Strange Eons Read Online Free PDF Page B

could be more still in the warehouse, including correspondence from Lovecraft. Such letters fetch high prices nowadays. Anyway, he was willing to make a deal with me.”
    “What sort of deal?”
    Waverly rose. “I’m going to Boston at Beckman’s expense. Whatever I find to buy, Beckman sells—and we split fifty-fifty.”
    “When do you leave?”
    “There’s a flight in the morning.” Waverly moved to the door of the den. “If you plan on being home, I’ll give you a call tomorrow night around eight and tell you what I’ve learned.”
    “I’ll be waiting,” Keith said.

They came out of the darkness and the depths, capering, crawling, creeping in response to the faint, eerie piping of an unseen flute.
    Those that capered were human, or humanoid; they danced in the flickering flare of fires set about the ancient stones high on the lonely hilltop, and Keith heard their shrill and cadenced chanting: Iaa! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
    And then came the response—the buzzing drone that was not a human voice or a human sound or even an imitation of human speech. But there were words he recognized— Yog-Sothoth, Cthulhu, Azazoth —and their utterance rose from the shadow-shapes that crept and crawled in the lonely night beyond the circle of firelight.
    None could be seen clearly, and for this Keith was grateful, but the flames glinted to give glimpses of massive, monstrous mountains. Heaving, quivering mountains alive with the movement of myriad ropy tentacles; mountains covered with bulging eyes, opening and closing spasmodically, and hundreds of gaping mouths from which issued the hissing and croaking horror of words not shaped by mortal tongue.
    It seemed to Keith as though the very hills shuddered to the fearsome echo of that guttural response, and then the scene faded and he was back in his own room once more. He realized he had dreamed and was still dreaming as his bed shook as though an earthquake assailed it.
    Now, as his dream continued, the shaking ceased, but the memory of the creatures persisted, and with them the memory of all that Waverly had hinted at.
    Fear came, and then resolution.
    In his dream, Keith fancied he reached for the phone book on the nightstand and fumbled through its pages until he found the listing for Beckman, Frederick T., rare books. He imagined that he dialed the number, listening to the far-off sound of the ringing phone, the lifting of the receiver on the other end of the line, and his own voice whispering, “Mr. Beckman?”
    Then came the reply: deep, hollow, unearthly, but distinct. The voice that said, “You fool—Beckman is dead!”
    It was then that Keith opened his eyes to find himself sitting on the side of the bed, phone in hand, listening to the click that cut off the connection—the click that told him he had not dreamed.
    At 7:30 that morning Keith picked up his newspaper from the front driveway. A boxed-insert story above the fold on the front page caught his eye:
    3.5 QUAKE JOLTS L.A.
LITTLE DAMAGE REPORTED
    That much, at least, had been real. Keith scanned the story—a story familiar to every Los Angeles resident—noting the usual references to the San Andreas fault and the establishment of the quake’s epicenter in the Lancaster area. Seismologists were repeating their warning that the temblor might signal a major upheaval to come, but that too was a standard ingredient of any such account.
    Keith read the story almost with relief, and it wasn’t until he turned the page that he found the item which really jolted him. Again it was boxed and brief, as befitted a last-minute insertion of late news:
    GLENDALE BOOK DEALER SLAIN
Police are investigating the murder of Frederick T. Beckman, 59, who was stabbed to death last night in his home at 1482 Whitsun Drive, Glendale. The body was discovered by sheriff’s deputy Charles McLoy following a neighbor’s call reporting sounds of a disturbance next door. Presumably