“Ludvig Prinn,” said the guide, softly, noting Cartaret’s stare. “He mingled with our priests, you know.”
For some reason the depiction of this almost legendary seer stirred Cartaret more deeply than any other hitherto revealed terror. The casual inclusion of the infamous sorcerer in the procession of actual history hinted at dire things; it was as though Cartaret had read a prosaic biography of Satan in Who’s Who.
Nevertheless, with a sort of heartsick craving his eyes continued to search the walls as they walked onward to the still indeterminate end of the long red-illumined chamber in which Nephren-Ka was interred. The guide — priest, now, for Cartaret no longer doubted — proceeded softly, but stole covert glances at the white man as he led the way.
Captain Cartaret walked through a dream. Only the walls were real now: the Walls of Truth. He saw the Ottomans rise and flourish, looked on forgotten battles and unremembered kings. Often there recurred in the sequence a scene depicting the priests of Nephren-Ka’s own furtive cult. They were shown amidst the disquieting surroundings of catacombs and tombs, engaged in unsavory occupations and revolting pleasures. The camera-film of time rolled on; Captain Cartaret and his companion walked on. Still the walls told their story.
There was one small division of the wall which portrayed the priests conducting a man in Elizabethan costume through what seemed to be a pyramid. It was eery to see the gallant in his finery pictured amidst the ruins of ancient Egypt, and it was very dreadful indeed to almost watch, like an unseen observer, when a stealthy priest knifed the Englishman in the back as he bent over a mummy-case.
What now impressed Cartaret was the infinitude of detail in each pictured fragment. The features of all the men were almost photographically exact; the drawing, while crude, was life-like and realistic. Even the furniture and background of every scene were correct.
There was no doubting the authenticity of it all, and no doubting of the veracity thereby implied. But — what was worse — there was no doubting that this work could not have been done by any normal artist, however learned, unless he had seen it all.
Nephren-Ka had seen it all in prophetic vision, after his sacrifice to Nyarlathotep.
Cartaret was looking at truths inspired by a demon….
On and on, to the flaming fane of worship and death at the end of the hall. History progressed as he walked. Now he was looking at a period of Egyptian lore that was almost contemporary. The figure of Napoleon appeared.
The battle of Aboukir… the massacre of the pyramids… the downfall of the Mameluke horsemen… the entrance to Cairo…
Once again, a catacomb with priests. And three figures, white men, in French military regalia of the period. The priests were leading them into a red room. The Frenchmen were surprised, overcome, slaughtered.
It was vaguely familiar. Cartaret was recalling what he knew of Napoleon’s commission; he had appointed savants and scientists to investigate the tombs and pyramids of the land. The Rosetta stone had been discovered, and other things. Quite likely the three men shown had blundered onto a mystery the priests of Nephren-Ka had not wanted to have unveiled. Hence they had been lured to death as the walls showed. It was quite familiar — but there was another familiarity which Cartaret could not place.
They moved on, and the years rushed by in panorama. The Turks, the English, Gordon, the plundering of the pyramids, the World War. And every so often, a picture of the priests of Nephren-Ka and a strange white man in some catacomb or vault. Always the white man died. It was all familiar.
Cartaret looked up, and saw that he and the priest were very near to the blackness at the end of the great fiery hall. Only a hundred steps or so, in fact. The priest, face hidden in his burnoose, was beckoning him on.
Cartaret looked at the wall. The pictures were almost ended. But no — just ahead was a great curtain of crimson velvet on a ceiling- rack which ran off into the blackness and reappeared from shadows on the opposite side of the room to cover that wall.
“The future,” explained his guide. And Captain Cartaret remembered that the priest had told how each day he drew back the curtain a bit so that the future was always revealed just one day ahead. He remembered something else, and hastily glanced at the last visible section of the Wall of Truth next to the curtain. He gasped.
It was true! Almost as though gazing into a miniature mirror he found himself staring into his own face'.
Line for line, feature for feature, posture for posture, he and the priest of Nephren-Ka were shown standing together in this red chamber just as they were now.
The red chamber… familiarity. The Elizabethan man with the priests of Nephren-Ka were in a catacomb when the man was murdered. The French scientists were in a red chamber when they died. Other later Egyptologists had been shown in a red chamber with the priests, and they too had been slain. The red chamber! Not familiarity but similarity. They had been in this chamber! And now he stood here, with a priest of Nephren-Ka. The others had died because they had known too much. Too much about what — Nephren-Ka?
A terrible suspicion began to formulate into hideous reality. The priests of Nephren-Ka protected their own. This tomb of their dead leaders was also their fane, their temple. When intruders stumbled onto the secret, they lured them down here and killed them lest others learn too much.
Had not he come in the same way?
The priest stood silent as he gazed at the Wall of Truth.
“Midnight,” he said softly. “I must draw back the curtain to reveal yet another day before we go on. You expressed a wish, Captain Cartaret, to see what the future holds in store for you. Now that wish shall be granted.”
With a sweeping gesture he flung the curtain back along the wall for a foot. Then he moved, swiftly.
One hand leapt from the burnoose. A gleaming knife flashed through the air, drawing red fire from the lamps, then sank into Cartaret’s back, drawing redder blood.
With a single groan, the white man fell. In his eyes there was a look of supreme horror, not born of death alone. For as he fell, Captain Cartaret read his future in the Walls of Truth, and it confirmed a madness that could not be.
As Captain Cartaret died he looked at the picture of his next hours of existence and saw himself being knifed by the priest of Nephren-Ka.
The priest vanished from the silent tomb, just as the last flicker of dying eyes showed to Cartaret the picture of a still white body — his body — lying in death before the Wall of Truth.
The Invaders
HENRY KUTTNER
“Oh — it’s you,” said Hayward. "You got my wire?”
The light from the doorway of the cottage outlined his tall, lean figure, making his shadow a long, black blotch on the narrow bar of radiance that shone across the sand to where green-black rollers were surging.
A sea bird gave a shrill, eerie cry from the darkness, and I saw Hayward’s silhouette give a curious little jerk.
“Come in,” he said, quickly, stepping back.
Mason and I followed him into the cottage.
Michael Hayward was a writer — a unique one. Very few writers could create the strange atmosphere of eldritch horror that Hayward put into his fantastic tales of mystery. He had imitators — all great writers have — but none attained the stark and dreadful illusion of reality with which he invested his oftentimes shocking fantasies. He went far beyond the bounds of human experience and familiar superstition, delving into uncanny fields of unearthliness. Blackwood’s vampiric elementals, M. R. James’ loathsome liches — even the black horror of de Maupassant’s “Horla” and Bierce’s “Damned Thing” — paled by comparison.