted back into its archaic English.
“—And ye mortal which gaineth to ye black citadels of Koth & speaks with ye Darke Lord whose face is hidden, for a price maye he gain hys heartes desire, ryches & knowledge beyond countinge & lyffe beyond mortal span even two hundred and fiftie yeares.”
Again Conrad’s voice trailed off into unfamiliar gutturals. Another candle went out.
“—Let not ye mortals flynche as ye tyme draweth nigh for payement & ye fires of Hell laye hold upon ye vytals as the sign of reckoninge. For ye Prince of Darkness taketh hys due in ye endde & he is not to bee cozened. What ye have promised, that shall ye deliver. Augantha na shuba—”
At the first sound of those barbaric accents, a cold hand of terror locked about my throat. My frantic eyes shot to the candles and I was not surprised to see another flicker out. Yet there was no hint of any draft to stir the heavy black hangings. Conrad’s voice wavered; he drew his hand across his throat, gagging momentarily. The eyes of the Oriental never altered.
“—Amonge ye sonnes of men glide strange shadows for ever. Men see ye tracks of ye talones but not ye feete that make them. Over ye souls of men spread great black wingges. There is but one Black Master though men calle hym Sathanas & Beelzebub & Apolleon & Ahriman & Malik Tous—”
Mists of horror engulfed me. I was dimly aware of Conrad’s voice droning on and on, both in English and in that other fearsome tongue whose horrific import I scarcely dared try to guess. And with stark fear clutching at my heart, I saw the candles go out, one by one. And with each flicker, as the gathering gloom darkened about us, my horror mounted. I could not speak, I could not move; my distended eyes were fixed with agonized intensity on the remaining candle. The silent Oriental at the head of that ghastly table was included in my fear. He had not moved nor spoken, but under his drooping lids, his eyes burned with devilish triumph; I knew that beneath his inscrutable exterior he was gloating fiendishly— but why—why?
But I knew that the moment the extinguishing of the last candle plunged the room into utter darkness, some nameless, abominable thing would take place. Conrad was approaching the end. His voice rose to the climax in gathering crescendo.
“Approacheth now ye moment of payement. Ye ravens are flying. Ye bats winge against ye skye. There are skulls in ye starres. Ye soul & ye bodie are promised and shall bee delivered uppe. Not to ye dust agayne nor ye elements from which springe lyfe—”
The candle flickered slightly. I tried to scream, but my mouth gaped to a soundless yammering. I tried to flee, but I stood frozen, unable even to close my eyes.
“—Ye abysse yawns & ye debt is to paye. Ye light fayles, ye shadows gather. There is no god but evil; no lite but darkness; no hope but doom—”
A hollow groan resounded through the room. It seemed to come from the robe-covered thing on the table! That robe twitched fitfully.
“Oh winges in ye black darke!”
I started violently; a faint swish sounded in the gathering shadows. The stir of the dark hangings? It sounded like the rustle of gigantic wings.
“Oh redde eyes in ye shadows! What is promised, what is writ in bloode is fulfilled! Ye lite is gulfed in blackness! Ya—Koth!”
The last candle went out suddenly and a ghastly unhuman cry that came not from my lips or from Conrad’s burst unbearably forth. Horror swept over me like a black icy wave; in the blind dark I heard myself screaming terribly. Then with a swirl and a great rush of wind something swept the room, flinging the hangings aloft and dashing chairs and tables crashing to the floor. For an instant, an intolerable odor burned our nostrils, a low hideous tittering mocked us in the blackness; then silence fell like a shroud.
Somehow, Conrad found a candle and lighted it. The faint glow showed us the room in fearful disarray—showed us each other’s ghastly faces—and showed us the black ebony table—empty! The doors and windows were locked as they had been, but the Oriental was gone—and so was the corpse of John Grimlan.
Shrieking like damned men we broke down the door and fled frenziedly down the well-like staircase where the darkness seemed to clutch at us with clammy black fingers. As we tumbled down into the lower hallway, a lurid glow cut the darkness and the scent of burning wood filled our nostrils.
The outer doorway held momentarily against our frantic assault, then gave way and we hurtled into the outer starlight. Behind us the flames leaped up with a crackling roar as we fled down the hill. Conrad, glancing over his shoulder, halted suddenly, wheeled and flung up his arms like a madman, and screamed, “Soul and body he sold to Malik Tous, who is Satan, two hundred and fifty years ago! This was the night of payment—and my God—look! Look! The Fiend has claimed his own!”
I looked, frozen with horror. Flames had enveloped the whole house with appalling swiftness, and now the great mass was etched against the shadowed sky, a crimson inferno. And above the holocaust hovered a gigantic black shadow like a monstrous bat, and from its dark clutch dangled a small white thing, like the body of a man, dangling limply. Then, even as we cried out in horror, it was gone and our dazed gaze met only the shuddering walls and blazing roof which crumpled into the flames with an earth-shaking roar.
THE SOUL-EATER
Weird Tales, August 1937
I swam below the surface of a lake
And found myself within a curious hall,
Lined with bronze columns, somber-black and tall;
On them I heard the evil gray waves break.
Sudden the granite floor began to shake;
A monster strode from out an iron stall;
Before his gryphon feet I reeled, to fall
As one who, dreaming, struggles to awake.
Upon my lips he set his grisly mouth
As to allay some fierce, demoniac drouth.
A broken shell, I tread the earth in vain;
My comrades are the goblin and the troll,
Since One in that forgotten, sunken fane
In evil hunger sucked from me my soul.
THE DREAM AND THE SHADOW
Weird Tales, September 1937
I dreamed a stony idol striding came
Out of the shadows of a brooding land,
And drew me, with unspoken, grim command
Into the dark. He named a monstrous Name,
And when I shrank with more than earthly shame,
He raised me high, gripped in his granite hand,
And crushed me—then to stain the silver sand,
My blood dripped down in jets of crimson flame.
I woke, and cold with horror of this dream,
Rose in my bed, crossed white with moonlight’s bars.
Sudden a monstrous shadow seemed to loom
Above my bed; I lay and could not scream.
Across the sky a shadow passed like doom,
And for an instant, blotted out the stars.
WHICH WILL SCARCELY BE U
NDERSTOOD
Weird Tales, October 1937
Small poets sing of little, foolish things,
As more befitting to a shallow brain
That dreams not of pre-Atlantean kings,
Nor launches on that dark uncharted Main
That holds grim islands and unholy tides,
Where many a black mysterious secret hides.
True rime concerns her not with bursting buds,
The chirping bird, the lifting of the rose—
Save ebon blooms that swell in ghastly woods,
And that grim, voiceless bird that ever broods
Where through black boughs a wind of horror blows.
Oh, little singers, what know you of those
Ungodly, slimy shapes that glide and crawl
Out of unreckoned gulfs when midnights fall,
To haunt a poet’s slumbering, and close
Against his eyes thrust up their hissing head,
And mock him with their eyes so serpent-red?
Conceived and bred in blackened pits of hell,
The poems come that set the stars on fire;
Born of black maggots writhing in a shell
Men call a poet’s skull—an iron bell
Filled up with burning mist and golden mire.
The royal purple is a moldy shroud;
The laurel crown is cypress fixed with thorns;
The sword of fame, a sickle notched and dull;
The face of beauty is a grinning skull;
And ever in their souls’ red caverns loud
The rattle of cloven hoofs and horns.
The poets know that justice is a lie,
That good and light are baubles filled with dust—
This world’s slave-market where swine sell and buy,
This shambles where the howling cattle die,
Has blinded not their eyes with lies and lust.
Ring up the demons from the lower Pit,
Since Evil conquers goodness in the end;
Break down the Door and let the fires be lit,
And greet each slavering monster as a friend.
Let obscene shapes of Darkness ride the earth,
Let sacrificial smokes blot out the skies,
Let dying virgins glut the Black Gods’ eyes,
And all the world resound with noisome mirth.
Break down the altars, let the streets run red,
Tramp down the race into the crawling slime;
Then where red Chaos lifts her serpent head,
The Fiend be praised, we’ll pen the perfect rime.
FUTILITY
(”Golden Goats . . .”)
Weird Tales, November 1937
Golden goats on a hillside black,
Silken hose on a wharf-side trull,
Naked girl on a silver rack—
What are dreams in a shadowed skull?
I stood at a shrine and Chiron died,
A woman laughed from the bawdy roofs,
And he burned and lived and rose in his pride
And shattered the tiles with clanging hoofs.
I opened a volume dark and rare,
I lit a candle of mystic lore—
Bare feet throbbed on the outer stair
And the candle faltered to the floor.
Ships that sail on a windy sea,
Lovers that take the world to wife,
What doth the harlot hold for me
Who scarce have lifted the veil of Life?
FRAGMENT
(“And so his boyhood . . .”)
Weird Tales, Dec. 1937
And so his boyhood wandered into youth,
And still the hazes thickened round his head,
And red, lascivious nightmares shared his bed
And fantasies with greedy claw and tooth
Burrowed in the secret parts of him—
Gigantic, bestial and misshapen paws
Gloatingly fumbled each white youthful limb,
And shadows lurked with scarlet gaping jaws.
Deeper and deeper in a twisting maze
Of monstrous shadows, shot with red and black,
Or gray as dull decay and rainy days,
He stumbled onward. Ever at his back
He heard the lecherous laughter of the ghouls.
Under the fungoid trees lay stagnant pools
Wherein he sometimes plunged up to his waist
And shrieked and scrambled out with loathing haste,
Feeling unnumbered slimy fingers press
His shrinking flesh with evil, dank caress.
Life was a cesspool of obscenity—
He saw through eyes accursed with unveiled sight—
Where Lust ran rampant through a screaming Night
And black-faced swine roared from the Devil’s styes;
Where grinning corpses, fiend-inhabited,
Walked through the world with taloned hands outspread;
Where beast and monster swaggered side by side,
And unseen demons strummed a maddening tune;
And naked witches, young and brazen-eyed,
Flaunted their buttocks to a lustful moon.
Rank, shambling devils chased him night on night,
And caught and bore him to a flaming hall,
Where lambent in the flaring crimson light
A thousand long-tongued faces lined the wall.
And there they flung him, naked and a-sprawl
Before a great dark woman’s ebon throne.
How dark, inhuman, strange, her deep eyes shone!
HAUNTING COLUMNS
Weird Tales, Feb. 1938
The walls of Luxor broke the silver sand
When stars were golden lepers in the night,
And, granite monsters in the pallid light,
They lurched like drunken Titans through the land,
With giant strides, most terrible and grand.
They ringed me when the slender moon was bright,
And gazing up their cold, inhuman height,
I shrieked and writhed and beat them with my hand.
Then dawn spread far her amaranthine gleam,
And I could feel my brain to opal turn
That on the iron hinges of the dream
Shattered to glowing shards that freeze and burn.
God grant my bones lie silver on the plain
Ere yet the walls of Luxor come again.
THE POETS
Weird Tales, March 1938
Out of the somber night the poets come,
A moment brief to fan their lambent flame;
Then, like the dimming whisper of a drum,
Fades back into the night from whence they came.
The gray fog, swirling cloak of cynic Time,
Meshes achievement in the ages’ gloom,
A moment’s mirth, a breath of lilting rime,
And then—the gray of old oblivion’s womb.
Weaver of melodies all golden-spun
The singer sings his song—and passes on.
The poets strum his lyre—then is one
With gray-hued dusk and rose of fading dawn.
A moment’s laughter on the winds of Time,
A moment’s ripple on Time’s silent sea,
A golden riffle in the river’s slime,
And then—the silence of Eternity.
Gray dust and ash where leaped the mystic fire,
Mingled with air and wind the once-red flame;
Breeze-born the tune, but now forgot the lyre—
Remains?—the musty thing that men call Fame.
Half-curious eyes that scan the yellowed page,
All heedless of the makers of the feast—
Why, Pierrot might have been a musty sage,
Francois Villon a stoled and sour priest.