What happened then is scarcely to be described in words. It is full of
those paradoxes, contradictions and anomalies which have no place in
waking life, but which fill our more fantastic dreams and are taken as
matters of course till we return to our narrow, rigid, objective world
of limited causation and tri-dimensional logic. As the Hindoo continued
his tale, he had difficulty in avoiding what seemed--even more than
the notion of a man transferred through the years to boyhood--an air
of trivial, puerile extravagance. Mr. Aspinwall, in disgust, gave an
apoplectic snort and virtually stopped listening.
For the rite of the silver key, as practised by Randolph Carter in that
black, haunted cave within a cave, did not prove unavailing. From the
first gesture and syllable an aura of strange, awesome mutation was
apparent--a sense of incalculable disturbance and confusion in time
and space, yet one which held no hint of what we recognize as motion
and duration. Imperceptibly, such things as age and location ceased
to have any significance whatever. The day before, Randolph Carter
had miraculously leaped a gulf of years. Now there was no distinction
between boy and man. There was only the entity Randolph Carter, with a
certain store of images which had lost all connection with terrestrial
scenes and circumstances of acquisition. A moment before, there had
been an inner cave with vague suggestions of a monstrous arch and
gigantic sculptured hand on the farther wall. Now there was neither
cave nor absence of cave; neither wall nor absence of wall. There was
only a flux of impressions not so much visual as cerebral, amidst
which the entity that was Randolph Carter experienced perceptions or
registrations of all that his mind revolved on, yet without any clear
consciousness of the way in which he received them.
By the time the rite was over, Carter knew that he was in no region
whose place could be told by Earth's geographers, and in no age whose
date history could fix; for the nature of what was happening was not
wholly unfamiliar to him. There were hints of it in the cryptical
Pnakotic fragments, and a whole chapter in the forbidden _Necronomicon_
of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred, had taken on significance when he
had deciphered the designs graven on the silver key. A gate had been
unlocked--not, indeed, the Ultimate Gate, but one leading from Earth
and time to that extension of Earth which is outside time, and from
which in turn the Ultimate Gate leads fearsomely and perilously to the
Last Void which is outside all earths, all universes, and all matter.
There would be a Guide--and a very terrible one; a Guide who had been
an entity of Earth millions of years before, when man was undreamed of,
and when forgotten shapes moved on a steaming planet building strange
cities among whose last, crumbling ruins the first mammals were to
play. Carter remembered what the monstrous _Necronomicon_ had vaguely
and disconcertingly adumbrated concerning that Guide:
"_And while there are those_," the mad Arab had written, "_who have
dared to seek glimpses beyond the Veil, and to accept HIM as guide,
they would have been more prudent had they avoided commerce with HIM;
for it is written in the Book of Thoth how terrific is the price of
a single glimpse. Nor may those who pass ever return, for in the
vastnesses transcending our world are shapes of darkness that seize
and bind. The Affair that shambleth about in the night, the evil that
defieth the Elder Sign, the Herd that stand watch at the secret portal
each tomb is known to have, and that thrive on that which groweth out
of the tenants thereof:--all these Blacknesses are lesser than HE WHO
guardeth the Gateway: HE WHO will guide the rash one beyond all the
worlds into the Abyss of unnamable devourers. For HE is 'UMR AT-TAWIL,
the Most Ancient One, which the scribe rendereth as THE PROLONGED OF
LIFE._"
Memory and imagination shaped dim half-pictures with uncertain outlines
amidst the seething chaos, but Carter knew that they were of memory and
imagination only. Yet he felt that it was not chance which built these
things in his consciousness, but rather some vast reality, ineffable
and undimensioned, which surrounded him and strove to translate itself
into the only symbols he was capable of grasping. For no mind of Earth
may grasp the extensions of shape which interweave in the oblique gulfs
outside time and the dimensions we know.
There floated before Carter a cloudy pageantry of shapes and scenes
which he somehow linked with Earth's primal, eon-forgotten past.
Monstrous living things moved deliberately through vistas of fantastic
handiwork that no sane dream ever held, and landscapes bore incredible
vegetation and cliffs and mountains and masonry of no human pattern.
There were cities under the sea, and denizens thereof; and towers in
great deserts where globes and cylinders and nameless winged entities
shot off into space, or hurtled down out of space. All this Carter
grasped, though the images bore no fixed relation to one another or to
him. He himself had no stable form or position, but only such shifting
hints of form and position as his whirling fancy supplied.
He had wished to find the enchanted regions of his boyhood dreams,
where galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of
Thran, and elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled,
beyond forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns that sleep lovely
and unbroken under the moon. Now, intoxicated with wider visions, he
scarcely knew what he sought. Thoughts of infinite and blasphemous
daring rose in his mind, and he knew he would face the dreaded Guide
without fear, asking monstrous and terrible things of him.
All at once the pageant of impressions seemed to achieve a vague kind
of stabilization. There were great masses of towering stone, carven
into alien and incomprehensible designs and disposed according to
the laws of some unknown, inverse geometry. Light filtered down from
a sky of no assignable color in baffling, contradictory directions,
and played almost sentiently over what seemed to be a curved line of
gigantic hieroglyphed pedestals more hexagonal than otherwise, and
surmounted by cloaked, ill-defined shapes.
There was another shape, too, which occupied no pedestal, but which
seemed to glide or float over the cloudy, floor-like lower level. It
was not exactly permanent in outline, but held transient suggestions of
something remotely preceding or paralleling the human form, though half
as large again as an ordinary man. It seemed to be heavily cloaked,
like the shapes on the pedestals, with some neutral-colored fabric;
and Carter could not detect any eye-holes through which it might gaze.
Probably it did not need to gaze, for it seemed to belong to an order
of beings far outside the merely physical in organization and faculties.
A moment later Carter knew that this was so, for the Shape had spoken
to his mind without sound or language. And though the name it uttered
was a dreaded and terrible one, Randolph Carter did not flinch in fear.
Instead, he spoke back, equally without sound or language, and made
those obeisances which the hideous _Necronomicon_ had taught him to
make. For this shape was nothing less than that which all the world has
feared since Lomar rose out of the sea, and the Children of the Fire
Mist came to Earth to teach the Elder Lore to man. It was indeed the
frightful Guide and Guardian of the Gate--'UMR AT-TAWIL, the ancient
one, which the scribe rendereth the PROLONGED OF LIFE.
The Guide knew, as he knew all things, of Carter's quest and coming,
and that this seeker of dreams and secrets stood before him unafraid.
There was no horror or malignity in what he radiated, and Carter
wondered for a moment whether the mad Arab's terrific blasphemous hints
came from envy and a baffled wish to do what was now about to be done.
Or perhaps the Guide reserved his horror and malignity for those who
feared. As the radiations continued, Carter eventually interpreted them
in the form of words.
* * * * *
"I am indeed that Most Ancient One," said the Guide, "of whom you know.
We have awaited you--the Ancient Ones and I. You are welcome, even
though long delayed. You have the key, and have unlocked the First
Gate. Now the Ultimate Gate is ready for your trial. If you fear, you
need not advance. You may still go back unharmed, the way you came. But
if you choose to advance----"
The pause was ominous, but the radiations continued to be friendly.
Carter hesitated not a moment, for a burning curiosity drove him on.
"I will advance," he radiated back, "and I accept you as my Guide."
At this reply the Guide seemed to make a sign by certain motions of his
robe which may or may not have involved the lifting of an arm or some
homologous member. A second sign followed, and from his well-learned
lore Carter knew that he was at last very close to the Ultimate Gate.
The light now changed to another inexplicable color, and the shapes on
the quasi-hexagonal pedestals became more clearly defined. As they sat
more erect, their outlines became more like those of men, though Carter
knew that they could not be men. Upon their cloaked heads there now
seemed to rest tall, uncertainly colored miters, strangely suggestive
of those on certain nameless figures chiselled by a forgotten sculptor
along the living cliffs of a high, forbidden mountain in Tartary; while
grasped in certain folds of their swathings were long scepters whose
carven heads bodied forth a grotesque and archaic mystery.
Carter guessed what they were and whence they came, and Whom they
served; and guessed, too, the price of their service. But he was still
content, for at one mighty venture he was to learn all. Damnation, he
reflected, is but a word bandied about by those whose blindness leads
them to condemn all who can see, even with a single eye. He wondered at
the vast conceit of those who had babbled of the _malignant_ Ancient
Ones, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a
wrath on mankind. As well, he thought, might a mammoth pause to visit
frantic vengeance on an angleworm. Now the whole assemblage on the
vaguely hexagonal pillars was greeting him with a gesture of those
oddly carven scepters and radiating a message which he understood:
"We salute you, Most Ancient One, and you, Randolph Carter, whose
daring has made you one of us."
Carter saw now that one of the pedestals was vacant, and a gesture
of the Most Ancient One told him it was reserved for him. He saw
also another pedestal, taller than the rest, and at the center of
the oddly curved line--neither semicircle nor ellipse, parabola nor
hyperbola--which they formed. This, he guessed, was the Guide's own
throne. Moving and rising in a manner hardly definable, Carter took his
seat; and as he did so he saw that the Guide had seated himself.
Gradually and mistily it became apparent that the Most Ancient One
was holding something--some object clutched in the outflung folds of
his robe as if for the sight, or what answered for sight, of the
cloaked Companions. It was a large sphere, or apparent sphere, of
some obscurely iridescent metal, and as the Guide put it forward a
low, pervasive half-impression of _sound_ began to rise and fall in
intervals which seemed to be rhythmic even though they followed no
rhythm of Earth. There was a suggestion of chanting--or what human
imagination might interpret as chanting. Presently the quasi-sphere
began to grow luminous, and as it gleamed up into a cold, pulsating
light of unassignable color, Carter saw that its flickerings conformed
to the alien rhythm of the chant. Then all the mitered, scepter-bearing
Shapes on the pedestals commenced a slight, curious swaying in the same
inexplicable rhythm, while nimbuses of unclassifiable light--resembling
that of the quasi-sphere--played around their shrouded heads.
The Hindoo paused in his tale and looked curiously at the tall,
coffin-shaped clock with the four hands and hieroglyphed dial, whose
crazy ticking followed no known rhythm of Earth.
"You, Mr. de Marigny," he suddenly said to his learned host, "do not
need to be told the particularly alien rhythm to which those cowled
Shapes on the hexagonal pillars chanted and nodded. You are the only
one else--in America--who has had a taste of the Outer Extension. That
clock--I suppose it was sent you by the Yogi poor Harley Warren used
to talk about--the seer who said that he alone of living men had been
to Yian-Ho, the hidden legacy of eon-old Leng, and had borne certain
things away from that dreadful and forbidden city. I wonder how many of
its subtler properties you know? If my dreams and readings be correct,
it was made by those who knew much of the First Gateway. But let me go
on with my tale."
* * * * *
At last, continued the Swami, the swaying and the suggestion of
chanting ceased, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping and
motionless heads faded, while the cloaked shapes slumped curiously on
their pedestals. The quasi-sphere, however, continued to pulsate with
inexplicable light. Carter felt that the Ancient Ones were sleeping
as they had been when he first saw them, and he wondered out of what
cosmic dreams his coming had aroused them. Slowly there filtered into
his mind the truth that this strange chanting ritual had been one of
instruction, and that the Companions had been chanted by the Most
Ancient One into a new and peculiar kind of sleep in order that their
dreams might open the Ultimate Gate to which the silver key was a
passport. He knew that in the profundity of this deep sleep they were
contemplating unplumbed vastnesses of utter and absolute outsideness,
and that they were to accomplish that which his presence had demanded.
The Guide did not share this sleep, but seemed still to be giving
instructions in some subtle, soundless way. Evidently he was implanting
images of those things which he wished the Companions to dream: and
Carter knew that as each of the Ancient Ones pictured the prescribed
thought, there would be born the nucleus of a manifestation visible
to his earthly eyes. When the dreams of all the Shapes had achieved a
oneness, that manifestation would occur, and everything he required
be materialized, through concentration. He had seen such things on
Earth--in India, where the combined, projected will of a circle of
adepts can make a thought take tangible substance, and in hoary
Atlaanât, of which few even dare speak.
Just what the Ultimate Gate was, and how it was to be passed, Carter
could not be certain; but a feeling of tense expectancy surged over
him. He was conscious of having a kind of body, and of holding the
fateful silver key in his hand. The masses of towering stone opposite
him seemed to possess the evenness of a wall, toward the center of
which his eyes were irresistibly drawn. And then suddenly he felt the
mental currents of the Most Ancient One cease to flow forth.
For the first time Carter realized how terrific utter silence, mental
and physical, may be. The earlier moments had never failed to contain
some perceptible rhythm, if only the faint, cryptical pulse of the
Earth's dimensional extension, but now the hush of the abyss seemed
to fall upon everything. Despite his intimations of body, he had no
audible breath; and the glow of 'Umr at-Tawil's quasi-sphere had grown
petrifiedly fixed and unpulsating. A potent nimbus, brighter than those
which had played round the heads of the Shapes, blazed frozenly over
the shrouded skull of the terrible Guide.
A dizziness assailed Carter, and his sense of lost orientation waxed
a thousandfold. The strange lights seemed to hold the quality of the
most impenetrable blacknesses heaped upon blacknesses, while about
the Ancient Ones, so close on their pseudo-hexagonal thrones, there
hovered an air of the most stupefying remoteness. Then he felt himself
wafted into immeasurable depths, with waves of perfumed warmth lapping
against his face. It was as if he floated in a torrid, rose-tinctured
sea; a sea of drugged wine whose waves broke foaming against shores of
brazen fire. A great fear clutched him as he half saw that vast expanse
of surging sea lapping against its far-off coast. But the moment of
silence was broken--the surgings were speaking to him in a language
that was not of physical sound or articulate words.
"_The Man of Truth is beyond good and evil_," intoned a voice that was
not a voice. "_The Man of Truth has ridden to All-Is-One. The Man of
Truth has learned that Illusion is the One Reality, and that Substance
is the Great Impostor._"
And now, in that rise of masonry to which his eyes had been so
irresistibly drawn, there appeared the outline of a titanic arch not
unlike that which he thought he had glimpsed so long ago in that cave
within a cave, on the far, unreal surface of the three-dimensioned
Earth. He realized that he had been using the silver key--moving it in
accord with an unlearned and instinctive ritual closely akin to that
which had opened the Inner Gate. That rose-drunken sea which lapped
his cheeks was, he realized, no more or less than the adamantine mass
of the solid wall yielding before his spell, and the vortex of thought
with which the Ancient Ones had aided his spell. Still guided by
instinct and blind determination, he floated forward--and through the
Ultimate Gate.