The Call of Cthulhu | Page 2

writing of some kind the bulk of these designs seemed
certainly to be; though my memory, despite much the papers and
collections of my uncle, failed in any way to identify this particular
species, or even hint at its remotest affiliations.
Above these apparent hieroglyphics was a figure of evident pictorial
intent, though its impressionistic execution forbade a very clear idea of
its nature. It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a
monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say
that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous
pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be
unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted
a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the
general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful.
Behind the figure was a vague suggestions of a Cyclopean architectural
background.
The writing accompanying this oddity was, aside from a stack of press
cuttings, in Professor Angell's most recent hand; and made no pretense
to literary style. What seemed to be the main document was headed
"CTHULHU CULT" in characters painstakingly printed to avoid the
erroneous reading of a word so unheard-of. This manuscript was
divided into two sections, the first of which was headed "1925 - Dream
and Dream Work of H.A. Wilcox, 7 Thomas St., Providence, R. I.",
and the second, "Narrative of Inspector John R. Legrasse, 121 Bienville
St., New Orleans, La., at 1908 A. A. S. Mtg. - Notes on Same, & Prof.
Webb's Acct." The other manuscript papers were brief notes, some of
them accounts of the queer dreams of different persons, some of them
citations from theosophical books and magazines (notably W.
Scott-Elliot's Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria ), and the rest comments on

long-surviving secret societies and hidden cults, with references to
passages in such mythological and anthropological source-books as
Frazer's Golden Bough and Miss Murray's Witch-Cult in Western
Europe. The cuttings largely alluded to outré mental illness and
outbreaks of group folly or mania in the spring of 1925.
The first half of the principal manuscript told a very particular tale. It
appears that on March 1st, 1925, a thin, dark young man of neurotic
and excited aspect had called upon Professor Angell bearing the
singular clay bas-relief, which was then exceedingly damp and fresh.
His card bore the name of Henry Anthony Wilcox, and my uncle had
recognized him as the youngest son of an excellent family slightly
known to him, who had latterly been studying sculpture at the Rhode
Island School of Design and living alone at the Fleur-de-Lys Building
near that institution. Wilcox was a precocious youth of known genius
but great eccentricity, and had from chidhood excited attention through
the strange stories and odd dreams he was in the habit of relating. He
called himself "psychically hypersensitive", but the staid folk of the
ancient commercial city dismissed him as merely "queer." Never
mingling much with his kind, he had dropped gradually from social
visibility, and was now known only to a small group of esthetes from
other towns. Even the Providence Art Club, anxious to preserve its
conservatism, had found him quite hopeless.
On the ocassion of the visit, ran the professor's manuscript, the sculptor
abruptly asked for the benefit of his host's archeological knowledge in
identifying the hieroglyphics of the bas-relief. He spoke in a dreamy,
stilted manner which suggested pose and alienated sympathy; and my
uncle showed some sharpness in replying, for the conspicuous
freshness of the tablet implied kinship with anything but archeology.
Young Wilcox's rejoinder, which impressed my uncle enough to make
him recall and record it verbatim, was of a fantastically poetic cast
which must have typified his whole conversation, and which I have
since found highly characteristic of him. He said, "It is new, indeed, for
I made it last night in a dream of strange cities; and dreams are older
than brooding Tyre, or the contemplative Sphinx, or garden-girdled
Babylon."

It was then that he began that rambling tale which suddenly played
upon a sleeping memory and won the fevered interest of my uncle.
There had been a slight earthquake tremor the night before, the most
considerable felt in New England for some years; and Wilcox's
imagination had been keenly affected. Upon retiring, he had had an
unprecedented dream of great Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and
sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze and sinister with
latent horror. Hieroglyphics had covered the walls and pillars, and from
some undetermined point below had come a voice that was not a voice;
a chaotic sensation which only fancy could transmute into sound, but
which he attempted to render by the almost unpronounceable jumble of
letters: "Cthulhu fhtagn."