by Clark Ashton Smith
(Dedicated to H. P. Lovecraft)
I find it peculiarly difficult to express the exact nature of the
sentiment which Tomeron had always evoked in me. However, I am sure
that the feeling never partook, at any time, of what is ordinarily
known as friendship. It was a compound of unusual esthetic and
intellectual elements, and was somehow closely allied in my thoughts
with the same fascination that has drawn me ever since early childhood
toward all things that are remote in space and time, or which have
about them the irresolvable twilight of antiquity. Somehow, Tomeron
seemed never to belong to the present; but one could readily have
imagined him as living in some bygone age. About him, there was nothing
whatever of the lineaments of our own period; and he even went so far
as to affect in his costume an approximation to the garments that were
worn several centuries ago. His complexion was extremely pale and
cadaverous, and he stooped heavily from poring over ancient tomes and
no less ancient maps. He moved always with the slow, meditative pace
of one who dwells among far-off reveries and memories; and he spoke
often of people and events and ideas that have long been forgotten.
For the most part, he was apparently unheedful of present things; and
I felt that for him the huge city of Ptolemides, in which we both
dwelt, with all its manifold clamor and tumult, was little more
than a labyrinth of painted vapors. Oddly enough, there was a like
vagueness in the attitude of others toward Tomeron; and though he had
always been accepted without question as a representative of the noble
and otherwise extinct family from which he claimed descent, nothing
appeared to be known about his actual birth and antecedents. With two
servants, who were both deaf-mutes, who were very old and who likewise
wore the raiment of a former age, he lived in the semi-ruinous mansion
of his ancestors, where, it was said, none of the family had dwelt for
many generations. There he pursued the occult and recondite studies
that were so congenial to his mind; and there, at certain intervals, I
was wont to visit him.
I cannot recall the precise date and circumstances of the beginning
of my acquaintance with Tomeron. Though I come of a hardy line that
is noted for the sanity of its constitution, my faculties have been
woefully shaken by the horror of the happening with which that
acquaintance ended. My memory is not what it was, and there are
certain lacunae, for which my readers must contrive to forgive me. The
only wonder is, that my powers of recollection have survived at all,
beneath the hideous burden they have had to bear; for, in a more than
metaphoric sense, I have been as one condemned to carry with him at all
times and in all places the loathsome incubus of things long dead and
corrupt.
I can readily recall, however, the studies to which Tomeron had
devoted himself, the lost demonian volumes from Hyperborea and Mu and
Atlantis with which his library shelves were heaped to the ceiling,
and the queer charts, not of any land that lies above the surface of
the earth, on which he pored by perpetual candle-light. I shall not
speak of these studies, for they would seem too fantastic and too
macabre for credibility; and that which I have to relate is incredible
enough in itself. I shall speak, however, of certain strange ideas
with which Tomeron was much pre-occupied, and concerning which he so
often discoursed to me in that deep, guttural and monotonous voice
of his, that had the reverberation of unsounded caverns in its tones
and cadences. He maintained that life and death were not the fixed
conditions that people commonly believed them to be; that the two
realms were often intermingled in ways not readily discerned, and had
penumbral borderlands; that the dead were not always dead, nor the
living, as such terms are habitually understood. But the manner in
which he spoke of those ideas was extremely vague and general; and
I could never induce him to specify his meaning or to proffer some
concrete illustration that would render it intelligible to a mentality
such as mine, that was unused to dealing in the cobwebs of abstraction.
Behind his words, there hovered, or seemed to hover, a legion of dark,
amorphous images that I could never formulate or depict to myself in
any way, till the fatal denouement of our descent into the catacombs
of Ptolemides.
I have already said that my feeling for Tomeron was never anything
that could be classified as friendship. But even from the first, I
was well aware that Tomeron had a curious fondness for me--a fondness
whose nature I could not comprehend, and with which I could hardly even
sympathize. Though he fascinated me at all times, there were occasions
when my interest was not un-alloyed with a sense of actual repulsion.
At whiles, his pallor was _too_ cadaverous, too suggestive of fungi
that have grown in the dark, or of leprous bones by moonlight; and
the stoop of his shoulders conveyed to my brain the idea that they
bore a burden of centuries through which no man could conceivably have
lived. He aroused always a certain awe in me; and the awe was sometimes
mingled with an indeterminate fear.
I do not remember how long our acquaintance had continued; but I do
remember that he spoke with increasing frequency, toward the end, of
those bizarre ideas at which I have hinted. Also, I felt that he was
troubled about something, for he often looked at me with a mournful
gleam in his hollow eyes; and sometimes he would speak, with peculiar
stress, of the great regard that he had for me. And one night he said:
"Theolus, the time is coming when you must know the truth--must know
me as I am, and not as I have been permitted to seem. There is a term
to all things, and all things are obedient to inexorable laws. I would
that it were otherwise, but neither I nor any man, among the living
or among the dead, can lengthen at will the term of any state or
condition of being, or alter the laws that decree such conditions."
Perhaps it was well that I did not understand him, and that I was
unable to attach much importance to his words or to the singular
intentness of his bearing as he uttered them. For a few more days, I
was spared the knowledge which I now carry. Then, one evening, Tomeron
spoke thus:
"I am now compelled to ask an odd favor of you, which I hope you will
grant me, in consideration of our long friendship. The favor is, that
you accompany me this very night to those vaults of my family which lie
in the catacombs of Ptolemides."
Though much surprised by the request, and not altogether pleased, I was
nevertheless unable to deny him. I could not imagine the purpose of
such a visit as the one proposed; but, as was my wont, I forebore to
interrogate Tomeron, and merely told him that I would accompany him to
the vaults if such were his desire.
"I thank you, Theolus, for this proof of friendship," he replied
earnestly. "Believe me, I am loath to ask it; but there has been a
certain deception, an odd misunderstanding which cannot go on any
longer. Tonight, you will know the truth."
Carrying torches, we left the mansion of Tomeron and sought the ancient
catacombs of Ptolemides, which lie beyond the walls and have long been
disused, for there is now a fine necropolis in the very heart of the
city. The moon had gone down beyond the desert that encroaches toward
the catacombs; and we were forced to light our torches long before we
came to the subterranean adits; for the rays of Mars and Jupiter in a
sodden and funereal sky were not enough to illumine the perilous path
we followed among mounds and fallen obelisks and broken graves. At
length we discovered the dark and weed-choked entrance of the charnels;
and here Tomeron led the way with a swiftness and surety of footing
that bespoke long familiarity with the place.
Entering, we found ourselves in a crumbling passage where the bones of
dilapidated skeletons were scattered amid the rubble that had fallen
from the sides and roof. A choking stench of stagnant air and of
age-old corruption made me pause for a moment; but Tomeron scarcely
appeared to perceive it, for he strode onward, lifting his torch and
beckoning me to follow. We traversed many vaults in which mouldy bones
and verdigris-eaten sarcophagi were piled about the walls or strewn
where desecrating thieves had left them in bygone years. The air was
increasingly dank, chill and miasmal; and mephitic shadows crouched or
swayed before our torches in every niche and corner. Also, as we went
onward, the walls became more ruinous and the bones we saw on every
hand were greener with the mould of time.
At last we rounded a sudden angle of the low cavern we were following.
Here we came to vaults that evidently belonged to some noble family,
for they were quite spacious and there was but one sarcophagus in each
vault.
"My ancestors and my family lie here," said Tomeron.
We reached the end of the cavern and were confronted by a blank wall.
At one side, was the final vault, in which an empty sarcophagus stood
open. The sarcophagus was wrought of the finest bronze and was richly
carven.
Tomeron paused before the vault and turned to me. By the flickering
uncertain light, I thought that I saw a look of strange and
unaccountable distress on his features.
"I must beg you to withdraw for a moment," he said, in a low and
sorrowful voice. "Afterwards, you can return."
Surprised and puzzled, I obeyed his request and went slowly back along
the cavern for some distance. Then I returned to the place where I
had left him. My surprize was heightened when I found that he had
extinguished his torch and had dropped it on the threshold of the final
vault. Also, Tomeron himself was not visible anywhere.
Entering the vault, since there was no other place where he could
have hidden himself, I looked about for him, but the room was empty.
At least, I deemed it empty till I looked again at the richly carven
sarcophagus and saw that it was now tenanted, for a cadaver lay within,
shrouded in a winding sheet of a sort that has not been used for
centuries in Ptolemides.
I drew nigh to the sarcophagus, and peering into the face of the
cadaver, I saw that it bore a fearful and strange resemblance to the
face of Tomeron, though it was bloated and puffed with the adipocere of
death and was purple with the shadows of decay, as after long ages in a
charnel air. And looking again, I saw that it was indeed Tomeron.
I would have screamed aloud with the horror that came upon me; but my
lips were benumbed and frozen, and I could only whisper Tomeron's name.
But as I whispered it, the lips of the cadaver seemed to part, and the
tip of its tongue protruded between them. And I thought that the tip
trembled, as if Tomeron were about to speak and answer me. But gazing
more closely I saw that the trembling was merely the movement of worms
as they twisted up and down and to and fro, and sought to crowd each
other from Tomeron's tongue.
* * * * *