Whispers: An anthology of Fantasy and Horror

THE HOUSE OF CTHULHU by Brian Lumley

Now it happened aforetime that Zar-thule the Conqueror who is called Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities, swam out of the East with his dragonships; aye, even beneath the snapping sails of his dragonships. The wind was but lately turned favorable, and now the weary rowers nodded over their shipped oars while sleepy steersmen held the course. And there Zar-thule descried him in the sea the island Arlyeh, whereon loomed tall and twisted towers builded of black stones whose tortuous twinings were of contorted angles all unknown and utterly beyond the ken of men. Aye, and this island was redly litten by the sun sinking down over its awesome black crags and burning behind the asymmetrical aeries and spires carved therefrom by other than human hands.

And though Zar-thule felt a great hunger and stood sore weary of the great sea’s expanse behind the lolling dragon’s tail of his ship Redfire, and even though he gazed with red and rapacious eyes upon the black island, still he held off his reavers, biding them that they ride at anchor well out to sea until the sun was deeply down and gone into the Realm of Cthon; aye, even unto Cthon, who sits in silence to snare the sun in his net beyond the Edge of the World. Indeed, such were Zar-thule’s raiders as their deeds were best done by night, for then Gleeth the blind Moon God saw them not nor heard in his celestial deafness the horrible which ever attended unto such deeds.

For, notwithstanding his cruelty, which was beyond words, Zar-thule was no fool. He knew him that his wolves must rest before a whelming, that if the treasures of the House of Cthulhu were truly such as he imagined them in his mind’s eye—then that they must likewise be well guarded by fighting men who would not give up easily. And his reavers were fatigued even as Zar-thule himself, so that he rested them all down behind the painted bucklers lining the decks and furled him up the great dragon-dyed sails and set a watch that in the middle of the night he might be roused and rousing in turn the men of his twenty ships in unto and sack the island of Arlyeh.

Far had Zar-thule’s reavers rowed before the fair winds found them, aye, far from the rape of Yaht-Haal, the Silver City at the edge of the frostlands. Their provisions were all but eaten, their swords all oceanrot in rusting sheaths; but now they ate them all of their remaining regimen and drank them of the liquors thereof and cleansed and sharpened their dire blades before taking themselves into the arms of Shoosh, Goddess of the Still Slumbers. They well knew them one and all that soon they will be at the sack, each for himself and loot to that sword’s wielder whose blade drank long and deep.

And Zar-thule had promised them great treasures, aye, even great treasures from the House of Cthulhu, for back there in the sacked and seared city at the edge of the frostlands he had heard it from the bubbling and anguished lips of Voth Vehm the name of the so-called “forbidden” isle of Arlyeh. Voth Vehm, in the throes of terrible tortures, had called out the name of his brother-priest, Hath Vehm, who guarded the House of Cthulhu in Arlyeh. And too Voth Vehm had answered even in the hour of his dying to Zar-thule’s additional tortures; crying out that Arlyeh was indeed forbidden and held in thrall by the sleeping but yet dark and terrible god Cthulhu, the gate to whose House his brother-priest guarded.

Then had Zar-thule reasoned that Arlyeh must contain riches indeed, for he knew it was not meet that brother-priests betray one another; and aye, surely had Voth Vehm spoken exceedingly fearfully of this dark and terrible god Cthulhu that he might thus divert Zar-thule’s avarice from the ocean sanctuary of his brother-priest, Hath Vehm. Thus reckoned Zar-thule, even brooding on the dead and disfigured hierophant’s words, until he bethought him to leave the sacked city. Then, with the flames leaping brightly and reflected in his red wake, Zar-thule put to sea in his dragonships; aye, even did he put himself to sea, all loaded down with the silver booty, in search of Arlyeh and the treasures of the House of Cthulhu. And thus came he to this place.

Shortly before the midnight hour, the watch roused Zar-thule up from the arms of Shoosh, aye, and all the freshened men of the dragonships; and then beneath Gleeth the blind Moon Gods pitted silver face, seeing that the wind had fallen, they muffled their oars and dipped them deep and so closed in with the shoreline. A dozen fathoms from beaching, out rang Zar-thule’s plunder cry, and his drummers took up a stern and steady beat by which the trained but yet rampageous reavers might advance to the sack.

Came the scrape of keel on grit, and down from his dragon’s head leapt Zar-thule to the sullen shallow waters, and all his captains and men, to wade ashore and stride the night-black strand and wave their swords—and all for naught! Lo, the island stood quiet and still and seemingly untended . . .

Only now did the Sacker of Cities take note of this isle’s truly awesome aspect. Black piles of tumbled masonry, festooned with weeds from the tides, rose up from the dark wet sand, and there seemed inherent in these gaunt and immemorial relics a foreboding not alone of bygone times; great crabs scuttled in and about the archaic ruins and gazed with stalked ruby eyes upon the intruders; even the small waves broke with an eerie hush, hush, hush upon the sand and pebbles and primordial exuviae of crumbled yet seemingly sentient towers and tabernacles. The drummers faltered and paused and silence reigned.

Now many of them among these reavers recognized rare gods and supported strange superstitions, and Zar-thule knew this and had no liking for their silence. It was a silence that might yet yield mutiny!

“Hah!” quoth he, who worshipped neither god nor demon nor yet lent ears to the gaunts of night: “See—the guards have known of our coming and have fled to the far side of the island—or perhaps they gather rank at the House of Cthulhu.” So saying he formed him up his men into a body and advanced into the island.

And as they marched they passed him by the paleolithic piles not yet ocean-sundered, striding through silent streets whose fantastic facades gave back the beat of the drummers in a strangely muted monotone.

And lo, mummied faces of coeval antiquity seemed to leer from the empty and oddly-angled towers and craggy spires; fleet ghouls that flitted from shadow to shadow apace with the marching men, until some of those hardened grew sore afraid and begged them of Zar-thule: “Master, let us get us gone from here, for it appears that there is no treasure, and this place is like unto no other; and that it stinks of death, aye even of death and of them that walk the shadowlands.”

But Zar-thule rounded on one who stood close to him muttering thus, crying: “Coward!—out on you!” Whereupon he lifted up his sword and cleft the trembling reaver in two parts, so that the sundered man screamed once before falling with twin thuds to the black earth. But now Zar-thule perceived that indeed that many of his men were sore afraid, and so he had him torches lighted and brought up and they pressed on into the island.

There, beyond low dark hills, they came to a great gathering of queerly carved and monolithic edifices, all of the same strange design comprising confused angles and surfaces and all with the stench of the pit, aye, even the fetor of the very pit about them. And in the center of these malodorous megaliths there stood the greatest tower of them all, a massive menhir that loomed and leaned windowless to a great height and about which at its base squat pedestals bore likenesses of blackly carven krackens of terrifying aspect.

“Hah!” quoth Zar-thule. “Plainly is this the House of Cthulhu; and see its guards and priests have fled them all before us to escape the reaving!

But a tremulous voice, old and mazed, answered from the shadows at the base of one great pedestal, saying, “No one has fled, O reaver, for there are none here to flee, save me—and I cannot flee for I guard the gate against those who may utter The Words.”

At the sound of this old voice in the stillness, all the reavers started and peered nervously about at the leaping torch-cast shadows, but one stout captain stepped forward to drag from out of the dark an old, old man—and lo, all and all they fell back at once seeing the mien of this mage. For he bore upon his face and hands, aye, and upon all visible parts of him, a gray and furry lichen that seemed to crawl upon him even as he stood crooked and trembled in his great age.

‘Who are you?” demanded Zar-thule, aghast at the sight of so hideous a spectacle of afflicted infirmity; even Zar-thule, aghast . . .

“I am Hath Vehm, brother-priest of Veth Vehm who serves the gods in the temples of Yaht-Haal the Silver City. I am Hath Vehm, Keeper of the Gate at the House of Cthulhu, and I warn you that it is forbidden to touch me.” He gloomed with rheumy eyes at the captain who held him until that raider took away his hands.

“And I am Zar-thule the Conqueror,” quoth Zar-thule, less in awe now, “Reaver of Reavers, Seeker of Treasures and Sacker of Cities. I have plundered Yaht-Haal, aye, plundered the Silver City and burned it low. And I have tortured Veth Vehm unto death. But in his dying he cried out a name, aye, even with hot coals eating at his belly. And it was your name he spake. And he was truly a brother unto you, Hath Vehm, for he warned me of the terrible god Cthulhu and of this ‘forbidden’ isle Arlyeh. But I knew he spake not truly that he sought him only to protect a great and holy treasure and to protect his brother-priest who guards that treasure, doubtless with strange runes to frighten away the superstitious reavers! But Zar-thule is neither afraid nor credulous, old one. Here I stand and I say to you on your life that I’ll know the way into this treasure house within the hour!”

And now Zar-thule’s captains and men had taken heart. Hearing their chief speak thus to the ancient priest of the island, and noting the old ones trembling infirmity and hideous disfigurement, they had gone about and about the beetling tower of obscure angles until one of them had found him a door. Now this door was great, tall, solid, and wide and nowise hidden to the beholder; and yet at times it seemed narrow at its top and indistinct at its edges. It stood straight up in the wall of the House of Cthulhu, and yet looked as if to lean to one side . . . and then in one and the same moment lean to the other! It bore leering inhuman faces carven of its surface and horrid hieroglyphics, and these unknown characters seemed to writhe about the gorgon faces, and aye, those faces, too, moved and grimaced in the light of the flickering flambeaux.

The ancient Hath Vehm came to them where they gathered in wonder of the great door and spake thus: “Aye, that is the gate of the House of Cthulhu; I am its guardian.”

“So,” spake Zar-thule, who was also come there, “and is there a key to this gate? I see no means of entry.”

“Aye, there is a key, but none such as you might readily imagine; for it is not of metal but of words!”

“Magic?” asked Zar-thule, undaunted, he had heard aforetimes of similar thaumaturgies.

“Aye, magic!” agreed the Guardian of the Gate.

Zar-thule put the point of his sword to the old man’s throat, observing as he did so the furry gray growth moving upon the elder’s face and scrawny neck, saying: “Then say those words now and let’s have done!”

“Nay, I cannot say The Words—I am sworn to guard the gate that The Words are never spoken, neither by myself nor by any other who would foolishly or mistakenly open the House of Cthulhu. You may kill me—aye, even take my life with that very blade you now hold to my throat—but I will not utter The Words . . .”

“And I say that you will—eventually!” quoth Zar-thule in an exceedingly cold voice . . . in a voice even as cold as the northern sleet. Whereupon he put down his sword and ordered two of his men to come forward, commanding that they take the ancient and tie him down to thonged pegs made fast in the ground, one thong to each arm and one to each leg, so that he was spread out flat upon his back not far from the great and oddly fashioned door in the wall of the House of Cthulhu.

Then a fire was lighted of the sparse shrubs of the low hills and of driftwood fetched from the shore; and others of Zar-thule’s reavers went out and trapped certain great nocturnal birds that knew not the power of flight; and yet others found a spring of brackish water and filled them up the water-skins. And soon tasteless but satisfying meat turned on the spits above a fire, and in the same fire sword-points glowed red, then white; until Zar-thule and the captains and men had eaten their fill, whereupon the Reaver of Reavers motioned to his torturers that they should attend to their task. And the torturers came forward to retrieve their swords; aye, for of course those swords that had their tips in the fire were theirs. And Zar-thule had trained these torturers himself, so that they excelled in the arts of the pincer and hot irons.

But here there came a diversion. For some little time a certain captain—his name was Cush-had; he who first found the old priest in the shadows of the great pedestal and dragged him forth—had been peering most strangely at his hands in the firelight and rubbing them upon the hide of his jacket. Of a sudden he cursed and leapt to his feet, springing up from the remnants of his meal. He danced about in a frightened manner, beating wildly at the tumbled flat stones about with his hands. Then of a sudden he stopped and cast sharp glances at his naked forearms. In the same seconds his eyes stood out in his face and he screamed as if he were pierced through and through with a keen blade; and he rushed to the fire and thrust his hands in its heart, even to his elbows. Then he drew his arms from out the flames, staggering and moaning and calling upon certain trusted gods, and tottered away into the night, his arms steaming and dripping bubbly liquid upon the ground.

Amazed, Zar-thule sent a man after him with a torch, who soon returned trembling with a very pale face in the firelight to tell how the madman had fallen—or leapt—to his death in a deep crevice, but that before he fell there had been visible upon his face a creeping, furry grayness! And as he had fallen, aye, even as he crashed down to his death, he had screamed: “Unclean, unclean, unclean!”

Then, all and all when they heard this, they remembered the old priest’s words of warning when Cush-had dragged him out of hiding, and the way he had gloomed upon the unfortunate captain, and they looked at the ancient where he lay held fast to the earth. The two reavers whose task it had been to tie him down looked them one to the other with very wide eyes, their faces whitening perceptibly in the firelight, and they took up a quiet and secret examination of their persons; aye, even a minute examination . . .

Zar-thule felt fear rising in his reavers like the east wind when it rises up fast and wild in the desert of Sheb. He spat at the ground and lifted up his sword, crying: “Listen to me! You are all superstitious cowards, all and all of you, with your old wives fears and mumbo-jumbo. What’s there here to be frightened of; an old man, alone, on a black rock in the sea?”

“But I saw upon Cush-had’s face—” began the man who had followed the demented captain.

“You only thought you saw something,” Zar-thule cut him off. “It was only the flickering of your torch-fire and nothing more. Cush-had was a madman!”

“But—”

“Cush-had was a madman!” Zar-thule said again, and his voice turned very cold. “Are you, too, insane? Is there room for you, too, at the bottom of that crevice?” But the man shrank back and said no more, and yet again did Zar-thule call his torturers that they should be about their work.

The hours passed . . .

Blind and coldly deaf Gleeth the old Moon God may have been, and yet perhaps he had sensed something of the agonized screams and the stench of roasting human flesh drifting up from Arlyeh that night, for certainly he seemed to sink down in the sky very quickly.

Now; however, the tattered and blackened figure stretched out upon the ground before the door in the wall of the House of Cthulhu was no longer strong enough to cry out loudly, and Zar-thule despaired for he had perceived that soon the priest of the island would sink into the last and longest of slumbers; and still The Words were not spoken. Too, the reaver king was perplexed by the ancient’s stubborn refusal to admit that the door in the looming menhir concealed treasure; but in the end he put down this effect of certain vows Hath Vehm had no doubt taken in his inauguration to the priesthood.

The torturers had not done their work well. They had been loath to touch the elder with anything but their hot swords; they would not—not even when threatened most direly—lay hands upon him or approach him more closely than absolutely necessary to the application of their agonizing art. The two reavers responsible for tying the ancient down were dead, slain by former comrades upon whom they had inadvertently lain hands of friendship; and those they had touched, their slayers, they too were shunned by their companions and sat apart from the other reavers.

As the first gray light of dawn began to show behind the eastern sea, Zar-thule finally lost all patience and turned upon the dying priest in a veritable fury. He took up his sword, raising it over his head in two hands—and then Hath Vehm spoke:

“Wait,” he whispered, his voice a low, tortured croak, “wait, O reaver—I will say The Words.”

“What?” cried Zar-thule, lowering his blade. “You will open the door?”

“Aye,” the cracked whisper came, “I will open the Gate—but, first, tell me: did you truly sack Yaht-Haal the Silver City and raze it with fire and torture my brother-priest to death?”

“I did all that,” Zar-thule callously nodded.

“Then come you close.” Hath Vehm’s voice sank low. “Closer, O reaver king, that you may hear me in my final hour.”

Eagerly the Seeker of Treasures bent him down his ear to the lips of the ancient, kneeling down beside him where he lay—and Hath Vehm immediately lifted up his head from the earth and spat upon Zar-thule!

Then, before the Sacker of Cities could think or make a move to wipe the slimy spittle from his brow, Hath Vehm said The Words; aye even in a loud and clear voice he said them—words of terrible import and alien cadence that only an adept might repeat—and at once there came a great rumble from the door in the beetling wall of weird angles.

Forgetting for the moment the tainted insult of the ancient priest, Zar-thule turned to see the huge and evilly carven door tremble and waver and then by some unknown power move or slide away until only a great black hole opened where it had been. And lo, in the early dawn light, the reaver horde pressed forward to seek them out the treasure with their eyes; aye, even to seek out the treasure beyond the open door. And Zar-thule too made to enter the House of Cthulhu, but again the dying hierophant cried out to him:

“Hold! There are more Words, O reaver king!”

“More Words?” Zar-thule turned and the priest, his life ebbing quickly, smiled mirthlessly at the sight of the furry gray blemish that crawled upon the barbarian’s forehead over his left eye.

“Aye, more Words! Listen: long and long ago, when the world was very young, before Arlyeh and the House of Cthulhu were first sunken into the sea, wise elder gods devised a rune that should Cthulhu’s House ever rise and be opened by foolish men, it might be sent down again—aye, and even Arlyeh itself sunken deep once more beneath the salt waters. Now I say those other Words!”

Swiftly the king reaver leapt, his sword lifting, but ere that blade could fall Hath Vehm cried out those other strange and dreadful Words; and lo, the whole island shook in the grip of a great earthquake. Now in awful anger and fear Zar-thule’s sword fell and hacked off the ancient’s whistling and spurting head from his ravened body; but even as the head rolled free, so the island shook itself again, and the ground rumbled and began to break open.

From the open door in the House of Cthulhu, whereinto the host of greedy reavers had rushed to the treasure, there now came loud and singularly hideous cries of fear and torment . . . and of a sudden and even more hideous stench. And now Zar-thule knew truly and truly indeed there was no treasure.

Great ebony clouds gathered swiftly and livid lightning crashed; winds rose up that blew Zar-thule’s long black hair over his face as he crouched in horror before the open door of the House of Cthulhu. Wide and wide were his eyes as he tried to peer beyond the reeking blackness of that namelessly ancient aperture—but a moment later he dropped his great sword to the ground and screamed; aye, even the Reaver of Reavers screamed. For two of his wolves had appeared from out of the darkness, more in the manner of whipped puppies than true wolves, shrieking and babbling and scrambling frantically over the queer angles of the orifice’s mouth . . . but they had emerged only to be snatched up and squashed like grapes by titanic tentacles that lashed after them from the dark depths beyond! And these rubbery appendages drew the crushed bodies back into the inky blackness, from which there instantly issued forth the most monstrously nauseating slobberings and suckings before the writhing members once more snaked forth into the dawn light. This time they caught at the edges of the opening, and from behind them pushed forward—a face!

Zar-thule gazed upon the enormously bloated visage of Cthulhu, and screamed again as that terrible Beings awful eyes found him where he crouched—found him and lit with an hideous light!

The reaver king paused, frozen, for but a moment—and yet long enough so that the ultimate horror of the thing framed in the titan threshold seared itself upon his brain—before his legs found their strength. Then he turned and fled; speeding away and over the low black hills and down to the shore and into his ship which he somehow managed, even single-handed and in his frantic terror, to cast off; and always in his mind’s eye there burned that fearful sight, the awful Visage and Being of Lord Cthulhu.

There had been the tentacles, springing from a green pulpy head about which they sprouted like lethiferous petals about the heart of an obscenely hybrid orchid; a scaled and amorphously elastic body of immense proportions, with clawed feet fore and hind; long narrow wings ill-fitting the horror that bore them in that it seemed patently impossible for any wings to lift so fantastic a bulk—and then there had been the eyes! Never before had Zar-thule seen such evil rampancy expressed in the ultimately leering malignancy of Cthulhu’s eyes!

And Cthulhu was not finished with Zar-thule, for even as the king reaver struggled madly with his sail, the monster came across the low hills in the dawn light, slobbering and groping down to the very water’s edge. Then, when Zar-thule saw against the morning the mountain that was Cthulhu, he went mad for a period; flinging himself from side to side of his ship so that he was like to fall into the sea, frothing at the mouth and babbling horribly in pitiful prayer—aye, even Zar-thule whose lips never before uttered prayers—to certain benevolent gods of which he had heard. And it seems that these kind gods, if indeed they exist, must have heard him!

Illustration by Mike Garcia.

With a roar and a blast greater than any before, there came the final shattering that saved Zar-thule’s mind, body, and soul, and the entire island split asunder; even the bulk of Arlyeh breaking into many parts and settling into the sea. And with a piercing scream of frustrated rage and lust—a scream which Zar-thule heard with his mind as well as his ears—the monster Cthulhu sank Him down also with the island and his House beneath the frothing waves.

A great storm raged then such that might attend the End of the World; banshee winds howled and demon waves crashed over and about Zar-thule’s dragonship, and for two days he gibbered and moaned in the rolling, shuddering scuppers of crippled Redfire before the mighty storm wore itself out.

Eventually, close to starvation, the one-time Reaver of Reavers was discovered becalmed upon a flat sea not far from the fair strands of bright Theem’hdra; and then, in the spicy hold of a rich merchant’s ship, he was borne in unto the wharves of the city of Klühn, Theem’hdra’s capital.

With long oars he was prodded ashore, stumbling and weak and crying out in his horror of living—for he had gazed upon Cthulhu! The use of the oars had much to do with his appearance, for now Zar-thule was changed indeed, into something that in less tolerant parts of the world might certainly have expected to be burned! But the people of Klühn were kindly folk; they burned him not but lowered him in a basket into a deep dungeon cell with torches to light the place and daily bread and water that he might live until his life was rightly done. And when he was recovered to partial health and sanity, learned men and physicians went to talk with him from above and ask him of his strange affliction, of which all in all stood in awe.

I, Teh Atht, was one of them that went to him, and that was how I came to hear of this tale. And I know it to be true for oft again over the years I have heard of this Loathly Lord Cthulhu that seeped down from the stars when the world was an inchoate infant. There are legends and legends, aye, and one of them is that when times have passed and the stars are right Cthulhu shall slobber forth from His House in Arlyeh again, and the world shall tremble to His tread and erupt in madness at His touch.

I leave this record for men as yet unborn, a record and a warning: leave well enough alone, for that is not dead which deeply dreams, and while perhaps the submarine tides have removed forever the alien taint which touched Arlyeh—that symptom of Cthulhu which loathsome familiar grew upon Hath Vehm and transferred itself upon certain reavers of Zar-thule—Cthulhu himself yet lives and waits upon those who would set him free. I know it. In dreams . . . I myself have heard His call!

And when dreams such as these come in the night to sour the sweet embrace of Shoosh, I wake and tremble and pace the crystal-paved floors of my rooms above the Bay of Klühn, until Cthon releases the sun from his net to rise again, and ever and ever I recall the aspect of Zar-thule as last I saw him in the flickering torchlight of his deep dungeon cell; a fumbling gray mushroom thing that moved not of its own volition but by reason of the parasite growth which lives upon and within it . . .