“Well, I really don’t know,” Spellman carefully considered. “But see here, Larner, favors work two ways, you know? You still haven’t answered my question. I might be able to do as you ask, but are you willing to tell me what happened the night Merritt died?”
Larner’s eyes, however, had gone furtive, nervous again. He turned his face away. “We’ll handle it ourselves, Spellman, no matter the price,” he muttered. Then he glanced sharply back at the face of the student framed in the barred window, and again Spellman was amazed at the mercurial property of the man’s character. Now his eyes were penetrating, almost sane. “Nothing happened. Merritt took a fit, that’s all. He was a madman—you know?” Again Larner turned away, this time to walk over to his bed and lie down in his former position.
Spellman, knowing that their “chat” was over, continued slowly down the stark corridor, peering in at the barred spy-holes as he went.
The remainder of that night, despite the fact that he knew all was in order, Martin Spellman could not rid his subconscious of distant alarm bells, and as he walked the nighted halls he found himself occasionally glancing nervously over his shoulder.
• • •
Spellman had the next weekend free of duty, and he used his Saturday to track down Larner’s strange references in the Cthaat Aquadingen. He eventually found a decidedly alien-looking—chant?—hidden away in one of the manuscript’s four coded sections under the legible heading “Sixth Sathlatta.” Almost without knowing, he copied the weirdly jumbled letters down onto a sheet of paper, attempting a tongue-twisting pronounciation as he did so:
“Ghe ‘phnglui, mglw’ngh ghee’yh, Yibb-Tstll,
Fhtagn mglw y’tlette ngh’wgah, Yibb-Tstll,
Ghe’phnglui mglw-ngh ahkobhg’shg, Yibb-Tstll,
THABAITE!—YIBB-TSTLL, YIBB-TSTLL, YIBB-TSTLL!”
Then, before searching for further references to Yibb-Tstll, the young nurse spent a few more minutes vainly trying to make something of what he had written down. Finally he gave up the hopeless task, moving on eventually to find the notes he sought—crowded marginalia apparently deciphered from the coded pages, so-called methods of evocation—in another of the book’s sections. To clarify the “message” of these notes, and to make of them something of a readable passage, again, as with the Sixth Sathlatta, he neatly copied the words down onto paper:
(1) TO CALL THE BLACK:
This method involves a wafer, of (flour?) and water composition—printed with the Sixth Sathlatta in the
original
symbols—handed to the victim with the summoning chant (Necronomicon, p. 224, under heading
Hoy-Dhin)
called out aloud within the said victim’s hearing. This will not produce Yibb-Tstll but his Black Blood, which has the property of being able to live apart from Him; called from a universe so alien that it is known only to Yibb-Tstll and Yog-Sothoth, conterminous with all spaces and times. The victim is taken when the Black Blood settles like a mantle about him and smothers him. Then the juice of Yibb-Tstll returns with the soul of the victim to the body of The Drowner in His own continuum….
(2) TO SEE YIBB-TSTLL IN DREAMS:
…& the Sixth Sathlatta may be used…that one might scry in Dreams the Form of The Drowner, Yibb-Tstll, who walks in all Times & Spaces. It must however be observed that the Chant should be used sparingly—
once only—
before each Sleep wherein the Scrying is to be done, lest the Seer impart into That on which he gazes a Perception of the Gate of his Mind; & that, in using this Gate to enter from Outside, & in returning thither through this same Gate, Yibb-Tstll may
burn out
the Mind & Gate & all in His coming & going…for the Agony is great & Death certain. Nor, in such a visitation, would His Actions in this Sphere be controlled; The Drowner’s Appetite was well known to the Adepts of old….
(3) TO CALL YIBB-TSTLL:
This method again involves the use of the Sixth Sathlatta: called out three times by thirteen adepts in unison at midnight of any First Day. Note:
any
thirteen callers will find the ritual as described answered, provided at least one amongst them is an adept; but unless at least
seven
of the callers are adepts—and unless, on the night before the midnight of a calling, they first seal their souls with the Naach-Tith Barrier—they may well suffer hideous reversals and penalties!
• • •
There was a note here in red ink, added by Larner to the foregoing marginalia: “Must try to find the remainder of the words to raise the barrier of Naach-Tith….” Obviously, Spellman thought, at the time the man in the ward called Hell had written that last cryptic note, he had already been well along the strange paths of insanity.
For the rest of the afternoon Spellman left the pages of his rapidly shaping manuscript alone and turned to his studies, only making a break for a meal at about six and returning to his textbooks immediately after. At eight he brewed a pot of coffee, which, rather than giving him a lift, seemed to make him somewhat weary so that he lay down on his bed for a few minutes. He had been more tired than he thought, however, waking up cramped and chilly some three hours later when a nightmare—the nature of which he could not remember—shocked him from his sleep.
He turned on his gas fire then, brewing another cup of coffee before taking out his manuscript to make a few small alterations and further notes. He worked solidly until two in the morning, only undressing and climbing into bed when he was satisfied that the current chapter of his book was going well. But before sleeping he took up the loose sheets of paper bearing those notes copied earlier from the Cthaat Aquadingen.
Again, out loud, he commenced to attempt a pronounciation of that weird jumble of letters entitled the Sixth Sathlatta, fancying that his low utterances this time sounded more nearly like they should. But before reaching the end of the second line, when he felt a strange dread welling up inside him, he paused. An involuntary shudder ran the length of his spine.
What was it he had read of this so-called “invocation”? Yes, there it was, just as he had copied it down: “…& the Sixth Sathlatta may be used…that one night scry in Dreams the Form of The Drowner, Yibb-Tstll, who walks in all Times & Spaces.”
An odd dizziness seemed to come over him and he shook his head to clear it; but though this steadied him somewhat, nonetheless he put away his papers and settled himself down in bed. Something was wrong with his nerves, that was plain. It must be this place and its inmates. He would have to get himself down into Oakdeene village more often with Harold Moody.
Again Spellman dropped quickly off to sleep, and once more his dreams were of a nightmarish nature….
There were weird scenes of alien herbage and evil-looking monochrome flowers. Jungles of darkly exotic ferns stretched writhing fronds toward starless, dark green skies through which fantastic birds slid on veined and pulsating wings. There was a clearing close by in the hellish tangle of unknown growths, towards which Spellman’s subconscious spirit seemed drawn in some inexplicable fashion. Fungoid shrubs drew back from him as he moved toward the clearing, and huge insects buzzed evilly as they burst from the bells of poisonous-looking blooms at his approach. He realized that he was the alien in this monstrous dimension of dream, and that the reluctance of its denizens was such as his own might be were the roles reversed.
Soon he reached the clearing, a great scabrous area of bleached and sterile earth stretching for at least a mile before the jungle took up again on the other side. In the center of this hideous expanse The Thing stood, and at that distance Spellman judged It to be at least three times as tall as a man. As he drew closer across the crumbling and scabby ground he saw that The Thing was turning, slowly turning about on feet hidden from his view by a great green cloak, a cloak that bulged and jerked and writhed as it fell from just beneath the—head?—to the corroded and powdery surface on which it stood. Drawing still closer, the dream-Spellman felt a scream welling in his throat as the great figure turned towards him and he saw the face clearly for the first time. Had the terrible shape not gone on turning—had those eyes noticed him for a single moment—Martin Spellman knew he must shriek out loud, but no, The Thing in Green continued Its apparently aimless turning, and Its voluminous cloak was alive with uncanny motion….