Await the passing of strange years—
When that will wake which is not dead…
—in which the reference was surely to Cthulhu himself, dreaming but undead in his house in R’lyeh, ocean-buried in vast and pressured vaults of the mighty Pacific. Something had happened in those eon-hidden prehistoric times, some intervention perhaps of Nature, perhaps of alien races more powerful yet, whose result had been a suppression or sundering of the CCD; and they had either fled or been “banished” into exile from a world already budding with life of its own.
The regions in which the “gods” of the cycle had interred themselves or had been “prisoned” (they could never really die) had been varied as the forms they themselves had taken. Cthulhu was locked in sunken R’lyeh; Hastur in the star-distant deeps of Hali; Ithaqua the Wind-Walker confined to icy Arctic wastes where, in five-year cycles, to this very day he is still known to make monstrous incursions; and so on.
Yet others of the cycle had been dealt with more harshly: the Tind’losi Hounds now dwelled beyond Time’s darkest angles, locked out from the three sane dimensions; and Yog-Sothoth had been encapsulated in a place bordering all time and space but impinging into neither facet of the continuum—except should some foolhardy wizard call him out! And Yibb-Tstll, too—he also had his place…
But if these gods or demons of the conjectural Cthulhu Mythology were largely inaccessible to men, certain manifestations of them were not. Masters of telepathy, the CCD had long discovered the vulnerable minds of men and insinuated themselves into the dreams of men. On occasion such dreamers would be “rewarded”, granted powers over lesser mortals or even elevated to the priesthood of the CCD. In ancient times, even as now, they would become great wizards and warlocks. And James Gedney had been one such, who had collected all the works of wizards gone before and learned them, or as much of them as he might. Titus Crow had been another, but where Gedney’s magic had been black, Crow’s had been white.
Looking back now, Gifford could see that it had been inevitable that the two must clash. Clash they had, and Darkness had lost to Light. And for a little while the world had been a cleaner place…
“Do you remember how it all came to a head?” Gifford asked. “Crow and Gedney, I mean?”
The moon was fully up now, its disk silvering distant spires, turning the path to a night-white ribbon winding its way across the heath. And the path itself had grown narrower, warning that perhaps the two had chosen the wrong route, which might well peter out into tangles of gorse and briar. But they made no effort to turn back.
“I remember,” said Arnold. “Gedney had discovered a way to call an avatar of Yibb-Tstll up from hell. ‘The Black’, he called it: putrid black blood of Yibb-Tstll, which would settle upon the victim like black snow, thicker and thicker, suffocating, destroying—and leaving not only a lifeless but a soulless shell behind. For the demon was a soul-eater, a wampir of psyche, of id!” He shuddered, and this time not alone from the chill of the night air. And his eyes were hooded where they gloomed for a moment upon the other’s dark silhouette where it strolled beside him. And in his mind he repeated certain strange words or sounds, a conjuration, ensuring that he had the rune right.
“Your memory serves you well,” said Gifford. “He’d found a way to call The Black, all right—and he’d used it. I saw Symonds die that way, and I knew there had been others before him. People who’d crossed Gedney; and of course The Black was a perfect murder weapon.”
Arnold nodded in the moonlight. “Yes, it was…” And to himself: …And will be again!
“Do you recall the actual machinery of the thing?” Gifford asked.
Careful—something warned Arnold—careful! He shrugged. “Something of it. Not much.”
“Oh, come now!” Gifford chided. “Eight years as leader of your coven, and far more powerful now than Gedney ever was, and you’d tell me you never bothered to look into the thing? Hah!” And to himself: Ah, no, friend Arnold. You’ll have to do better than that. Squirm, my treacherous little worm, squirm!
“Something of it!” Arnold snapped. “It involves a card, inscribed with Ptetholite runes. That was the lure, the scent by which The Black would track its victim, Gedney’s sacrifice. The card was passed to the victim, and then…then…”
“Then Gedney would say the words of the invocation,” Gifford finished it for him. “And The Black would come, appearing out of nowhere, black snowflakes settling on the sacrifice, smothering, drowning, sucking out life and soul!”
Arnold nodded. “Yes,” he said. “Yes…”
They had come to the end of the path, a bank that descended to a broad, moonlit expanse of water rippled by the light wind. “Hah!” Gifford grunted. “A lake! Well, we’ll just have to retrace our steps, that’s all. A waste of time—but still, it allowed us a little privacy and gave us the chance to talk. A lot has happened, after all, since I went off to America to start a coven there, and you stayed here to carry on.”
They turned back. “A lot, yes,” Arnold agreed. “And as you say, I am far more powerful now than ever Gedney was. But what of you? I’ve heard that you, too, have had your successes.”
“Oh, you know well enough that I’ve prospered,” Gifford answered. “My coven is strong—stronger, I suspect, than yours. But then again, I am its leader.” He quickly held up a hand to ward off protests. “That was not said to slight you, Arnold. But facts speak for themselves. It wasn’t idle chance that took me abroad. I went because of what I knew I’d find there. Oh, we divided Gedney’s knowledge, you and I—his books—but I knew of others. And more than mere books. There are survivals even now in old New England, Arnold, if a man knows where to seek them out. Cults and covens beyond even my belief when I first went there. And all of them integrated now—under me! Loosely as yet, it’s true, but time will change all that.”
“And you’d integrate us, too, eh?” the smaller man half-snarled, rounding on his companion. “And you even had the nerve to come here and tell me it to my face! Well, your American influence can’t help you here in England, Gifford. You were a fool to come alone!”
“Alone?” the other’s voice was dangerously low. “I am never alone. And you are the fool, my friend, not I.”
In their arguing the two had strayed from the path. They stumbled on a while in rough, damp turf and through glossy-leaved shrubbery—until once more the stack of an old chimney loomed naked against the moon. And now that they had their bearings once more, both men reached a simultaneous decision—that it must end here and now.
“Here,” said Arnold, “right here is where Gedney died. He gave Crow one of his cards, called The Black, and loosed it upon the man.”
“Oh, Crow had set up certain protections about his house,” Gifford continued the tale, “but they were useless against this. In the end he had to resort to a little devilishness of his own.”
“Aye, a clever man, Crow,” said Arnold. “He knew what was writ on Geph’s broken columns. The Ptetholites had known and used Yibb-Tstll’s black blood, and they’d furnished the clue, too.”
“Indeed,” Gifford mocked, “and now it appears you know far more than you pretended, eh?” And in a low tone he chanted:
“Let him who calls The Black
Be aware of the danger—
His victim may be protected
By the spell of running water,
And turn the called-up darkness
Against the very caller…”
Arnold listened, smiled grimly and nodded. “I looked into it later,” he informed. “Crow kept records of all of his cases, you know? An amazing man. When he found himself under attack he heeded a certain passage from the Necronomicon. This passage: