At length, completing his notes, Zarnak rose and went to a steel cabinet against one wall, whose topmost drawer he unlocked with a small key. He drew forth a tray lined with black velvet whereupon reposed a number of curious objects shaped like five-pointed stars. Some had been carved from a stony mineral, either slate gray or dull green. The bottom row were of ceramic, taffy-colored, baked in a kiln and heavily glazed. These last had been manufactured for Zarnak by a sculptor friend in Seattle, and Zarnak himself had consecrated them, had energized them with power, according to an old formula he had discovered in Clithanus.
Thoughtfully, he weighed the star-shaped amulet of the Elder Gods in the palm of one hand, while his gaze brooded upon the stone image. It would be interesting to discover whether the statuette of Ythogtha had so impregnated the mind of Parker Winfield with its malign and sinister influence that the dreams continued even without the eidolon being present as a sort of “conductor."
It would also be interesting to learn what happened when one of the star stones came in physical contact with the image from Outside ....
THE dream began as all the dreams began: He was sinking slowly down through luminous water that dimmed and darkened around him into blackest gloom, lit only with that eerie emerald radiance from the ruin. He was vaguely conscious of stifling pressure from the many tons of water above him, of wet cold, of utter helplessness ....
Parker Winfield felt his body drift without volition over the murky vista of tumbled stone blocks that were matted with pallid weed and thick with slime ... the broken stone ruin came closer, ever closer. The weird green luminance waxed in strength, pulsing like the beating of some enormous heart ....
Now his dream-form was floating up the mossy, mud-thick stone steps; now the very portal of the ruin filled his vision, immense, of unthinkable antiquity, concealing God alone knew what horrible abnormality, what monstrous dweller in the depths ....
The portal opened: Throbbing green radiance smote Parker Winfield full in the face, blinding, dazzling him—then his dreamer’s vision adjusted to the unwholesome light, and he strove to see the source of that lambent glow, which seemed throned in some vast and oddly angled chair
Then a flash of clear, pure, golden light wiped the dreamscape away!
Winfield awoke, gasping, saturated with cold perspiration, hands shaking like willows in a wind. He stared about him with wild and haunted gaze, seeing only his own darkened bedroom, nothing more. A wave of sheer relief sluiced through him, washing away the residue of night-fear—
The telephone rang. With nerveless hands, Winfield snatched up the instrument.
"Yes?"
"Doctor Zarnak here," said the familiar voice. "Have you had another of those sea-dreams?"
"I certainly have, and worse than the ones before, although it ended differently from the others—"
Zarnak listened carefully to his client’s description of the nightmare. From time to time he made small, precise notes in the book on his desk before him. When the other was finished with his recitaclass="underline"
"Very good. I believe I have isolated and eradicated the source of the infection, as you might call it. You shall dream no more; or, rather, such dreams as you experience from henceforward will be only the healthy dreams of normal sleep ... ah, one thing more. I regret to tell you that the jadeite image from your grandfather's collection of artifacts met with severe damage during the testing process, and I will be unable to return it. Yes; very good. And you are shipping the remainder of the collection to the Institute? Very satisfactory. Good day to you."
Zarnak replaced the instrument in its cradle, made a final note in his book, rose, and stepped silently from the room.
On the asbestos mat atop the small steel and porcelain table which had borne the jadeite image and the star-stone now reposed only a heap of fine-gray ash. The sharp stench of ozone hovered in the air.
It was much better so ... and the case was one that had had, after all, a happy ending.
I HAVE always been pretty confident that August Derleth borrowed the title for his novel The Lurker at the Threshold from Robert Hitchins' 1911 novel of spiritualism The Dweller on the Threshold, and equally sure that Lin Carter derived the title of the following story, “Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods”, from the anonymous 1888 lost race novel A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder. We know Derleth appreciated Hitchins' work, though he happens not to mention this particular novel by name as far as i know, while Lin Carter, being a fan of lost race novels and having written some himself, would have to have been familiar with Strange Manuscript. Lucky for me, both Derleth and Carter are in no position to prove me wrong.
The present tale shares certain features in common with "The Winfield Heritance" both make passing reference to Harold Hadley Copeland and his researches, as well as to the terrible Xothic legend cycle, and both have some link with Derleth’s The Lurker at the Threshold. It is interesting, moreover, that whereas "The Winfield Heritance" branches off from the third episode of Derleth’s Lurker—the "Narrative of Winfield Phillips", in which the eponymous Phillips plays Dr. Parker to Seneca Lapham’s Solar Pons—"Strange Manuscript" builds instead on the first and second episodes, “Billington’s Wood” and “Manuscript of Stephen Bates.” Not only are Seneca Lapham and Winfield Phillips not mentioned in “Strange Manuscript", but Carter has ignored the events of the third episode entirely. In that concluding segment, Derleth had arbitrarily swept away all that preceded, including the identity of the monster as Ossadogowah, the son of Tsathoggua, substituting Yog-Sothoth. Carter here has returned to the original conception of Tsathoggua, Junior. While even Lin Carter lacked the chutzpah to dare substitute a new conclusion to Lurker, something I ventured with "The Round Tower" (see The Dumwich Cycle), in "Strange Manuscript Found in the Vermont Woods" he did at least try to tie up some of the loose ends Derleth left hanging.
We ought also to note the connection between this story and Carter’s Book of Eibon chapter, “The Feaster from the Stars", in which the same entity is conjured. "Strange Manuscript" is also woven into the fabric of the Xothic cycle by virtue of the connection of its protagonist with the Hoag family of Arkham, whose scion, Captain Abner Exekiel Hoag, first brought back the manuscript of the Ponape Scripture. The sonnet cycle “Dreams from R'lyeh” provides another glimpse of the heirs of this tainted line.
I have noticed an intriguing little blip in a couple of Mythos tales (maybe there are more) which may be worth pointing out, and that is the occasional presence of odd variants on familiar biblical names. I have always liked August Derleth’s "Alijah [for Elijah] Billington in The Lurker at the Threshold, and Lin Carter has an odd spelling of Ezekiel in the name "Abner Exckiel Hoag." Of course, as in names like "Xavier”, the "X" could be said as either an "x" or a "z." I assume "Exekiel" is to be pronounced with a "z." The name "Abner Exckiel Hoag” seems to stem from two sources, "Hoag", a common enough New England name, was the lost name of a friend of Lovecraft to whose collected poems HPL wrote the introduction. James E. Hoag’s "To the American Flag", in fact, mistakenly appears attributed to Lovecraft in the latter’s own Collected Poems! "Abner Exckiel" is a pair of biblical names, those of the military chief of staff tor King David, who cried to dissuade him from the disastrous census of his people (2 Samuel 24), and the Exilic Jewish priest-prophet Ezekiel. Lin Carter had combined both names long before, in his Belmont novel The Tower at the Edge of Time (1968), where there is a mystic seer named, improbably for an Oriental, "Abdekiel.”