How true is the saying, “Fools rush in…”
Not until I was standing right before the tomb did I see that Bruce had indeed been there. The heavy plank door was pulled slightly ajar, making a little arc in the dirt. The iron chain which had held it was now broken. It was a tight squeeze, since the door would open no further, but I finally managed to enter. Flashing my light around, I saw a few mouldering wooden coffins at one side. I scarcely glanced at them. Instead, I examined the cement walls that were damp and musty.
Then I gave a start of surprise. Without quite knowing what I was looking for, I had found it! At the rear of the tomb, I saw a roughly rectangular hole in the cement. Quickly I crossed to it. I flashed my light into a passage that led slightly downward for about ten feet, then seemed to level off. Determined now to go where Bruce had gone, I bent low and squeezed into the passage.
At the bottom of the slight incline, I again flashed my light ahead. Then my heart pounded in excitement and amazement. The passage was narrow, but high enough for a man to stand erect—and it extended far beyond the feeble beam of my flashlight! I moved slowly ahead. Soon I began to distinguish what seemed to be other smaller passages branching off, but what struck me so forcibly was that this main passage seemed to extend straight toward the ravine!
There was a stagnant, loathsome stench that seemed to roll over me in tangible waves. I touched the earth walls, and recoiled. It was the same dampish, grayish kind of soil Bruce had examined, but much worse. It was slimy; it seemed to crawl under my touch as though it were alive. I came near then to giving up and going back; but, gritting my teeth, I went on.
My foot struck something hard. I bent, fumbled, and picked it up. It was Bruce’s automatic. It still felt faintly warm. I knew it had been fired. Now there was no more doubt—only a vague fear and foreboding. I stood there in that noisome passage, holding the gun that had been fired, wondering what I should do next.
It was decided for me. Just then I heard the sound. Quickly I snapped off the flashlight and stood there in the dark, tense and listening. My heart pounded blood into my ears so that I could hardly hear the sound when it came again. But I heard it all right—faint and far away, not close as I had first thought.
The sound was a voice. A blurred and mumbled voice that seemed to chant, and the chant was a thing obscene and alien for all its vagueness—of that much I was sure. Quite still I stood and listened, and still the sound came, faintly from far away down that passage toward the ravine. It seemed jubilant and joyous; now uttering paeans of praise, now again descending to a garbled undertone of obscene implications that made my flesh crawl, despite that I could distinguish none of the words.
I knew, as I stood there listening to that loathsome ritual, that there were things I should piece together—something to do with Lyle Wilson—but somehow I couldn’t remember any more; my thoughts were becoming jumbled and uncertain. Not daring to use the flashlight, I moved warily forward a few more paces.
“Bruce!” I called softly, and listened. Then a bit louder: “Bruce! Can you hear me? You must be in here!”
Then—oh god!—then I heard a sound that was not the chanting, a sound much closer, just ahead of me. I stopped and listened and didn’t breathe. Something a few yards away was moving toward me in the darkness.
“Bruce, is that you?” I called again.
And suddenly I knew those were not footsteps nor anything resembling footsteps, nor anything I had ever heard before.
I never used to have nightmares, I never used to feel an awful fear of an enclosed room. I never used to wake in the middle of the night with a dread of a monstrous unclean thing coming toward me out of the dark, so that I must fumble frantically for the light cord, and lie sweating afterwards, and fear to sleep again.
I wish I had never clicked on my flashlight, there in that passage behind the tomb. Something stopped there, half revealed at the end of my pale beam of light. I know only that it wasn’t human. I fired the gun and I didn’t miss. There were only three bullets left, and I remember hearing every one of them hit with a soggy, sucking sound like pebbles thrown into thick mud. It could not have been more than ten seconds, but it was ten eternities. I suddenly knew that it did not fear the light, but was only momentarily confused.
And then—it came just a little nearer into the beam of light and stood fully revealed. I didn’t hear myself scream, but I know I must have, for my throat was raw afterward. I felt my mind slipping slowly away into a chaos of vertiginous horror. I knew it was I that moved, and I must have screamed again. Yes, it was I who moved steadily, slowly closer; and I could not help myself! I knew I must move closer still, until…
Until what, I never knew; for at that moment, strangely, I seemed touched with a surging wave of coolness that beat down my rising panic. It no longer seemed I that moved; it was another part of me—a part that had been eons ago, that was trying now to go back to the soft, safe warmth of the primordial. It was the kind of ecstatic feeling I’d had as a child when I squeezed thick black mud between my hands—but this was magnified a thousandfold, cozy and dreamy and logical.
And yet there was something wrong, vaguely disturbing. There was another I, unimportant and far away somewhere, but persistently imploring… imploring me not to succumb, not to go back… to remember. Remember what? That tiny faraway me was so pitifully amusing, as it tried with a feeble sort of intensity to burst the surrounding comfortable darkness. It was trying to tell me… something to do with…
A dream? Was that it? Seemingly eons ago I remembered a dream a friend had told me… of something irresistibly drawing… an affinity…
How swiftly did comprehension flee back to me then, through a newly rising panic, as I remembered! How quickly I was back in that passage again as the ancient part of me and the present part of me merged with a frantic rush, and I saw…
Then it was that I screamed, for the third and final time, an articulate scream: “Bruce!…”
I was very near now to that thing that was drawing me, and I saw it quite clearly—but with that last articulate scream, something about me abruptly shivered, wavered, and I felt a sudden surge of power. I could feel something trying to help me tear my mind away; something softly, subtly, urgently aiding me; something whispering, “Do not come! Do not move! Go back! Now! Quickly!”
And that urging was the greatest horror of all, for I knew Bruce was there…
By what supreme effort I did tear my eyes and mind away, I shall never know. I do not remember it. I only remember the frantic escape up that last ten feet of slope… of something surging soundlessly behind, something that touched my ankle as I squeezed through the broken rectangle into the tomb… and the awful sodden sound of it hitting, seconds too late, with a sort of squish like a heavy wet sponge against a wall…
There remained one more thing to be done. Out of the tomb I fled, across the graveyard and into the ravine. I knew now what I was searching for, and I found it despite the darkness. I found it, well concealed in a little gully behind masses of bush and vine—the other end of that passage.
I saw the iron-barred gate across the tiny entrance, probably placed there by Lyle Wilson himself. It now stood open with a snap-lock hanging from it. Just inside the gate I could dimly see Lyle Wilson, a crouching figure, rapt and listening. He had heard my revolver shots, he had heard my screams—and then silence. Now he began another of those low chants that gradually rose in volume to a jubilant paean of praise. I could not have remembered the words even if I had wanted to. They were hardly even articulate words. I saw him accompany it with an unholy little ritual and dance that ordinarily would have sickened me to the soul; but already I was beyond that.