PneephTaal waited.
Patiently.
For over four billion years PneephTaal had patiently waited, biding its time. It knew that one day, conceivably five or ten or fifteen million years or more in the future, its opportunity would come.
It would wait. It would be ready.
PneephTaal had come to earth while the youthful planet was still recovering from the titanic shock of cosmic birth, and since that time its sentient awareness had not dimmed. Although sealed within a cavernous rock-hewn vault by the authority of the Elder Gods—a force which even it could not overthrow—its life essence existed in a dormant state fired by an alien intellect which could never accept its own conquest. When it first had arrived, the planet had barely begun its primordial existence, being little more than some 500 million years old, still a fiery mass of unsolidified, molten rock.
Billions and many more millions of years passed as the land cooled and the atmosphere evolved to a state wherein life, shocked into nativity by a majestic flash uniting certain elementary molecular particles, could be sustained. And when this new life demonstrated its uniqueness by splitting into equal and identical units, PneephTaal regarded the embryonic creations with disinterest.
It paid little heed to the evolving, many-celled animals that swam in the salty seas and eventually developed a primitive intelligence; it sensed with total indifference the mutating life forms that later ventured forth to conquer the land. Nor was PneephTaal bored with its captive existence for its perceptive faculty was able to span the vastness of interstellar space probing the secrets of distant galaxies and individual star systems, invading in thought the inhabitants of a nearly endless array of tenanted planets that held even the tiniest shred of interest for it. There was little in the entire cosmos it did not know—except how to escape its bondage imposed by the Elder Gods. Millions upon millions of years continued to elapse and gigantic reptiles thundered over the earth, dimwitted creatures whose lives were spent in satisfying their never-ending need for sustenance to feed their ever-empty stomaches.
PneephTaal knew how they felt.
It waited, as man first began to tread the earth. And it brooded, as civilizations leaped to flaming heights, then perished. And it hungered with a craving that could have devoured galaxies! It thought of what it would do when once again it regained the freedom it once had known, when again it could feast throughout the star-flecked universe.
Paraphrased from the Eltdown Shards
With shocking suddenness, this sentient entity—mighty, seemingly indestructible, quasi-immortal—was aware of an amazing truth which momentarily stunned its intellect with a blinding flare. It was no longer imprisoned!
ALAN HASRAD, REPORTER FOR THE ARKHAM DAILY NEWS, sat in his book-lined study reading the afternoon mail. He rubbed thoughtfully at his large nose and pondered the curious letter from B. C. Fletcher he had just finished reading for the second time.
An indefinably sinister undertone ran through it, although the nature of the menace at which Fletcher hinted was not disclosed, and Alan was left with the haunting impression of some unnamed but very real evil affecting the writer. A genuine dread—not terror, for the man wrote with perfect calmness—seemed to raise a spectral head from behind his apparently casual words.
Fletcher was a complete stranger to Alan. He wrote in a rapid, scholarly script with diction and construction suggesting a man of more than average attainment. The letter explained how he had read of different arcane exploits in which Alan had been involved, events savoring of the fantastic and bizarre, and for this reason, along with Alan’s standing as a respected journalist, regarded him as a possible source of help in the problem confronting him. He mentioned briefly that he had retired nearly a year ago to a small and semi-isolated cottage on Shadow Lake near Bramwell, a region of Massachusetts with which Alan had some familiarity. His next paragraphs spoke with ambiguous restraint about an inexplicable phenomenon which was causing the neighboring countryside great alarm, but suggested it would be inadvisable to attempt details by mail, believing an interesting and convincing demonstration would be witnessed by Alan if he would come in person.
The letter was an odd mixture of old-fashioned formality coupled with an obvious bewilderment and deep-seated uneasiness, which doubtless combined to produce the impression of dread on the part of the writer. He concluded with a rather formal invitation to visit him, with full directions for reaching his cottage near the lake should Alan drive and a promise to meet him if he came by train.
Scrawled beneath the closing was the flourishing signature of B. C. Fletcher.
Ordinarily, such a letter would have evoked little enthusiasm in Alan. As a journalist and minor participant in certain unusual phenomena which tended to escape the notice of most, he had grown accustomed to receiving all sorts of communications from cultured cranks, and had come to pay little attention to most of them. But this was different from the usual run of such letters. Its sincerity was undeniable and the sanity of the writer did not seem to be in question.
He reflected about Shadow Lake and the nearby town of Bramwell. Alan had several relatives living in the area, whom he visited from time to time, and was casually acquainted with some of the local town folks. Come to think of it, he considered, hadn’t there been recent mention of that locality in the papers? Something to do with a killing which had some very interesting features? Alan seemed to think this was the case and spent the next few minutes examining back issues of the Arkham Daily News before locating the account he had recalled.
Slowly, with much more care than he had given to his first hasty perusal a week ago, he reread the article. It told of the death of Moss Kent, a farmer who had lived out on the Somersville Road a half mile east of Shadow Lake. Kent had been an old bachelor and hadn’t been missed till one of his neighbors found him sprawled in the yard before his unpainted shack.
There was more, but no further information of practical importance was offered other than the notion that unnatural features were still being investigated by the authorities. It was a curious article, thought Alan, not because of what had been stated, but because of the provocative nature of that which had been left unsaid.
Alan debated the advisability of snatching a day or two to investigate. What finally decided him against it was the fact that Fletcher had declined to even suggest the nature of his trouble, and Alan felt slightly piqued to be called upon in such a manner. He wrote briefly, saying he was interested but busy and invited Fletcher to come to Arkham to discuss the matter or else write full details.
Fletcher’s second letter arrived five days later. In part it read:
I cannot blame you for not wishing to come to Bramwell without full information. However, I have few tangible facts to offer you. It was with the thought that if you accepted my invitation you would see and perhaps understand and explain these terribly unnatural happenings…
Even as I write, the Mists are rising again from the swamp in back of my cottage. Each night between dusk and darkness I see the same sight as I sit at my library window, and it is not a pleasant one. More and more it suggests to me the steady, purposeful advance of an army. First comes the vanguard, stray scouts swirling and spiralling upwards from the dank marsh nearby, to feel the way for the dense murky phalanxes that follow. The advance does not take long. Soon the main body closes in, and my little cottage on its knoll between the swamp and the lake is besieged by the chill, writhing dampness which blots out the dim lights of Bramwell beyond the marsh like a stone wall.
Mr. Hasrad, the mist is sentient! Oh, I know how it sounds, but I’m not crazy; I know I’m not having hallucinations. Do you wonder that I hated to write this? Why my first letter was intentionally so vague? I wanted you to see for yourself—to look at these vast banks of lazily twisting vapor, slowly writhing and turning in chill, unnatural convolutions, encircling my dwelling with a living wall of frightfulness. Then you would understand and be convinced. When on a windless night you heard the timbers of the cottage creak and give beneath a hideous, external constriction, you would know! And if you sat through the long hours till dawn and watched their sullen retreat before the anemic rays of the pale watery sun…