A Free Short Story

Years ago, while a student at UCLA, I was drawn to the strange worlds created by H.P. Lovecraft and by those who wrote stories focused on his Cthulhu Mythos. Most of my writing, for long years, had been non-fiction. But my fascination with Lovecraftiana drew me to write a couple of stories. One, called “The Thing on the Desert,” is lost. It was the story of a young man, driving alone across the desert between a mythical spot similar to the Parker Dam area of Arizona and Los Angeles. On the way he has a horrifying encounter with strange humanoid beings and, surprisingly, mighty Cthulhu himself. Clues point to the experience being a hallucination, but the final evidence drives him mad.

The second story is the one you’re about to read. It was triggered by a combination of my interest in the Cthulhu Mythos and an article I read in the December, 1972 issue of a magazine called “Intellectual Digest.” The article, by Laurence B. Chase, originally appeared in “University, A Princeton Quarterly,” and was entitled “John A. Wheeler: The Black Hole of the Universe.”

Wheeler (1911–2008) was one of the world’s top theoretical physicists. He had worked with Albert Einstein and tried to achieve Einstein’s famous vision of a unified field theory. He invented the now-popular terms, black hole and wormhole.

The thing that interested me the most in this article was a simple question: what came before the Big Bang? Wheeler conceived of an idea he called superspace and that the physical universe exists within this superspace. I began to wonder, “What is beyond superspace? My conjectures, along with Lovecraft, resulted in the following story. For fans of the Mythos, the book Emet, briefly mentioned here, was meant to be my own contribution to the mythos. It was to be explained and used more thoroughly in a novel that would have been a sort of detective/spy meets Cthulhu. Yeah, in retrospect, that may not have been my brightest idea.

Well, here’s the story. Please let me know what you think.


THE BLACK HOLES OF SPACE
By Donald Michael Kraig
© 2010


No person alive knows what happened to that house on the corner. I couldn’t sleep last night and was watching television when I felt an odd sensation. The ground was moving. Now in California this normally is not an unusual sensation, but in this instance, something was different. It wasn’t as lf the ground was moving, but it was more like something unbelievably monstrous was moving through the ground perhaps a hundred feet below the surface. On an impulse I ran outside. The only inclination of what was to happen was the sound of a piece of wood breaking. I turned as if magnetically drawn toward the house at the end of the street. It was almost silent when it happened, many people on the street weren’t even awakened. The house just collapsed. It fell in upon itself barely raising dust. Like the biblical walls of Jericho, the walls of the house came tumbin’ down. I ran to the house to see if I could help Dave.

No person alive knows what happened to Dave Fulcher, and I imagine not too many care. His parents died about a year ago in a car accident and he never talked about any other relatives. I think I was his only friend. He was kind of queer, unusual, in his actions. He was always cocking his head as if he was listening for something. Something which, from the expression on his face, must have terrified him.

The books he had were strange, too. I had never heard of any of those books like Emet or what he said was German for Unspeakable Cults. But no matter what he read or how weird he was, I sort of liked him. So I ran to his house and found scattered through debris the manuscript which follows. The last page was still in his overturned typewriter. If he was in the house, his body was never found.

No person alive knows what happened to Dave, at least no human person. After reading what followed, I can only make a terrifying guess.

 ................................................................................... .....................................................................................................................(Signed)

Thomas Jefferson Murtaugh


* * *

—PROLOGUE—


I, Dave Fulcher, am relieved. The past few nights have seen me writing the following pages containing my version of what happened so that others may know. This prologue explains what has occurred to me since my trans-dimensional experience. I am relieved to have finished because I have felt…him…coming from unbelievable distances and a place of unimaginable horror. He is coming for me, and I know my time is short.

Numbers and time. When I think of time I think of numbers such as three plus three: a total of six. Specifically, I think of seventy-two months or three hundred twelve weeks. Two thousand, one hundred eighty-four days or fifty-two thousand, four hundred sixteen hours. Three million, one hundred forty-four thousand, nine hundred sixty minutes or one hundred eighty-eight million, six hundred ninety-seven thousand, six hundred seconds. Anyway you look at it it’s still six years, and, retrospectively, it seems like a lifetime. Yet, to one such as I who has spent many years studying the motions of the bodies of the galaxies in the universe it is but a minute iota of passing time when compared to the existence of Man’s life on Earth, much as the existence of homo sapien life on Earth is but a fraction of an instant when compared to the existence of our planet, and the existence of our planet is just a nanosecond when compared to the existence of the universe.

It’s all relative. Time, mass and area must be thought of in terms of relationships to one another, not as constants. To me, the six years since my experience has been a lifetime. But to those who have lived longer than the galaxies, longer than time itself, a span of six years is beneath notice. It’s all relative.

My last three years have been spent in study of morbid, foul and infernally ancient tomes that give evidence to me that I did witness the history of the universe! Does that sound mad? Ha! That’s why they locked me up in a “rest home” for three years.

“Rest home.” Ha! That’s a poor euphemism. It was, pure and simple, an insane asylum where I was left to vegetate and meditate for three long years. Three years! Three years without books. Three years without paper and pen. Three years without even that juvenile atrocity nicknamed, quite appropriately, the “boob tube.”

So for three years I sat there with what they had diagnosed as “psychosis due to electrical shock.” But did even one of those moronic imbeciles who claimed to be doctors check into what I said? Of course not! So for three years I sat there and for three years I thought about my experience until I remembered every bit, every second, every fraction of it.

I am not a genius, but I finally realized that they would never let me out as long as I held the verity of my experience. So two months after I denied that my experience had any validity I was a free man. Free to see if my experience did, in fact, reveal the secret of the universe. Free to see if my experience did reveal the secret existence of…Them.

For three years I was in the asylum, and for the three years since I was released I have been studying such outré volumes as the Necronomicon of the “mad” Arab Abdul Alhazred and Emet (Truth) by the Spanish Jew Stephan de Thomas el Grito. Perhaps it is good that few people have related these and other inherently evil books to events in such places as Ponape, Alaska, Innsmouth and Dunwich. Surely the physical separation of such places has aided in the lack of visible relationships. But lf people did see the relationships then they would know the history of the universe...and of the Old Ones!

I know now that He—that It— is coming for me and will not allow my words to be heard. I know what obscene fate He has in store for me. I have heard him crawling, undulating beneath the Earth, and each day He is closer to the surface. Soon, perhaps tonight, I will be taken to my awful, ultimate end. My attempt here is to tell what I know, and record it for the future and any who seek the truth. To record it for those who may wish to investigate my claims and [editor’s note: here the manuscript ends]

* * *

—PART 1—


So that future readers will know that I am not just another fool or mental invalid, I will start by telling of myself. Autobiographies are always hard to start, but I guess mine begins with the stars. No, that should be, THE STARS! I wonder how long mankind, from the poorest peon to the mightiest monarch, has wondered about...THE STARS! Did the earliest pre-homo sapien hominids desire to live in other galaxies, other universes, other dimension, or did the harshness of their lives preclude such dreams? Australopithecus, did you dream of THE STARS?

I have always been fascinated by THE STARS! You could not believe how happy I was when my parents gave me a telescope for my ninth birthday. Even then I realized how poor in quality that device was, but that didn’t matter. That little-better-than-a-toy telescope gave me a better look at THE STARS!

Only on cloudy nights would I be inside the house. Other dark hours would find me hypnotically staring through the eyepiece of my telescope. I could barely see the rings of Saturn or the moons of Jupiter, and the Pleiades looked like a mere handful of bright points of light. But that’s not the thing. My telescope’s lack of power and clarity were meaningless to my soul. The vital thing to me was that the mixture of metal, glass and mirror which I called MY telescope, brought me closer to my only true friends: THE STARS!

It was inevitable that when I started college I would be studying Astronomy. My UCLA registration card read:

NAME: FULCHER, DAVID STEVENSON
STUDENT NUMBER: CU 45973 840
MAJOR: ASTRONOMY

I did well in my studies, very well. In fact, when I graduated, the Astronomy department offered me a teaching assistant job. So I became David Fulcher, T.A.

In the fall quarter of 1973 I was a T.A. (I lead a discussion section) for Astronomy 1 (course #16970) under Professor Thaddeus “Tad” Armbruster. Tad was tall and stocky, unlike the short and skinny stereotype of astronomers. His face was deeply lined from years of peering into telescopes and staring at photographs. When I first saw him he looked stern, abrupt and even mean. This impression disappeared immediately as his face cracked into a genuinely warm smile. We became good friends.

He was a popular teacher and his classes were always filled to the limit. Not only were his lectures interesting, they were fun. The laughter of his students would frequently make the halls of campus ring for minutes on end. Everyone loved him. When
he announced to his class that he had been chosen by the American Astronomical Association to be the U.S. representative at the International Astrophysical Society’s 196th annual convention, to be held in Stockholm on December 18–21 of this year, the class erupted into a standing ovation. He turned his back to the class to hide a tear as the ovation continued. Finally, he just dismissed the class. I went up to shake his hand, and was the first to personally congratulate him. We were all proud of him, and I think that I must have been the proudest.

On the fifteenth of December he had a mild heart attack and could not attend. I was heartbroken over the news. Although mild, his doctors insisted that he not fly on the long, arduous journey to Sweden. I was amazed and surprised when he called me and gave me the opportunity to be his surrogate. With all expenses paid by the American Astronomical Association and a chance to meet some of the most famous astronomers in the world, I readily agreed. Within hours I was on my way.

I won’t bore you with the details of my flight, landing, unpacking, guided tour of Stockholm and first two days of the convocation. What wasn’t dull was too general to be of interest to anybody, and, for the most part, those first few days were poorly attended. Most people spent their time trying to converse through interpreters with the representative from the People’s Republic of China (previously known as “Red” Chlna ’till the ping-pongers ping-ponged their way into our pitter-pattering hearts) about what life was like in the world’s most populous country. When I wasn’t talking to them (this was the first time since the revolution in China that they had been invited to an IAS meeting), I was talking to many “freaks” like myself, some of whom had hair even longer than my shoulder length locks.

It was on the third day that I first attended a scheduled event. In the little book they had given all of the conventioneers at the start of the meeting (“compleat” with a space at the back for names, addresses and telephone numbers) it simply read:

1:30 p.m.
Black Holes and the Birth of the Universe: A New Theory
By Prof. Alexi Alexandrovich of the University of Minsk, USSR

After lunch with a few new friends at a nearby bistro, where we genially discussed the possibility, or rather the inevitability of life on other planets, I went to my room to pick up my cassette recorder. It was a feisty little machine that I had bought back in 1966. People I know usually refer to their old tools or machines as “trusty.” In the instance of my recorder, however, “rusty” was more apropos. To get that thing to work I would frequently have to hit, shove, push and pray. The cord was broken and the electricity would sputter, crackle and spark. To be able to use it had necessitated the purchase of a small adapter so the European current could be used. I had decided to tape Prof. Alexandrovich’s lecture so I could play it later for Tad.

Although the tape recorder was later destroyed, the tape itself was in surprisingly good condition. The following is a translation of the speech from the French in which Prof. Alexandrovich spoke so the reader will better understand what happened later in my experience:

“The black hole is, in a matter of speaking pure gravity. Gravity is important to the births and deaths of stars, and the life history of stars can, I believe, be compared to the history of the universe. Therefore, in order to understand the universe, one must first understand the stars.

“Stars were born through gravitational forces. Gravity pulled from space untold trillions of atoms of hydrogen. This ‘pulling together’ resulted in vast pressures, and from that pressure came heat, heat in such great quantities that, with the pressure, the result was a thermonuclear fusion reaction, a burning, so to speak. In other words, a star was born.

“When those atomic star fires go out, when the material that feeds the thermonuclear reaction is used up, though the flame is gone, the gravity, as a result of the remaining material, is still there. Sometimes, in a star’s death throes, the star will explode—that is what we call a super nova. In other instances it will get larger in size and become a red giant. Eventually it will shrink, pulled into itself by gravity. Names we use to describe this condition include ‘white dwarf,’ ‘black dwarf,’ and ‘Neutron star.’

“In some instances gravity will make this mass continue to contract over and over into itself, until the gravity of this body becomes so strong that any matter nearby will be sucked into this ‘hole’ at a speed which approaches the speed of light. Even light itself, which, of course, is matter, will be sucked into this gravitational pile. When something absorbs all light, it appears black, and that is why these areas are called the black holes of space.

“Gravity still causes the mass in the black holes to shrink upon itse1f. Theoretically, there is a limit to the size of which matter may be shrunk down as explained by the Pauli-Exclusion Principle. But the mass in the black hole does not follow these theoretical rules! The mass continues to shrink. What happens to the matter? There are two possibilities. Either our theories of Boolean geometry, from which the Pauli-Exclusion Principle is derived, are wrong, or the matter in the black holes goes somewhere else! As you all know, we have been able to prove that Boolean geometry, to the extent of our knowledge, is valid. Therefore, I contend that matter goes through the black holes and comes out in a form that is tota1ly opposite to the black hole, something white and bright. In fact, as you can see by these calculations on the screen behind me, the light coming from the mass which has gone through the black holes would come out much brighter than any known star. There is only one type of object in the sky which would answer that description: quasars. Quasi-Stellar Objects are further away than the most distant galaxies and brighter than anything we know. Only their distance makes them appear dim.” Here the professor paused to take a drink of water, change some of the visual aids behind him, and. take a brief break.

He continued, “But there is more to my theory. I believe that the life of a star is a copy of the life of the universe in miniature, and the idea of the black holes of space can tell how the universe was born!

“The universe is expanding. By studying the rate of expansion and comparing this with the size of the universe (28 billion light years or 17 times 1021mi1es), we have been able to determine with the help of computers that the ‘big bang’ that started the universe occurred about ten billion years ago. We then used the ultra-precise atomic clock and discovered the rate at which the speed of the universe’s expansion is slowing down (due to gravity). Feeding this information into a computer, we learned that in another twenty billion years, when the universe has a diameter of about 23 times 1022 miles, expansion will cease and the universe will start to contract, again due to gravity. This contraction will be the opposite of the ‘big bang.’ The expansion due to the ‘big bang’ started fast and slowed down, while this contraction will start slowly and speed up, eventually approaching the speed of light. This whole period of contraction should take about twenty billion years. Put another way, we believe the life span of the universe to be fifty billion years.

“This leads us to some theoretical problems Let us say that the universe has contracted over and over into itself until it becomes what I call the ‘Universal Vortex,’ the universal equivalent of a black hole. Many people have thought of the universe as ‘everything.’ But if ‘everything’ shrlnks down to nothing but mass and gravity, infinitely small because it keeps contracting on itself, what happens to the space the universe was in? Does it disappear, too?

“I think not. I prefer the theory of John Wheeler, professor of physics at Princeton in the USA. He theorizes the idea of ‘superspace.’ Superspace is the area in which the universe exists. This leads to the conjecture that if one universe exists in superspace, why couldn’t two universes exist in superspace? Or for that matter why not two hundred or two thousand or two million?

“I contend it is possible that an unknown number of universes do exist. If they exist they are undetectable to us due to the separation between various universes by vast amounts of superspace, and the inability of our present instruments to observe phenomena that far away. Further, I contend that if there are other universes, all of the other universes started at the same time in one ‘big bang.’ I also theorize that in twenty billion years, all universes will have reached the end of their expansion, and at that point, superspace will be filled to capacity. There is, in my opinion, a static element which unites these universes. This static element I have already named the Universal Vortex.

“Picture the Universal Vortex as a small hole or tube. The universe contracts, gravity trying to pull it through that hole into another section of superspace. Science fiction enthusiasts would describe this as going from one dimension into another. Gravity succeeds in shrinking each universe down small enough to pass through the Universal Vortex, but by doing so has created a minuscule mass filled with incredible potential energy. This energy must be released in some kinetic form, enhance by the Bernoulli effect. That enhanced kinetic form is a new ‘big bang’ into a new dimension, a new section of superspace. Thus, the universe is not a one shot fling, but rather a continuous, cyclica1 occurrence based upon the Universal Vortex at the center of all universes.”

Professor Alexandrovich went on to give proofs of his theories with technical equations from the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics which need not be repeated here. When he finished, I went over to the wall to get my tape recorder from where it had been plugged in. Instead of pulling the plug, I gave a yank on the cable going into the wall with my right hand. One of the wires in the cable broke and shorted, and, unfortunately, I was touching a bare spot on the wire. A miniature streak of lightning bolted from the newly broken wire to the index finger of my right hand, The muscles of my body tensed in involuntary response to the electric current. I was forced into a fetal position. Just before I blacked out I realized that my heart had stopped beating. Like a star going nova, I was dying in a blaze of fury, only for me it was electrical, not thermonuclear.

* * *

—PART 2—


Garlic! Now I know how totally absurd that sounds. I mean, I could understand hell’s sulfurous smelling smoke or perhaps the odor of brimstone, but garlic? And the odd thing was that the garlic odor was not in my nostrils, but in my mouth. Yes, in retrospect I am positive that there was a warm scent of garlic—not taste, mind you—but scent of garlic in my mouth; how I “smelled” it I’ll never know, but nonetheless, that was the impression I got. Also, there seemed to be a strong pressure holding my nostrils together, and another type of pressure on my belly. The pressure on my stomach was not constant like the pressure on my nose, rather it was a regular pulse-like motion; a slow, pulse-like motion.

My eyes, through this initial period of awareness, had remained closed. The reason for keeping them closed was, I felt, a perfectly proper one: I was afraid, no, that should read terrified to open them! Through the thin skin of one’s eyelids it is possible to detect light. But through my lids there was no light. There was only total, bleak, black darkness, the type of darkness that freezes your spine, causing involuntary shuddering spasms, and then reaches into your very soul, injecting you with nameless, intelligence-defying, inexplicable fear. Summoning up the sum total of my courage, and adding to it a huge measure of foolhardiness, I slowly, ever so very slowly, opened my eyes. Still complete, sense-destroying blackness. In a panic I reached out, only to find something blocking my movement. Now that was something for my senses to investigate. I felt around with my hands to try and discover what was surrounding me. It was hard, yet neither warm nor cool to the touch. The inhibiting structure allowed me to be straight, but because I could not sense gravity, I could not tell if I was upright, prone, or in any other position. My constricting case allowed me little movement except about a foot forward with my hands. It was as if I had been entombed. Suddenly the full realization of what I had just thought struck me. Had I been buried alive?

Then, with the omnipresent pressure still on my nose and stomach, and the odor of garlic still in my mouth, I detected a miniscule pinprick of light. You cannot comprehend my pleasure at the discovery of light after having it withheld from my sight. Try to imagine the incredible, overpowering feelings and emotions of a blinded person recovering eyesight after many years of total dark. Surely that was how I felt.

The theory of relativity can really mess you up when you are trying to figure out the relationships between moving objects. In my case, the pinprick of light seemed to be getting bigger. This could, in reality mean several things. For example, both I and the light could have been stationary while the light was actually growing in size. Or the light and I could have been moving toward each other giving the impression of growth where great distance had made this large light structure appear small. Possibly the light could have been stationary and I was moving toward it. On the other hand I might have been stationary and the light could have been moving toward me. Or, it could have been a mixture of these things.

I don’t know which of these things caused it, but I do know that the light was increasing in size. In fact, it was soon bright enough to allow visual investigation of my surrounding prison. Surprisingly, it seemed as if there was nothing around me. But when I reached out my way was still impeded by the encasing cell. I could at best guess that my encasement was some sort of force barrier. Unfortunately, I know nothing of its properties save that it felt neither warm nor cold, that it was impenetrable, and that it was so totally transparent the light passing through it was in no way refracted.

The light grew to such ominously huge proportions it was almost tangible. Soon the light dwarfed me. It seemed ten billion times the size of the sun. It was a bright, white, surging, seething mass, globular but not smooth. The bright object made me think of a huge, brilliant diamond that was basically round, but cut with fifty million facets. This, at least, was what it looked like from the outside. Somehow I got the impression that the light was on the outside of an object and trying to get inside! I don’t know what caused that impression, but it must have been correct because the light suddenly disappeared (into the mass?) and I was surrounded by darkness once again.

I believe the barrier around me must have served as a protective device, because an instant later, everything exploded into a blaze of light. I don’t think I can adequately convey the power in that explosion. If every nuclear weapon on Earth were to be detonated simultaneously, and that power were to be increased by ten to the five-millionth power, you would not have released one-billionth of the energy released in the explosion which I observed. You can now easily understand why I was grateful for my protective barrier, smell of garlic and pressure on my nose and stomach included.

Matter seemed to explode from that central point in front of me and out into all directions, even at me. I was in safety, though, due to the barrier. Quickly, the exploded matter congealed into what were obviously galaxies, stars, planets and smaller spatial bodies. I am now sure of what I saw. After many hours of retrospection I am sure it could be nothing else. From my protective cocoon in superspace I had observed the births of universes from a central core: the Universal Vortex.

I observed life on a million planets. Beings lived, loved, procreated and died a million-billion times for every breath I took. I saw the universes stop expanding and start the inevitable contraction and gravitationally-caused rush to the center of space and time. Once again I saw before me that huge, bright, white, surging, seething mass that was trying to get into the Universal Vortex. Then the light disappeared into that globule, only to explode in an event of such power and glory that it was far beyond human ken. All this I saw an infinite number of times until my brain was ready to shatter into nothingness. Hundreds of billions of years passed in what seemed like seconds. And then, madly rushing time started to slow down.

My protective shell with me inside, along with the garlic and the pressure on my body, shifted position from a point near the Universal Vortex to a location far out in one of the multitudinous universes. The journey seemed to take a few hours, but my time sense was no longer what it should have been. Who or what was guiding my journey I shall never know, but the guiding force was obvious in its intent.

In this universe I saw one planet and the society developing upon it. The time factor had- by now slowed to a point where although lifetimes flew by in seconds, I was able to vaguely comprehend the history of that planet. I saw wars, famine and strife. I also saw the denizens of that planet develop a super science which ended death, allowed time and space travel in ways I could not comprehend, and-even let them extract the living brains from bodies and keep them alive in special canisters.

Although it is hard, I must now attempt tell you what they looked like. It is hard because in their society, on their world, many had radically different shapes and forms. I saw a humanoid with writhing, serpent-like, prehensile tentacles with eyes at the tips. Huge claws spouted from here shoulders. I saw a fully intelligent blue lobster-like creature with green fronds like hair. Instead of pincers it had large paws, like a bear’s.

There were large barrel creatures surrounded at the top by a pentagon of five pointed stars with short tentacles coming from each point and with wings like a bat’s around their middles. And when they bled, it was a foul, vomitous green ichor whose evil smell rankled the universe.

Most of the creatures of this society were indescribable. But I will talk no more of their appearance because seeing them is the most terrifying experience possible, and it is soul-destroying merely to recall it.

The members of this society, the “people” of this planet, learned that the universe would soon be collapsing, so with their advanced technology they constructed huge starships, veritable cities, and escaped their dying universe. The feeling that this general area in superspace—or perhaps path through superspace is more accurate—was their home made them stay in the area.

Eons passed. Matter exploded through the Universal Vortex once again. A planet, about the size of their own, eventually came to occupy the path their own planet had once occupied. They called this new sphere, Astoggua Kao, second home. These creatures landed and colonized the planet, with their headquarters on a cold mountain plateau they called Leng. There, their super science created servants from nothingness. Some were huge, bulbous masses called shoggths. Another form of life developed into hairy quadropeds, and later into hairless bypeds. This new species which was evolving was a true example of homo sapiens. And, dear God, they called the green planet on which they lived, “Earth!” They were my…our…ancestors!

At first, the native primitives worshiped and served the invaders from the previous planet whom they called the “Old Ones.” The Old Ones taught some of their technology to the native humans. Other invaders came from the stars to Earth. After numerous wars between themselves, the spaceborn creatures had divided up the entire planet. Although the obscene looking races from other worlds hated each other, they united for the development of one common goal: the conquest and subjugation of the universe they knew and the universes they didn’t know as yet but might encounter. Together these races worked, and together they spread out past the solar system and Milky Way galaxy, conquering all that stood in their way. As they spread out into the local cluster of galaxies, their super science seemed to be undefeatable. Further and further they went out into the universe until they met the Elder Gods.

The Elder Gods! Although they have the ability to take any shape they desire, their preferred shape is that of a pillar of light. When the Old Ones invaded the Elder Gods’ territory, the Elder Gods struck back...with a just and wrathful vengeance! Those creatures from Earth, the Old Ones, were decisively beaten. Most were killed, viciously rent into tiny bits of green ichor-stained flesh and cast to the furthest reaches of the universe. Others, often the strongest and therefore the leaders, were punished by being flung throughout the universe to various locations, and there imprisoned for eternity. Cthulhu was placed on Earth in the almost deserted city of R’lyeh which then sank beneath the ocean as did Atlantis and Mu. This titanic event is remembered in the Bible’s deluge and other legendary catastrophes of like type mentioned in the folklore of most of the Earth’s peoples. Hastur was thrust into the lake of Hali in the Hyades, The shoggoths were given an increase in their intelligence which resulted in them rebelling against their masters and destroying the city on the plateau of Leng. A barrier was placed around the Earth by the Elder Gods which prevented the rest of the Old Ones from getting closer to the Earth than the planet Neptune.

There are beings on Neptune. Beings with appearances so incredibly monstrous, so awfully grotesque, that even the remaining Old Ones’ sensibilities were strained. The Old Ones ignored Neptune and settled upon the ninth planet of our solar system, the planet they call Yuggoth, the planet we know as Pluto. However, even though our solar system and galaxy is hurtling through space and superspace, the Old Ones feel that the position of Earth is the position of their home, and they want to come back! Their desire for this is so intense, so intrinsic to them that it has become much more than thoughts, it has become a physical object, detectable by humankinds’ five senses, and is as obscene and vulgar as the fumes of hell.

Meanwhile, on Earth, most of the Old Ones’ technology was being forgotten. What little remained was so alien to all other forms of human knowledge it wrongly developed an evil connotation, was understood by only a handful of people, and had its own special name: Witchcraft.

Some humans, now many years after the death of Christ, wrote down not only the science of the Old Ones and their experiments (called “spells”), but also, through careful research, were able to recount the history of the Old Ones. These reporters and authors, such as the Arab Abdul Alhazred (the best known of the writers on this subject) are called “mad” or “possessed.”

In my crystal clear protective cocoon—with that damned pressure on my nose, the throbbing pressure on my stomach and the smell of garlic in my mouth—I started to get dizzy. But as a scientist, I fought the vertigo with an intense desire to see more, to learn more! This unnaturally caused vertigo which affected me must not, would not stop me. I observed some people trying to break the protective barrier set up by the Elder Gods and invite the Old Ones such as Great Cthulhu and Yig, Father of Serpents, back to Earth. But by accident or luck or providence these incredibly evil, inhuman monstrosities were always thrown back and the barrier resealed. I saw the Old Ones trying to evade the barrier and get back to Earth by going through different dimensions. This, too, failed. I saw the followers of Cthulhu try to allow him onto the surface world. Many of his followers on the east coast of America seem to be as much fish or frog as they are human! I saw Yog-Sothoth, the most powerful of the Old Ones, almost break through several times. By the merest chance they were always foiled.

Then I saw mushroom shaped clouds sprouting up at different places on the Earth, and knew that the date on the planet must have been in the nineteen fifties. I saw rockets and landings on the moon and I knew that the Earth was in the sixties. Seconds later, I saw a jet plane flying over the Atlantic Ocean and I sensed, I knew, that I was on that plane going to the IAS convention…

EXPLOSION!

Not just in my invisible encasement, but actually inside of me! My protective casing shattered, disappeared, was gone! I was suddenly falling toward the Earth, gasping, sputtering, coughing, trying to bring in air. I coughed, choked, and gasped, and then coughed, choked and gasped some more. Falling toward Earth faster and faster, I felt the pressure on my nose and belly increasing. And now, not just in my mouth, but all through my body was the smell, sense, the very essence of garlic, garlic, garlic…

* * *

—PART 3—


“Get back, damn it, and give him some room to breathe!”

With those few words in my ears I choked, coughed, and sputtered my way back into the world of the living. Opening my eyes, I was blinded momentarily by bright incoming light. As my irises adjusted, I was able to dimly make out a figure kneeling over me. We seemed to be surrounded by a circle of people-like objects. I looked around at an ocean of faceless bodies, wondering what they wanted from me. Then I passed out.

I slept deeply. Either I didn’t dream or my dreams did not have enough impact upon me so that I would remember them when I awoke. In any event, I cannot at this time remember any dreams during that period of sleep. Psychologists have a phrase, “motivated forgetting.” It means that something was so frightful so Godawful fearsome to one’s psyche or sanity, that you cause yourself to forget something. Perhaps that is why I cannot remember any dreams from that period of rest. Perhaps I dreamed of Gods and monsters so mind-boggling that the mere act of recall during a conscious state would be enough to drive me or any other sane person into raving lunacy.

When I finally awoke, and I believe that it must have been a couple of days later, I opened my eyes to white. White was everywhere. To my left was a white curtain. The other sides of the room were walls of a bluish-green so pale they were almost white. On the bed I was in were white sheets. Crisp (were they starched?) and cool, they comforted my body on what I soon realized was an unusually hot day. My right arm was strapped down. Inserted into my vein was a silvery needle. That part of the needle not inside my arm had been taped to the outside of my arm. Attached to this silver spike was a clear plastic tube that ran up to a clear glass valve and then to a clear bottle filled with a clear liquid. The bottle was hanging from a tall, tubular metal stand.

My mind was not yet functioning clearly, yet through the gauze that put a haze over my intellectual abilities I kept thinking the word “hospital.” I must be in a hospital. Behind the curtain to my left must be another patient.

I wriggled slightly, just to change position a bit. I started to drift off into a restful sleep when I felt, no sensed, a slight movement of the ground, as if some indescribable gelatinous ooze were undulating through the Earth. And I knew that this monstrous juggernaut was coming for me! Overpowered by exhaustion, I drifted into sleep. But it was not restful.

When I awoke again there was a nurse in the room who greeted me with an overly cheerful, “Well, it’s about time you got up. You’ve been sleeping for three days since you came in!” She wore that obnoxiously sugar-sweet smile that so many nurses and airline attendants wear. She left the room and I heard her talking to some disembodied voice directly outside of my door. This was followed by a shuffling of rubber-soled feet and the introduction of more people into my room. For the next few hours my cubbyhole room and my privacy were invaded by a steady stream of doctors and nurses who proceeded to ask questions, make tests, and be general nuisances.

Several hours later, Professor Alexandrovich himself came to see me. Speaking to me in French, he told me that I had stopped breathing as a result of the electrical shock. I didn’t open my eyes and start to breathe for about two minutes after I had experienced the shock. “Two minutes!” I thought in surprise. It had seemed like ten trillion lifetimes.

“I myself,” said the professor, “performed artificial respiration on you.” Then, chuckling with good natured humor, he added, “I hope you didn’t mind the garlic bread I had eaten for lunch.”

Laughingly I replied, “No, not at all. Tell me,” I asked out loud, “what technique of artificial respiration did you use?”

“Mouth to mouth,” he replied. “I pinched your nostrils closed, breathed into your mouth, then forced the air out by pushing on your stomach. It took me about two minutes to get your heart and lungs working again. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Pressure on the nose, a periodic pressure my stomach, and garlic scented breath in my mouth,” I thought. “It all fits perfectly.”

“Professor,” I said seriously, “your theory about the history of the universe and the Universal Vortex is correct.”

Puzzled, he asked why I was so positively sure and wanted to know if I had any form of proof that was epistemological and not merely theoretical.

As I was about to speak, I felt an undulating of the ground that the Professor did not seem to notice. I realized that the rumbling was a warning from, from, from…from some unspeakable nightmare that I had best not tell what I knew! But I somehow knew that the thing below would not appear here with the many people in this building. So as that obscene, quivering, undulating increased in intensity, I bravely (or was it foolishly?) told the Professor, “Sir, I know not whether God, fate, or some noxiously evil, inexplicable force controlled me, but while my heart was stopped I saw the birth of the universe. I saw the incomparable, incomprehensible majesty of the Universal Vortex while suspended in superspace. I saw billions of lives come in and go out of existence in the time it would take a person to inhale and exhale but once. I saw the entire cycle of birth and death, genesis and destruction of people, societies and universes more times than could be counted.

“And Professor, I saw a society of creatures with a technology capable of making them gods, and yet so hideous in appearance, so evil in intention, as to make a man insane. They are trying to take over the Earth, and they live, they live! The Old Ones are trying to come back home! They live. They Live! THEY LIVE!”