The Taint and Other Novellas Read Free

case of Joe Slater, the Catskill Mountains trapper, whose lunatic actions in 1900-01 had seemed governed not by the moon but rather by the influence of a point or object in the heavens much farther out than the orbit of Earth’s satellite. The authenticity of this case, however, seemed to Spellman spoiled by its chronicler’s insistence that Slater was in fact inhabited by the mind of an alien being. Then there was the German Baron, Ernst Kant, who, before his hideous and inexplicable death in a Westphalian Bedlam, had believed his every insane action controlled by a creature he called Yibb-Tstll; described as being “huge and black with writhing breasts and an anus within its forehead, a black-blooded thing whose brains feed upon its own wastes….”
    More recently there was Dr. David Stephenson’s recorded observations of one J. M. Freeth, a female zoophagous maniac whose declared intention was to absorb as many lives as she could. This she set about, like Bram Stoker’s Renfield, by feeding flies to spiders, spiders to sparrows, and finally by devouring the sparrows herself! She, too, as with the maniac in Stoker’s story, had been refused a cat once her intentions were quite clear! Her odd fancies had been part and parcel of her belief that she had watching over her a supernatural “God-creature” who would eventually come to release her. Miss Freeth’s obsessions and her “life-devouring” mania were far from unique, and the student collected and recorded a number of similar cases.
    Again, this time from the records of a certain Canton madhouse in America, Spellman culled the horrible story of an innate who had been, before his escape and subsequent disappearance some seven years previously in 1928, completely sure of his immortality and of the fact that he would “dwell in Y’hanthlei amidst wonder and glory forever….” His destiny (he was righteous in his self-assurance) was governed by “the Deep Ones, Dagon, and Lord Cthulhu”—with the former of which he would serve in the worship and glorification of the latter—whoever or whatever these names were supposed. to signify! There was, though, a clue to this last poor unfortunate’s aberrations. He was pronouncedly ichthyic in appearance, with protuberant eyes and scaly skin, and it was believed that these physical abnormalities had led him to dwell too often and too long over certain obscure myths and legends involving oceanic deities. In this connection it seemed likely that his “Dagon” was that same fish-god of the Philistines and Phoenicians, sometimes known as Oannes.
    So Spellman’s studies grew more specific as the weeks passed, but he little dreamed that in a certain cell in Hell there resided a man whose case was as odd as any he had so far collected for his book….
    • • •
    In mid-November, knowing something of the new direction his pupil’s studies were taking, Dr. Welford invited Spellman to read the case-file of Wilfred Larner, usually one of the quieter residents of Hell but a man who could swiftly turn from a reasonably controlled individual to a raging, savage animal. Larner’s case, too, seemed to have had its genesis in those “outside” regions which so fascinated the student nurse.
    Thus it happened that in his room above the basement ward Martin Spellman first came into close contact with Larner’s file, and from the first he became absorbed with the thing; particularly with those mentions of a certain “Black Book”—a thing called the Cthaat Aquadingen —purported to relate to the raising of water- and ocean-elementals and other “demons” of more obscure origins. Apparently this book was one of the main causes of Larner’s rapid mental decline some ten years previously; and, according to the file, its hints, suggestions, and the occasional blatantly blasphemous “revelation” could scarcely be considered safe reading for any man with a delicately balanced mind.
    Spellman could hardly be blamed for not