At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft - Chapter 9

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Episode Transcript

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Chapter nine of At the Mountains ofMadness by H. P. Lovecraft.
This LibriVox recordings in the public Domain, read by Ben Tucker, Chapter nine.
I have said that our study ofthe decadent sculptures brought about a change
in our immediate objective. This,of course, had to do with the
chiseled avenues to the black inner world, of whose existence we had not known

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before, but which we were noweager to find and traverse. From the
evident scale of the carvings, wededuced that a steeply descending walk of about
a mile through either of the neighboringtunnels would bring us to the brink of
the dizzy, sunless cliffs above thegreat Abyss Down, whose side adequate paths
improved by the old ones, ledto the rocky shore of the hidden and

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nighted Ocean. To behold this fabulousgulf in stark reality was a lure which
seemed impossible of resistance once we knewof the thing. Yet we realized we
must begin the question at once ifwe expected to include it on our present
flight. It was now eight PM, and we had not enough battery replacements
to let our torches burn on forever. We had done so much of our

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studying and copying below the glacial levelthat our battery supply had had at least
five hours of nearly continuous use,and despite the special dry cell formula,
would obviously be good for only aboutfour more. Though by keeping one torch
unused except for especially interesting or difficultplaces, we might manage to eke out
a safe margin beyond that. Itwould not do to be without a light

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in these Cyclopean catacombs. Hence,in order to make the Abyss trip,
we must give up all further muraldeciphering. Of course, we intended to
revisit the places for days and perhapsweeks of intensive study and photography, curiosity
having long ago got the better ofhorror, But just now we must hasten.
Our supply of trailblazing paper was farfrom unlimited, and we were reluctant

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to sacrifice spare notebooks or catching paperto augment it, but we did let
one large notebook go. If worsecame to worst, we could resort to
rock chipping, and of course itwould be possible, even in case of
really lost direction, to work upto full daylight by one channel or another,
if granted sufficient time, for plentifultrial and error. So at last

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we set off eagerly in the indicateddirection of the nearest tunnel. According to
the carvings from which we had madeour map, the desired tunnel mouth could
not be much more than a quartermile from where we stood, the intervening
space showing solid looking buildings quite likelyto be penetrable still at a subglacial level.
The opening itself would be in thebasement on the angle nearest foothills of

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a vast five pointed structure of evidentlypublic and perhaps ceremonial nature, which we
tried to identify from our aerial surveyof the ruins. No such structure came
to our minds as we recalled ourflight. Hence we concluded that its upper
parts had been greatly damaged, orthat it had been totally shattered in an
ice rift we had noticed. Inthe latter case, the tunnel would probably

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turn out to be choked, sothat we would have to try the next
nearest one, the one less thana mile to the north. The intervening
river course prevented our trying any ofthe more southerly tunnels on this trip,
and indeed, if both of theneighboring ones were choked, it was doubtful
whether our batteries would warrant an attempton the next northerly one, about a

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mile beyond our second choice. Aswe threaded our dim way through the labyrinth
with the aid of map and compass, traversing rooms and corridors in every stage
of ruin or preservation, clambering upramps, crossing upper floors and bridges,
and clambering down again, encountering chokeddoorways and piles of debris, Hastening now
and then along finally preserved and uncannilyimmaculate stretches, taking faults leads, and

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retracing our way, in such cases, removing the blind paper trail we had
left, and once in a whilestriking the bottom of an open shaft through
which daylight poured or trickled down.We were repeatedly tantalized by the s lptured
walls along our route. Many musthave told tales of immense historical importance,
and our only prospect of later visitsreconciled us to the need of passing them

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by. As it was, weslowed down once in a while and turned
on our second torch. If wehad had more films, we would certainly
have paused briefly to photograph certain basreliefs, but time consuming hand copying was
clearly out of the question. Icome now once more to a place where
the temptation to hesitate, or tohint rather than state, is very strong.

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It is necessary, however, toreveal the rest in order to justify
my course in discouraging further exploration.We had wormed our way very close to
the computed site of the tunnel's mouth, having crossed a second story bridge to
what seemed plainly the tip of apointed wall, and descended to a ruinous
corridor especially rich and decadently elaborate andapparently ritualistic sculptures of late workmanship. When

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about eight thirty PM, Danforth's keen, young nostrils gave us the first hint
of something unusual. If we hadhad a dog with us, I suppose
we would have been mourned before.At first we could not precisely say what
was wrong with the formerly crystal pureair, But after a few seconds our
memories reacted only too definitely. Letme try to state the thing without flinching.

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There was an odor, and thatodor was vaguely, subtly and unmistakably
akin to what had nauseated us uponopening the insane grave of the horror poor
Lake had dissected. Of course,the revelation was not as clearly cut the
time as it sounds now. Therewere several conceivable explanations, and we did
a good deal of indecisive whispering.Most important of all, we did not

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retreat without further investigation, for havingcome this far, we were loath to
be balked by anything short of certaindisaster. Anyway, what we must have
suspected was altogether too wild to believesuch things did not happen in any normal
world. It was probably sheer irrationalinstinct which made us dim our single torch,
tempted no longer by the decadent andsinister sculptures that leered menacingly from the

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oppressive walls, and which softened ourprogress to a cautious tiptoeing and crawling over
the increasingly littered floor and heaps ofdebris. Danforth's eyes, as well as
nose, proved better than mine,for it was likewise he who first noticed
the queer aspect of the debris,after we had passed many half choked arches
leading to chambers and corridors. Onthe ground level, it did not look

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quite as it ought after countless thousandsof years of desertion, and when we
cautiously turned on more light, wesaw that a kind of swath seemed to
have been lately tracked through it.The irregular nature of the litter precluded any
definite marks, but in the smootherplaces there were suggestions of the dragging of
heavy objects. Once we thought therewas a hint of parallel tracks as of

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runners. This was what made uspause again. It was during that pause
that we caught simultaneously, this timethe other odor ahead. Paradoxically, it
was both a less frightful and amore frightful odor, less frightful intrinsically,
but infinitely appalling in this place underthe known circumstances, unless, of course,

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getney, for the odor was theplain and familiar one of common petrol,
everyday gasoline. Our motivation after thatis something I will leave to psychologists.
We knew now that some terrible extensionof the camp Horrors must have crawled
into this nighted burial place of theeons. Hence could not doubt any longer
the existence of nameless conditions present orat least recent, just ahead. Yet

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in the end we did let sheerburning curiosity or anxiety or auto hypnotism,
or vague thoughts of responsibility toward Getneyor whatnot drive us on. Danforth whispered
again of the print he thought hehad seen at the alley, turning in
the ruins above, and a musicalpiping potentially of tremendous significance in the light

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of Lake's dissection report, despite itsclose resemblance to the cave mouth echoes of
the Windy Peaks, which he thoughthe shortly afterward half heard from unknown depths
below. I, in my turn, whispered of how the camp was left,
of what had disappeared, and ofhow the madness of a lone survivor
might have conceived the inconceivable a wildtrip across the monstrous mountains and a descent

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into the unknown primal masonry. Butwe could not convince each other or even
ourselves of anything definite. We hadturned off all light as we stood,
and vaguely noticed that a trace ofdeeply filtered upper day kept the blackness from
being absolute. Having automatically begun tomove ahead, we guided ourselves by occasional

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flashes from our torch. The disturbeddebris formed an impression we could not shake
off, and the smell of gasolenegrew stronger, more and more ruined,
and met our eyes and hampered ourfeet, until very soon we saw that
the forward way was about to cease. We had been all too correct in
our pessimistic guess about that rift glimpsedfrom the air. Our tunnel quest was

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a blind one, and we werenot going to be able to reach the
basement out of which the abyssward apertureopened. The torch flashing over the grotesquely
carbon walls of the blocked corridor inwhich we stood, showed several doorways in
various states of obstruction, and fromone of them the gasolene odor, quite
submerging that other hint of odor camewith a special distinctness. As we looked

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more steadily, we saw that,beyond a doubt, there had been a
slight and recent clearing away of debrisfrom that particular opening. Whatever the lurking
horror might be, we believed thedirect avenue toward it was now plainly manifest.
I do not think anyone will wonderthat we waited an appreciable time before
making any further motion, And yetwhen we did venture inside that black arch,

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our first impression was one of anticlimax. For amidst the littered expanse of
that sculptured crypt, a perfect cubewith sides of about twenty feet, there
remained no recent object of instantly discerniblesize, so that we looked, instinctively,
though in vain, for a fartherdoorway. In another moment, however,
Danforth's sharp vision had descried a placewhere the floor debris had been disturbed,

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and we turned on both torches fullstrength. Though what we saw in
that light was actually simple and trifling, I am none the less reluctant to
tell of it, because of whatit implied. It was a rough leveling
of the debris, upon which severalsmall objects lay carelessly scattered, and at
one corner of which a considerable amountof gasoline must have been spelled lately enough

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to leave a strong odor, evenat this extreme super plateau altitude. In
other words, it cannot be otherthan a sort of camp, a camp
made by questing beings, who,like us, had been turned back by
the unexpectedly choked way to the abyss. Let me be plain. The scattered
objects were, so far as substancewas concerned, all from Lake's camp,

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and consisted of tin cans as queerlyopened as those we had seen at that
ravaged place, many spent matches,three illustrated books, more or less curiously
smudged, an empty ink bottle withits pictorial and instructional carton, a broken
fountain pen, some oddly snipped fragmentsof fur and tint cloth, a used

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electric battery with circular of directions,a folder that came with our type of
tint heater, and a sprinkling ofcrumpled papers. It was all bad enough,
but when we smoothed out the papersand looked at what was on them,
we felt we had come to theworst. We had found certain inexplicably
blotted papers at the camp, whichmight have prepared us. Yet the effect

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of the site down there, andthe prehuman vaults of a nightmare city,
was almost too much to bear.A mad Gedney might have made the groups
of dots in imitation of those foundon the greenish soapstones, just as the
dots on those insane five pointed gravemounds might have been made, and he
might conceivably have prepared rough, hastysketches, varying in their accuracy or lack

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of it, which outlined the neighboringparts of the city, and traced the
way from a circularly represented place outsideour previous route, a place we identified
as a great cylindrical tower in thecarvings, and as a vast circular gulf
glimpsed in our aerial survey to thepresent five pointed structure and the tunnel mouth

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therein. He might, i repeat, have prepared such sketches for those before
us, were quite obviously compiled,as our own had been, from late
sculptures somewhere in the glacial labyrinth,though not from the ones which we had
seen and used. But what thisart blind Bungler could never have done was
to execute those sketches in a strangeand assured technique, perhaps superior, despite

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haste and carelessness, to any ofthe decadent carvings from which they were taken,
the characteristic and unmistakable technique of theold ones themselves. In the dead
cities heyday, there are those whowill say Danforth and I were utterly mad
not to flee for our lives afterthat, since our conclusions were now,
notwithstanding their wildness, completely fixed andof a nature I need not even mention

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to those who have read my accountas far as this, perhaps we were
mad, for have I not setthose horrible peaks or mountains of madness?
But I think I can detect somethingof the same spirit, albeit in a
less extreme form, in the menwho stalk deadly beasts through African jungles to
photograph them or study their habits.Half paralyzed with terror, though we were,

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there was nevertheless fanned within us ablazing flame of awe and curiosity which
triumphed in the end. Of course, we did not mean to face that
or those which we knew had beenthere, but we felt that they must
be gone by now. They wouldby this time have found the other neighboring
entrance to the Abyss, and havepassed within to whatever night black fragments of

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the past might await them the ultimateGulf, the ultimate gulf they had never
seen, or if that entrance toowas blocked, they would have gone on
to the north seeking another. Theywere, we remembered, partly independent of
light. Looking back to that moment, I can scarcely recall just what precise
form our new emotions took, justwhat change of immediate objective it was that

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so sharpened our sense of expectancy.We certainly did not mean to face what
we feared. Yet I will notdeny that we may have had a lurking,
unconscious wish to spy certain things fromsome hidden vantage point. Probably we
had not given up our zeal toglimpse the Abyss itself, though there was
interposed a new goal in the formof that great circular place shown on the

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crumpled sketches. As we had found, we had at once recognized it as
a monstrous cylindrical tower, figuring inthe very earliest carvings, but appearing only
as a prodigious round aperture from above. Something about the impressiveness of its rendering,
even in these hasty diagrams, madeus think that its subglacial levels must

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still form a feature of peculiar importance. Perhaps it embodied architectural marvels as yet
unencountered by us. It was certainlyof incredible age, according to the sculptures
in which it figured, being indeedamong the first things built in the city.
Its carvings, if preserved could notbut be highly significant. Moreover,

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it might form a good present linkwith the upper world, a shorter route
than the one we were so carefullyblazing, and probably that by which those
others had descended. At any rate, the thing we did was to study
the terrible sketches, which quite perfectlyconfirmed our own, and start back over
the indicated to the circular place,the course which our nameless predecessors must have

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traversed twice before us. The otherneighboring gait to the abyss would lie beyond
that. I need not speak ofour journey, during which we continued to
leave an economical trail of paper,for it was precisely the same in kind
as that by which we had reachedthe cul de sac, except that it
tended to adhere more closely to theground level than even descend to basement corridors.

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Every now and then we could tracecertain disturbing marks in the debris or
litter underfoot. And after we hadpassed outside the radius of the gasolene scent,
we were again faintly conscious, spasmodicallyof that more hideous and more persistent
scent, after the way it hadbranched from our former course We sometimes gave
the rays of our single torch afurtive sweep along the walls, noting in

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almost every case the well nigh omnipresentsculptures, which indeed seemed to have formed
a main esthetic outlet for the oldones. About nine PM, while traversing
a vaulted corridor whose increasingly glaciated floorseemed somewhat below the ground level, and
whose roof grew lower as we advanced, we began to see strong daylight ahead

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and were able to turn off ourtorch. It appeared that we were coming
to the vast circular place, andthat our distance from the upper air could
not be very great. The corridorended in an arch surprisingly low for these
megalithic ruins, but we could seemuch through it even before we emerged.
Beyond there stretched a prodigious round space, fully two hundred feet in diameter,

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strown with debris and containing many chokedarchways corresponding to the one we were about
to cross. The walls were inavailable spaces, boldly sculptured into a spiral
band of heroic proportions, and displayeddespite the destructive weathering caused by the openness
of the spot. An artistic splendorfar beyond anything we had encountered before.

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The littered floor was quite heavily glaciated, and we fancied that the true bottom
lay at a considerably lower depth.But the salient object of the place was
the titanic stone ramp, which,eluding the archways by a sharp turn outward
into the open floor, wound spirallyup the stupendous cylindrical wall, like an
inside counterpart of those once climbed outsidethe monstrous towers or zigarots of antique Babylon.

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Only the rapidity of our flight inthe perspective, which confounded the descent
with the tower's inner wall, hadprevented our noticing this feature from the air,
and thus caused us to seek anotheravenue to the subglacial level. Pobodi
might have been able to tell whatsort of engineering held it in place,
but Danforth and I could merely admireand marvel. We could see mighty stone

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corbals and pillars here and there,but what we saw seemed inadequate to the
function performed. The thing was excellentlypreserved up to the present top of the
tower, a highly remarkable circumstance inview of its exposure and its shelter had
done much to protect the bazaar anddisturbing cosmic sculptures on the walls. As
we stepped out into the awesome halfdaylight of this monstrous cylinder bottom, fifty

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million years old and without doubt themost primal ancient structure ever to meet our
eyes, we saw that the ramptraverse sides stretched dizzily up to a height
of fully sixty feet. This,we recalled from our aerial survey mint an
outside glaciation of some forty feet,since the yawning gulf we had seen from
the plain had been at the topof an approximately twenty foot mound of crumpled

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masonry, somewhat sheltered for three fourthsof its circumference by the massive curving walls
of a line of higher ruins.According to the sculptures, the original tower
had stood in the center of animmense circular plaza, and had been perhaps
five hundred or six hundred feet high, with tiers of horizontal disks near the
top and a row needlelike spires alongthe upper rim. Most of the masonry

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had obviously top outward rather than inward, a fortunate happening since otherwise the ramp
might have been shattered and the wholeinterior choked. As it was, the
ramp showed sad battering, whilst thechoking was such that all the archways at
the bottom seemed to have been recentlyhalf cleared. It took us only a
moment to conclude that this was indeedthe route by which those others had descended,

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and that this would be the logicalroute for our own ascent. Despite
the long trail of paper we hadleft elsewhere, The tower's mouth was no
farther from the foothills and our waitingplain than was the great terraced building we
had entered, and any further subglacialexploration we might make on this trip would
lie in this general region. Oddly, we were still thinking about possible later

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trips, even after all we hadseen and guessed. Then, as we
picked our way cautiously over the debrisof the great floor, there came a
sight which for the time excluded allother matters. It was the neatly huddled
array of three sledges, and thatfarther angle of the ramps lower and outward
projecting course, which had hitherto beenscreened from our view. There they were

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the three sledges missing from Lake's camp, shaken by a hard usage which must
have included forcible dragging along great reachesof snowless masonry and debris, as well
as much hand portage over utterly unnavigableplaces. They were carefully and intelligently packed
and strapped, and contained things memorablyfamiliar enough the gasoline stove, fuel cans,

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instrument cases, provision tins, tarpollensobviously bulging with books, and some
bulging with less obvious contents. Everythingderived from Lake's equipment. After what we
had found in that other room,we were, in a measure prepared for
this encounter. The really great shotcame when we stepped over and undid one
tarpollen whose outlines had peculiarly disquieted us. It seems that others as well as

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Lake, had been interested in collectingtypical specimens, for there were two here,
both stiffly frozen, perfectly preserved,patched with adhesive plaster where some wounds
around the neck had occurred, andwrapped with patent care to prevent further damage.
They were the bodies of young Gedneyand the missing dog. End of Chapter nine