|
THE CALL OF CTHULHU'S CADILLAC
You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a
three-noted car horn, why I respond to the sound as others might to a draught of
cool air. What I will do is relate the horrible circumstances and leave you to
judge whether or not this forms a suitable explanation of my peculiarity.
The year was 1969. I was wandering among
the coiled wire racks of the paperback section of a local store. Passing by the
cookbooks and the seamy mysteries, my attention was caught by a black bound book
with pages trimmed with purple. It was not the purple-edged pages nor the
blood-red letters spelling "H. P. Lovecraft" that had arrested my
attention. No. It was the image on the cover that had stopped me in my tracks.
For there, staring back at me with black, lifeless sockets was a leering
ruby-hued skull, burning in tongues of orange flame. The title of this sinister
looking book? The Colour Out of Space and Others, a Lancer paperback.
There was something abhorrent, even
blasphemous, about the way the glowing flames and the leering skull combined on
the black background of the book. There was also something strangely . . . compelling.
To this day I cannot explain what made me draw the thing from its wire crypt and
leaf through its pages --- pages covered not with any nameless hieroglyphs of
earth's youth, but only the letters of our familiar alphabet. My hands did not
tremble at first contact with that book. How strange it seems to me now that
they did not.
I bought the book and brought it home. I
placed it on my shelf of unread paperbacks, along with Clarke and Asimov and a
dozen other science fiction authors. Before I slid it into place I glanced again
at the gloating skull. How strange it looked, and how unlike any of the books I
usually read. Not for the last time I wondered what had compelled me to buy a
book whose cover blurb began with the words "Ancient Evil".
I put the book out of my mind for at least
a week. The pursuit of an education creates more complications than can be
imagined, and in my case there were countless matters which required my personal
attention. With one thing or another, there was just too much to do.
And then the weekend came.
My parents had been invited by my Uncle
Mario to visit his house in Long Island. I remembered my uncle, a short figure
with dark eyes and well trimmed hair, as the man who owned a long black Cadillac
whose horn, when pressed, would sound a note, then switch to another, and
finally to a third, in rapid succession. It was an interesting toy and one he
enjoyed immensely.
My parents agreed to my uncle's
invitation. Being fifteen years old and my parents' son, I had little chance of
remaining home. In fact I had none. This left me with the problem of finding
something to occupy my time while my parents and my uncle sat over coffee and
spoke of nothing for several hours. The solution, of course, was obvious.
Early on that fateful morning, we set out
for Long Island. As I sat in our car's back seat counting Volkswagens on the
long trek eastward, the blind skull stared out through the window behind me and
smirked. It remained in the car several hours after our arrival, leering in
anticipation as greetings were exchanged and we entered the house.
Once inside, introduction rapidly slipped
into small talk, then into the boring doggerel adults find so addicting. I
watched for my chance to escape, found it, and slipped quietly away. Walking out
onto the balcony for some air I chanced to look down and was again stopped in my
tracks as I had been over a week before. Below me, leering as it had done now
for nearly nine days, the burning skull stared up through the car's rear window.
It seemed to be staring directly at me. My time had come.
I have no memory of leaving the balcony,
nor of returning with the black-bound book in my hands. I have only a vague
recollection of sitting in a cushioned chair, glancing again at that unwholesome
leering skull, then opening the cover and beginning to read my first sample of
"the greatest modern writer of weird fiction."
Soon I was absorbed in the book. Before my
mind's eye unfolded tales of ominous, loathsome, unspeakable evil hidden in
aeons-old darkness. Shadows of things undreamed were revealed to me in hints and
whispers. Over and over I found my self repeating, "I'm not scared. I'm not!
It's just a book. Only stories." But such chilling, frightful stories!
Spellbound, I read on as a death-dealing creature of the stars gropingly
squeezed from its lair.
The Thing cannot be de scribed --- there
is no language for such abysms of shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such
eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order. . . . The
Thing of the idols, the green sticky spawn of the stars, had awakened to claim
his own . . . great Cthulhu was loose again. . . .
Suddenly, as if from some unguessed abyss,
there came a rushing roar and three loud blaring notes, practically at my feet.
Startled, I jumped, a horrified expression on my face, and the book fell from my
hands.
Though many years have passed since the
incident, the final sight that greeted my eyes still troubles me to this very
day. It has been hard for me to set down the crucial revelation, though no
reader can have failed to guess it. When the initial shock had passed, I stared
uncomfortably down at the gloating skull on the floor by my chair. I shook my
head and decided then and there that this book would never again be opened by my
hand. There would be no more dabbling in books of ancient evil for me. I, for
one, had learned my lesson.
Yet something keeps me from disposing of
the thing. It sits on my shelf even now, still leering, still waiting for the
day when I will dare to open those monstrous pages again. I do not think its
wait will be long. I am much older now, after all. I have seen far too much to
remain afraid of a lifeless, leering book. The existence of Cthulhu is, I am
sure, only story, or at best legend, half remembered racial memories of a
creature encountered aeons ago. I am not afraid. I'm not!
And yet I must confess to a certain sense
of dread when, years ago, on that balcony in Long Island, I cast my eyes toward
the source of that sudden noise. But what I saw there was no cyclopean spawn
from the black spaces between the stars, but rather my uncle's black Cadillac
lumbering forth from its parking space onto the street.
|