Selected Stories Read online

  He continued his search along the hill, but found no traces anywhere. The vegetation was growing completely unchecked here, and made the going difficult. With his armpits stinging with sweat, and the sun now burning down on him from the cloudless sky, he felt as if he were returning through time to a landscape straight out of prehistoric times, when dinosaurs still walked the earth and mankind was nothing more than the far-off dream of some unimaginable deity.

  Arriving at his room in the hotel, he immediately saw that someone had been inside. Nothing was missing, but some things had been slightly displaced. Fortunately his books and notes were in the traveling bag which was always locked, and they, whoever they had been, hadn’t dared pick the lock. He confronted Julien with his evidence, but the hotel keeper raised his eyebrows.

  “Sorry, but no,” he said. "Only I was in your room, to open the window and let in some fresh air. I made up the bed, but I didnt touch anything, mais non!’’

  “Have you been at the hotel the whole day through?”

  “Well... no,” Julien said. “I went out two or three times, once to the cafe for a pint of cold beer, and then I had to do some

  shopping. And I must admit I slept part of the afternoon too; nothing else to do. I hope nothing is missing.”

  “No, not as far as I noticed,” Herbert said. “But I’ll double-lock the door in the future. And maybe you’d better take your spare key with you in the future when you leave.”

  The happening disturbed him. He believed Julien. Anybody could have walked in during his absence, using the spare key from the board to get inside, and maybe it had just been an ordinary thief looking for something of value. But he didn’t really believe that.

  V. Vaeyen

  The next three days passed uneventfully. During the day he took long walks, not always straight in the direction of the hill so as not to make his interest too obvious, but he always managed to end up there in the later hours. During the evenings he worked on his notes, and sometimes went to the pub. He didn’t succeed in getting himself accepted by the locals, however. They answered his greetings, and made some small talk, but their looks spoke of distrust and suspicion.

  He found the thing on the sixth day, literally stumbling over it by pure coincidence. He was descending the hill along a narrow path when his foot caught in something. He stumbled and went down, managing to break his fall with his arms. He then started looking for what had tripped him. It didn’t take long to dig it out of the earth, once he had seen that it was not a tree root. As he wiped the clods of dirt and earth from it and stood up, he almost couldn’t believe his luck.

  It was not so very big, about twelve centimeters, but it was heavier than it looked. The small statue had probably once been painted, but time had taken care of that and left only its naked, petrified form. Small fragments were broken off, but it was still recognizable. The statuette was a crude image of the vulture-bat thing which was shown on the map in Liyuhh. It stood upright here, its wings folded on its back. Now that he had it so close, he easily saw that he had been mistaken. The vulture-bat being from Liyuhh was not the same as the statue inside the temple as shown in Von denen Verdammten. He had been wondering about that: why a deity worshiped inside the temple in one book should be shown so far away from that temple in the other.

  He grinned. This was what he had been looking for, finally a material proof for the real existence of the temple. He had been right in coming here. No matter how impossible it seemed, it was the only answer, and this statue proved that somehow there had to be a way to get inside the temple.

  He put the statuette in his bag, and while returning slowly to the village, he noted something he should have observed long before.

  He had never encountered anyone near the hill.

  Arriving back at the village, he went straight to Julien. He had grown to like and trust the bulky Frenchman, and wanted to know what he thought of the thing he had found.

  Julien looked up from his newspaper. He was sitting, or rather lying, in one of his chairs, and smoking one of his eternal stinking cigars.

  “Hi,” he said. “Had a nice walk?”

  “Sure, and I even brought something interesting and unusual with me,” Herbert said, taking the statuette from his bag and putting it on the table in front of Julien.

  He had expected a mild reaction of curiosity and interest, but not this. Julien jumped up, throwing his chair backward, and turning white as chalk. He even dropped his cigar.

  "A Vaeyen,” he said hoarsely. “Take that thing away!”

  “A what?” Herbert said, surprised. “It’s only a statue I’ve found.”

  “Sure it’s only a statuette, but take that bloody thing away before any of them sees it,” Julien said. “You’ve been poking around on the Dark Hill, that’s where you’ve found it, and that’s where you’d better put it back.”

  Slowly Herbert put the statuette back in his bag. “I tripped over it,” he said. “It was almost completely under the earth; only the head stood out. I would never have seen it—what did you call it?

  Julien bent down and recovered his cigar. Now that the statuette was out of his sight, he seemed to calm down too.

  “I didn’t call it anything,” he said, “and if I said anything, forget it. I’ll forget that I ever saw that thing in your hands, but please take care that no one from the village ever sees it or learns that it is in your possession. I would rather that you put it back where you found it.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Julien. You called it by a name, and if you don’t answer my question I can go and ask elsewhere."

  “I wouldn’t do that, not if I wanted to avoid trouble,” Julien said. “Believe me, I know what I’m talking about, though it isn’t much.” “Then tell me what you know.”

  “That... thing is called a Vaeyen. It’s the image of an old kind of demon, if you like. It’s a guardian, a watcher of the Dark Hill. There are several of them, but I have never seen them. I have heard about them, though.”

  "From whom, Julien?”

  But Julien didn’t answer. He was standing in the doorway now, and pointed. “Look: There it is, in the full sunlight. Yet it looks dark, unnatural, a thing of evil. No one from the village goes there now, and neither should you.”

  "Why do you say ‘no one goes there now?’ Is there another time when someone goes there, Julien? Who, and for what purpose? Come on, you’re a rational modern man, don’t tell me that you’re frightened of a stone statuette of some old demon?”

  “You’re not in the big city here. You’re in Freihausgarten, which is an old island in the sea of what calls itself civilization. The people here don’t speak and don’t think like us. That's why I want to get away from here as soon as I can manage it financially. I don’t belong here; no one who wasn’t born in Freihausgarten belongs. I am only tolerated here. No, I’m not superstitious, but I don’t want anyone to find out that you have found one of their precious Vaeyens. But if you want to know more, why don’t you go and see der Pfarrer tomorrow? The vicar wasn’t born here either, but he has been here over twenty-five years now, and he is accepted by the community because he minds his own business. That’s what I want to do too.” And with those words ended their conversation of the evening. Herbert went up to his room, and there completely cleaned the statuette. It was very old, no doubt of that, and he couldn’t place it in a specific period. The weight still surprised him. He tried to scratch it with his tools to find out if maybe it contained some heavy metal, but it was useless.

  He returned to his notes, searching for a clue to his discovery. One paragraph in Liyuhh caught his eye:

  "...und Seine Welt is eine Welt die schwarzer ist als das Schwarze und dunkler als das absolute Dunkel zwischen den Sternen.”

  "...and his world is a world blacker than black,” he translated roughly, “and darker than the absolute darkness between the stars.” Strange that Liyuhh carried so many references to darkness. Somewhere among those lines was a solution to be foun
d for the strange optical illusion of the Dark Hill? The phenomenon was strange, but then, when these notes had been made, there was a temple up there and not only a bloody hill!

  He switched to Von denen Verdammten, and did find a part of the text which could have some specific meaning:

  Und Das Dutikel Dasz Wartet hat fünf Diener, fünf Wächter des Temp els, und fünf Wächter des Dunkels, genannt die Feiaden: das schwarze Licht, das weisse Feuer das schwarzer ist als die Nacht, das weisse Dunkel das roter ist als das Feuer, das geflügelte Weib, und der griine Mond, die Ihm hal- teti und dienen in Seine Dunkelheit.

  Damn, Herbert thought, why don’t they give “Him” a name? Why again has it to be “the Dark That Waits?” So “It” has five servants, five waiters—no, wait, Wächter means watchers or guardians. Five who guard the temple and the Dark, and they are called Feiaden. That could fit; taking into account German pronunciation, Feiaden could have become Vaeyen. Five of them: the Black Light, the White Fire which is Blacker than Night, the White Dark which is more red than the Fire, the Winged Woman, and the Green Moon. They all “keep and guard Him in His Darkness.” It fitted with the drawing: five guardian demons, to guard the temple and serve the deity. The drawing in Von denen Verdammten showed the deity with a “winged woman” in its one hand, and a toad-like thing in the other. That one could be any of the remaining four, and so could be this statue. If only he knew what color it had been originally, that would have been a clue to its identity. And then, these titles could be symbolical too. “The Black Light”: an allusion to night, when the ceremonies were held? “The White Fire”: a fire constantly kept alive inside the temple? “The Green Moon": the moon shining over a green valley, a green hill? But then what about the “White Dark?

  It was no use trying to draw conclusions at this point of his research; he already knew too much, but not yet enough.

  VI. The Temple on the Dark Hill

  He went to see the vicar first thing the next morning. Der Pfarrer, the “soulkeeper”, was a man in his late forties. His face had a tendency to make him look fat, which he wasn’t really. He had the strong body structure and the raw hands of a man who is used to other things as well as saying grace in church on Sunday mornings. His greeting was cordial but reserved.

  Herbert had decided that the only way to learn something here would be to play with open cards right from the start. So after the usual exchange of formalities and polite remarks, he took the statuette out of his pocket and placed it on the table.

  “I have been told that this is called a Vaeyen,” he said, “supposed to be some kind of evil spirit. I have also been told to keep it out of sight of the villagers and to ask you if I wanted to learn more about it.”

  The vicar didn’t answer right away, and neither did he show the frightened reaction of Julien. He took up the Vaeyen, and whistled softly when he noticed its weight. He looked it over carefully, then put it down again.

  “Lucky to find it,” he said. “I suppose you have an idea of the value of this statuette? I know it dates back at least five centuries, but I suppose that it is much, much older... maybe as old as mankind. Since you know that much, it is indeed a Vaeyen, even the first one, das schwarze Licht, the Black Light.”

  “But what is it? Why was I told to keep it hidden?”

  The vicar looked at him intensely, rubbing his double chins. “Suppose, Mr. Ramon, you tell me first who you are, and what your specific interest is in this statuette? I have heard that you are a writer, supposedly here to rest, which isn’t exactly an explanation for your very long and very tiring walks... which strangely enough are always in the neighborhood of Dunkelhügel, the Dark Hill. Are you a writer of fiction? Maybe you are looking for material here for a novel or something?”

  How much could he tell this man? Herbert asked himself. Not everything certainly; maybe just enough to satisfy his curiosity. But then the vicar was no fool. He chose his words carefully.

  “I write fact,” he said, “science-fact as well as biographical material. At the moment I’m working on a study of the works of an American writer, who died in 1937. Howard Phillips Lovecraft. You may have heard of him, as many of his stories have been published in German translations, and even some of his letters and critical work. He wrote mainly what we would call ‘supernatural fiction.’ Most of his longer work deals with alien ‘deities’, beings who were on Earth long before mankind and originated many bizarre cults. He had a very peculiar way of mixing reality with his fiction, especially when it came to those cults and to ancient books on witchcraft. As a result, in a recent article in a well known periodical, it has been said that some of those cults very well might exist in reality, and that this author knew about it but disguised his knowledge as fiction. For my biographical work, I’m trying to separate truth from his own fiction. So I took up studying old and forgotten cultures, getting admittance to study certain old books dealing with mankind’s belief in the occult, magic, superstition and its varied religions. Some of those books contained maps, and information which formed strange parallels with cults that existed even at the start of this century in America. So I’m trying to find the possible cultural and religious connections to link those American cult beliefs with those I’m informed existed in the eighteenth and even nineteenth century in Europe, and in Germany. I want to find out if these pagan beliefs in strange deities already existed in those separate countries—and if so, where they all originated—or if they were imported in one of them.”

  The vicar nodded. “At least you’re not from some nut cult, then,” he said, and then laughed. “Sorry about those words; I’ve had only two of those during the last twenty-four years I’ve been here, but they were enough to last a lifetime.” His joking manner suddenly vanished as unexpectedly as it had come. “What else do you know?” Herbert hesitated now. What more should he tell? Well, a bit more could do no harm, even if it might set them on the wrong track.

  “I am particularly interested in the temple which should be on top of your Dark Hill, and which isn’t there. That’s why I really came here, to find out what is true and what is just fiction.”

  The vicar nodded, and sat down in his chair. He took a long sip of his brandy, then looked again at Herbert.

  “There was,” he said. “And it still is there."

  “Where?”

  The vicar spread his arms. “That’s what I hoped you could tell me, Mr. Ramon. You have been very frank with me, and now I’ll be the same. Because I think that you and I can be of great help to each other. You’re a good liar, but not good enough. Certainly, I have heard of that author you mentioned, Lovecraft. You see, I read very much; there’s not much else for me to do here. I get many literary magazines, and when I read in a book review of what Lovecraft wrote about, I ordered all his books from Insel Verlag, the German publisher. Of course he wrote fiction—those deities and all the powers he gave them, who would believe that to be fact? But there are other things... some seemingly universal beliefs and cults, and those are not fiction. They do, indeed, exist—even now. And don’t ask me where they came from, I don’t know. I only know that they exist, in Europe as well as in England and in the States. So now I will tell you what I know. Of course, you’ll understand that this is not an official conversation. What I will tell you will remain between us. You have seen my church: It’s small, simple, but sufficient for my needs and those of my people. I have been living here now for twenty four years with them; they are all present at the services on Sunday. I know them all, my people, and yet... yet I don’t. Tell me—do you believe in the power of the mind?”

  “I don’t quite understand what you mean by that.”

  “Not the occult, not the supernatural. I’m talking about telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis... auto-suggestion, mass-hypnosis, and all the other powers the mind is supposed to harbor. Would you believe me if I told you that this village—or its inhabitants—hasn’t changed for three hundred years? Oh, I don’t mean that they don’t die, I mean the general ...
oh, it’s so difficult to put a name on it. Their way of living, their way of thinking, their whole mentality. What I know about it comes from the papers left by my predecessors. Have you ever heard about... Cyäegha?”

  “Yes, I have, though only the name. It is mentioned in some of the books I’ve studied. It is supposed to be some kind of god of the earth, or caves, or something like that.”

  “Cyäegha... The Waiting Dark, the Lord of the Caves, indeed. It is the name of a very old deity, a kind of earth elemental. This... god, if you wish, was worshiped here from the seventeenth century on. Probably earlier, but there are no records before that time. This deity was supposed to live inside the Dark Hill, and its worshipers even brought it... sacrifices, though it could not reach them. That deity was served by five Vaeyens—five servant demons—who at the same time had a kind of guardian duty. To guard the deity and its valley from unwelcome visitors. Now what I tell you may seem strange, and unbelievable. But since those times, there has been a barrier around this valley... a psychological barrier, warding off all change, creating a kind of static mentality, unable to change! And the center of this barrier was that accursed temple. I don’t know when it was built, or even who built it—I never saw it myself. Maybe it was no more than a sacrificial altar, on top of that hill. But its power still exists.”

  “You said the Vaeyens had a double function?”

  “Yes. The worshipers feared this... deity. Maybe they made those Vaeyens, because the Vaeyens kept the valley and the hill as they were, but also restrained the deity.”

  “What happened?"

  “The worship became too big; rumors leaked out about... human sacrifices. The rumors spread, and about I860 a young priest came here, a young dedicated man, with the necessary knowledge. He put an end to the whole affair, or so my papers tell me. But how much can one believe of those old scripts? They say also that he tore the temple down with his bare hands and the use of sacred words. He also spoke words over the five Vaeyens, and placed them to guard the hill forever. He died on that hill.”