When I was 25 I was deep in love—this was before your mother—with a beautiful girl who died of consumption. Pining upon her grave I had a daydream, but this time by the strength of my desire I kept my mind white. I swam down through the loam and I was joined with her in full bodily union. She said this coupling must be our last, but that I now would have the power to move at will under and through the earth from time to time. We kissed farewell forever, Lorchen and I, and I swam down and on, her knight of dreams, exulting in my strength like some old kobold breasting the rock. It is not black down there, my son, as one would think. There are glorious colors. Water is blue, metals bright red and yellow, rocks green and brown, undsoweiter. After a time I swam back and up into my body, standing on the new-made grave. I was no longer pining, but profoundly grateful.
So I learned how to divine, my son, to be a fish of earth when there is need and Nature wills, to dive into the Hall of the Mountain King dancing with light. Always the finest colors and the strangest hues lay west. Rare earths they are named by scientists, who are wise, though blind. That’s why I brought us here. Under the greatest of oceans, earth is a rainbow web and Nature is a spider spinning and walking it.
And now you have shown you have my power, mein Sohn, but in a greater form. You have black nightdreams. I know, for I have sat by you as you slept and heard you talk and seen your terror, which would soon destroy you if you could recall it, as one night showed. But Nature in her wisdom blindfolds you until you have the needed strength and learning. As you know by now, I have provided for your education at a good Eastern school praised by Harley Warren, the finest employer that I ever had, who knew a lot about the nether realms.
And now you’re strong enough, mein Sohn, to act—and wise, I hope, as Nature’s acolyte. You’ve studied deep and made your body strong. You have the power and the hour has come. The triton blows his horn. Rise up, mein Iieber Georg, and follow me. Now is the time. Build upon what I’ve built, but build more greatly. Yours is the wider and the greater realm. Make your mind white. With or without some lovely woman’s help, now burst the gate of dreams!
Your loving Father
At any other time that document would have moved and shaken me profoundly. Truth to tell, it did so move and shake me, but I had been already so moved and shaken by today’s climactic events that my first thought was of how the letter applied to them.
I echoed from the letter, “Now burst the gate of dreams,” and then added, suppressing another interpretation, “That means I should take Morgan’s drug tonight. Let’s do it, Albert, as you proposed this morning.”
“Your father’s last command,” he said heavily, clearly much impressed by that aspect of the letter. Then, “Georg, this is a most fantastic, shattering missive! That sign he got—sounds like migraine. And his references to the rare-earth elements—that could be crucial. And colors in the earth perceived perhaps by extrasensory perception! The Miskatonic project should have started investigating dowsing years ago. We’ve been blind—” He broke off. “You’re right, Georg, and I am strongly tempted. But the danger! How to choose? On the one hand a supreme parental injunction and our raging curiosities—for mine’s a-boil. On the other hand Great Cthulhu and his minions. Oh, for an indication of how to decide!”
There was a sharp knocking at the door. We both started. After a moment’s pause I moved rapidly, Albert following. With my hand on the latch I paused again. I had not heard a car stop outside. Through the stout oak came the cry, “Telegram!” I opened it.
There was revealed a skinny, somewhat jaunty-looking youth of pale
complexion scattered with big freckles and with carrot red hair under his visored cap. His trousers were wrapped tightly around his legs by bicycle clips.
“Either of you Albert N. Wilmarth?” he inquired coolly. “I am he,” Albert said, stepping forward.
“Then sign for this, please.”
Albert did so and tipped him, substituting a dime for a nickel at the last instant.
The youth grinned widely, said, “G’night,” and sauntered off. I closed the door and turned quickly back.
Albert had torn open the flimsy envelope and drawn out and spread the missive. He was pale already, but as his eyes flashed across it, he grew paler still. It was as if he were two-thirds of a ghost already and its message had made him a full one. He held the yellow sheet out to me wordlessly:
LOVECRAFT IS DEAD STOP THE WHIPPOORWILLS DID NOT SING STOP TAKE COURAGE STOP DANFORTH
I looked up. Albert’s face was still as ghostly white, but its expression had changed from uncertainty and dread to decision and challenge.
“That tips the balance,” he said. “What have I more to lose? By George, Georg, we’ll have a look down into the abyss on whose edge we totter. Are you game?”
“I proposed it,” I said. “Shall I fetch your valise from the car?”
“No need,” he said, whipping from his inside breast pocket the small paper packet from Dr. Morgan he’d shown me that morning. “I had the hunch that we were going to use it, until that apparition at your father’s tomb shattered my nerves.”
I fetched small glasses. He split evenly between them the small supply of white powder, which dissolved readily in the water I added under his direction. Then he looked at me quizzically, holding his glass as if for a toast.
“No question of to whom we drink this,” I said, indicating the telegram he was still holding in his other hand.
He winced slightly. “No, don’t speak his name. Let’s rather drink to all our brave comrades who have perished or suffered greatly in the Miskatonic project.”
That “our” really warmed me. We touched glasses and drained them. The draft was faintly bitter.
“Morgan writes that the effects are quite rapid,” he said. “First drowsiness, then sleep, and then hopefully dreams. He’s tried it twice himself with Rice and doughty old Armitage, who laid the Dunwich Horror with him. The first time they visited in dream Gilman’s Walpurgis hyperspace; the second, the inner city at the two magnetic poles—an area topologically unique.”
Meanwhile I’d hurriedly poured a little more wine and lukewarm coffee and we’d settled ourselves comfortably in our easy chairs before the fire, the dancing flames of which became both a little blurred and a little dazzling as the drug began to take effect.
“Really, that was a most amazing missive from your father,” he chatted on rapidly. “Spinning a rainbow web under the Pacific, the lines those weirdly litten tunnels—truly most vivid. Would Cthulhu be the spider? No, by Gad, I’d prefer your father’s goddess Nature any day. She’s kindlier at least.”
“Albert,” I said somewhat drowsily, thinking of personality exchanges, “could those creatures possibly be benign, or at least less malevolent than we infer? —as my father’s subterranean visionings might indicate. My winged worms, even?”
“Most of our comrades did not find them so,” he replied judiciously, “though of course there’s our Innsmouth hero. What has he really found in Y’ha-nthlei? Wonder and glory? Who knows? Who can say he knows? Or old Akeley out in the stars—is his brain suffering the tortures of the damned in its shining metal cylinder? Or is it perpetually exalted by ever-changing true visions of infinity? And what did poor shoggoth-stampeded Danforth really think he saw beyond the two horrific mountain chains down there before he got amnesia? And is that last a blessing or a curse? Gad, he and I are suited to each other…the mind-smitten helping the nerve-shattered…fit nurses for felines….”