The events began for me in the summer of 1940. Coler had just returned from an expedition to Arabia, and had asked me to stop in at his manor in Severnford because he wished to show me “a little curiosity which I dug up in the Arabian desert.” As I was myself not involved in anything of overwhelming exigency, I came immediately. Inviting me in, he then left to fetch his prize. He returned moments later.
It would be both trite and untrue to say that the thing was then at all significant of terror: it was anomalous only in that it was unfathomable. What it seemed to be was a roughly rectangular glass or crystal box, of a dull viridescent color. The one peculiarity was that the figure had no seam or opening in it; so that if it were indeed a box, then it was a box whose manner of use had yet to be discovered. That it was merely an object of decoration seemed improbable, for it was, by our standards, hardly attractive in any way. Seeing all of this I looked up to Coler, mutely expressing my apprehension.
“I’m as confused as you are,” he said, “not only as to its function but as to its constituents. It does superficially resemble fluorite, and, if it were not so dull, one might think it pure dioptase; but my chemical tests prove that it is neither. It certainly is some sort of crystal, yet it is a crystal which seems to have few or no earthly elements.”
“My dear fellow,” I cried, “you must show it to the Archaeological Institute!” I was referring to the Royal Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. “What a find!”
“No, Collins, no,” he replied: “my reputation is too precarious. They will think it a hoax or some cleverly planned practical joke on my part. I’ve been in similar situations before: the result has always been the same.” He spoke with a dreary acerbity from which one could glean his remembrance of the past.
“How did you find it, anyway?” I queried.
“That’s another curious business! Our party was exploring some strange pillared ruins (possibly, though not certainly, Alhazred’s ‘fabulous Irem, City of Pillars’), and it happened that, while I was digging somewhere with a trowel, the ground beneath me suddenly gave way, and I plunged down what seemed to be a narrow pit. I fell down some twenty feet, landing finally on another sandy surface under the ground. Now my falling must have unearthed this crystal, for I then saw it lying next to me, still half-buried in the earth. Some of my men, who had seen me fall, threw me a rope, and I climbed out of the pit, bringing this thing up with me.”
It was, as he said, curious, but not totally out of the ordinary. When I asked him what he planned to do with the object, he replied:
“I don’t know, Collins, I don’t know. At present, there is nothing I can do, save somehow to find out its constituents and its purpose.”
“One moment, Coler,” I suddenly burst out. I had only then remembered some of my own readings in the arcane, which, although not within Coler’s level, were not inconsiderable. “Might this not be Blake’s Shining Trapezohedron?”
“I thought of that, too, Collins, but I’ve now dismissed the idea. Remember what Blake says about the Shining Trapezohedron: it is a many-faceted crystal or ‘glowing stone’ inside an ‘open box of yellowish metal.’ Now, in addition to the fact that our discovery has no opening, what we have here is simply a crystal box itself, or perhaps a solid block of crystal. Whatever it is, it is not the Shining Trapezohedron.”
Coler was staring at the thing as if hypnotized, and my gaze too became fixed on it. Its apparent functionlessness was what made it peculiar, not any inherent quality of the crystal itself. I am tempted to write that it even then gave off a miasma of otherworldly manufacture, and I cannot definitely adduce whether this view is actual or merely born of imperfect memory and subsequent explication. The thing was strange, but really nothing more; terror would come a little later.
* * *
Research and publishing of an historical-archaeological report on Roman ruins in Wales kept me almost constantly busy for an entire week after my visit with Coler. Indeed, it was exactly a week later that Coler called me again, saying that there had been a new development concerning his discovery. I had only concluded my work that morning, and was glad that Coler’s summons had come at such an opportune time. Again, I must refrain from adding that any feeling of dread was then overcoming me; for the enigma of the crystal was as yet minute, and in the course of my own activities, I had all but forgotten it. It would be the most pathetic of platitudes to say that the importance and significance which I gave it was far short of the mark.
The “new development” of which Coler had spoken was not as radical as I had supposed: its shape and color were still the same, and the only change was that there could be detected in the center of the green object a small glowing, as if some sort of phosphorescent ball had been placed within it. That this had resulted of its own accord was obvious, what with the seamlessness of the thing; and, because we knew not what the purpose of the box itself was, we could hardly have any notion as to the function of this odd glowing. I asked Coler when the glowing had begun, and he replied:
“I first detected it this morning, though it could well have started any time last night. But it is not that which bothers me: it is what we are to make of it.”
I could not but agree.
“What does it mean, man,” he said, more to himself than to me, “what does it mean? I cannot even begin to hypothesize on it, so outré and senseless does it seem. I can’t help feeling, however, that there is more here than meets the eye…
“The answer,” he continued, “may well be in one of my books. I’ve begun looking myself—there’s nothing in Prinn—but I still have dozens of volumes to go through.”
There could be nothing clearer than that Coler wanted help in his task. Being free of my own activities, I proffered my services, and he assented with an eagerness which told of his relief at not having to ask me himself. In his experience-gained self-sufficiency he had grown loath both of asking favors and of doing them. My suggestion that we begin at once was quickly adopted, and we two retired to his library, where his priceless collection of tomes lay.
Coler had already been some two-thirds of the way through von Junzt’s Unaussprechlichen Kulten when I called, and, taking up that book again, advised me to look through any of the other volumes I wished. I had never completely read Alhazred’s Necronomicon, and considered that now would be as good a time as any to do so. I took down the handwritten copy which Coler had purchased from an old occultist in Massachusetts, and began its perusal, seating myself in one of the two occasional chairs in the room, in the other of which Coler himself was seated.
How many hours we were in that room reading I have been unable to determine; but the fact that the first time I looked up from Alhazred’s volume, I saw through the window that night had fallen, and that the grandfather’s clock in the library registered well past 9, proves that no inconsiderable time had elapsed in the course of our task. Coler’s despair at discovering not even the vaguest reference to his find in von Junzt was matched by my own discouragement at the apparent uselessness of the Necronomicon. I had managed to get half through the tome, and there could not be discerned in even its allegorical whisperings any obscure allusions to Coler’s crystalline receptacle. Alhazred’s mentioning of a box which was a “window to space and time” could be nothing other than a citation of the Shining Trapezohedron, coinciding as it did exactly with the descriptions in both the Blake manuscript and in Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis. That being the case, it could be of no use to us; although Alhazred’s later noting something called “Nyarlathotep’s weapon” could have meant anything from those “Druid” stones in Avebury to that mysterious round tower in Billington Woods near Arkham, Massachusetts. Coler, late in the afternoon, had finished the von Junzt and had begun Warangal’s Civitates Antiquae Fantasticae, though even that Indian philosopher’s work seemed to be as ignorant of the green crystal as Prinn’s and Alhazred’s had been, so that our disheartenment at finding no clues soon turned to a dread that not a single volume in Coler’s library would bring any facts to light. Our exhaustion was as great as our frustration, and Coler, gentleman to the last, told me, at close on 9:30, to stop our work and partake of a late supper. No suggestion could have been more apt.