"Maybe, maybe not," the detective said noncommittally, obeying the police rule of never accusing anyone of anything in hearing of a witness unless ready to make an arrest. But he was already quite sure that Professor Marsh would never reappear to be subject to arrest or any other harassment by those who had not entered his special world of lost civilizations, vanished cities, lloigors, dols, and fnords. To this day, the file on the Joshua N. Marsh case in the Arkham police department bears the closing line: "Probable cause of death: suicide during drug psychosis." Nobody ever traced the change in Professor Marsh back to a KCUF meeting in Chicago and a strangely spiked punch; but the young detective, Daniel Pricefixer, always retained a nagging doubt and a shapeless disquiet about this particular investigation, and even after he moved to New York and went to work for Barney Muldoon, he was still addicted to reading books on pre-history and thinking strange thoughts.
SIMON MAGUS. You will come to know gods.
After the disappearance of Saul Goodman and Barney Muldoon, the FBI went over the Malik apartment with a fine-tooth comb. Everything was photographed, fingerprinted, analyzed, catalogued, and where possible shipped back to the crime laboratory in Washington. Among the items was a short note on the back of a Playboy Club lunch receipt, not in Malik's handwriting, which meant nothing to anybody and was included only for the sake of the completeness so loved by the Bureau.
The note said:
"Machen's dols = Lovecraft's dholes?"
VECTORS. You will come to no gods.
On April 25, most of New York was talking about the incredible event that had occurred shortly before dawn at the Long Island mansion of the nation's best-known philanthropist, Robert Putney Drake. Danny Pricefixer of the Bomb Squad, however, was almost oblivious of this bizarre occurrence, as he drove through heavy traffic from one part of Manhattan to another interviewing every witness who might have spoken to Joseph Malik in the week before the Confrontation explosion. The results were uniformly disappointing: aside from the fact that Malik had grown increasingly secretive in recent years, none of the interviews seemed to provide any useful information. A killer smog had again settled on the city, for the seventh straight day, and Danny, a nonsmoker, was very aware of the wheeze in his chest, which did nothing to improve his mood.
Finally, at three in the afternoon, he left the office of ORGASM at 110 West Fortieth Street (an associate editor there was an old friend of Malik's and frequently lunched with him, but had nothing substantial to offer in leads) and remembered that the main branch of the New York Public Library was only half a block away. The hunch had been in the back of his mind, he realized, ever since he glanced at Malik's weird Illuminati memos. What the hell, he thought, it'll only be a few more wasted minutes in a wasted day.
For once, the congestion at the window in the main reference room was not quite as bad as a Canal Street traffic jam. Atlantis and Its Gods by Professor J. N. Marsh was delivered to him in seventeen minutes, and he began leafing through it looking for the passage he vaguely remembered. At last, on page 123, he found it:
Hans Stefan Santesson points out the basic similarity of Mayan and Egyptian investiture rituals, as previously indicated in Colonel Churchward's insightful but wrongheaded books on the lost continent of Mu. As we have demonstrated, Churchward's obsession with the Pacific, based on his having received his first clues about our lost ancestors in an Asiatic temple, led him to attribute to the fictitious Mu much of the real history of the actual Atlantis. But this passage from Santesson's Understanding Mu (Paperback Library, New York, 1970, page 117) needs little correction:
Next he was taken to the Throne of Regeneration of the Soul, and the Ceremony of Investiture or Illumination took place. Then he experienced further ordeals before attaining to the Chamber of the Orient, to the Throne of Ra, to become truly a Master. He could see for himself in the distance the uncreated light from which was pointed out the whole happiness of the future… In other words, as Churchward puts it, both in Egypt and in Maya the initiate had to "sustain" (i.e., survive) "the fiery ordeal" to be approved as an adept. The adept had to become justified. The justified must then become illuminate… The destruction of Mu was commemorated by the possibly symbolic House of Fire of the Quiche Mayas and by the relatively later Chamber of Central Fire of the Mysteries which we are told were celebrated in the Great Pyramid.
Substituting Atlantis for Mu, Churchward and Santesson are basically correct. The god, of course, could choose the shape in which He would appear in the final ordeal, and, since these gods, or lloigor in the Atlantean language, possessed telepathy, they would read the initiate's mind and manifest in the form most terrifying to the specific individual, although the shoggoth form and the classic Angry Giant form such as appears in Aztec statues of Tlaloc were most common. To employ an amusing conceit, if these beings had survived to our time, as some occultists claim, they would appear to the average American as, say, King Kong or, perhaps, Dracula or the Wolf-Man.
The sacrifices demanded by these creatures evidently contributed significantly to the fall of Atlantis, and we can conjecture that the mass burnings practiced by the Celts at Beltain and even the Aztec religion, which turned their altars into abattoirs, were minor in comparison, being merely the result of persistent tradition after the real menace of the lloigor had vanished. We, of course, cannot fully understand the purpose of these bloody rituals, since we cannot fathom the nature, or even the sort of matter or energy, that comprised the lloigor. That the chief of these beings, is known in the Pnakotic Manuscripts and the Eltdown Shards as lok-Sotot, "Eater of Souls," suggests that it was some energy or psychic vibration of the dying victim that the lloigor needed; the physical body was, as in the case of the corpse-eating cult of Leng, consumed by the priests themselves, or merely thrown away, as among the Thuggee of India.
Thoughtfully and quietly, Danny Pricefixer returned the book to the clerk at the checkout window. Thoughtfully and quietly, he walked out on Fifth Avenue and stood between the two guardian lions. Who was it, he wondered, who had asked, "Since nobody wants war, why do wars keep happening?" He looked at the killer smog around him and asked himself another riddle, "Since nobody wants air pollution, why does air pollution keep increasing?"
Professor Marsh's words came back to him: "ifthese beings had survived to our time, as some occultists claim…"
Walking toward his car, he passed a newsstand and saw that the disaster at the Drake Mansion was still the biggest headline even in the afternoon editions. It was irrelevant to his problem, however, so he ignored it.
Sherri Brandi continued the chant in her mind, maintaining the rhythm of her mouth movements… fifty-three-big rhinoceroses, fifty-four big rhinoceroses, fifty-five-Camel's nails dug into her shoulders suddenly and the salty gush splashed hot on her tongue. Thank the Lord, she thought, the bastard finally made it. Her jaw was tired and she had a crick in her neck and her knees hurt, but at least the son-of-a-bitch would be in a good mood now and wouldn't beat her up for having so little to report about Charley and his bugs.
She stood up, stretching her leg and neck muscles to remove the cramps, and looked down to see if any of Car-mel's come had dribbled on her dress. Most men wanted her naked during a blow job, but not creepy Carmel; he insisted she wear her best gown, always. He liked soiling her, she realized; but, hell, he wasn't as bad as some pimps and we've all got to get our kicks some way.