It was April 26, two weeks after that dreadful Sunday at the Topsfield Power Plant. Mackie MacNamara was finally allowed to leave the Arkham hospital, although she was still covered in bandages. She joined her fellow investigators at the Miskatonic University Library, where Professor Henry Armitage, head librarian at Miskatonic, had decided to meet them. The Intrepid Investigators were perhaps not their most intrepid-looking. Jules Pollack looked permanently worried, which was emphasized by a deeply furrowed brow. Moira Baker was still sporting a bandage around her head, where the strange alien beings had attempted to open up her cranium and remove her brain. Surgeons had assured her that there would be minimal scarification, but Moira remained concerned. Irwin Bowers was looking unnaturally perky with a tinge of mania after having taken a long whiff of nitrous oxide, while Howards Lake seemed nervous and on the edge. He was perhaps still concerned that the strange biomechanical monstrosity would find him him again, and he had been sleeping poorly ever since the last encounter with the entity. Dark circles under Lake's eyes and a stubbly chin betrayed his predicament.
They were all seated in front of Professor Armitage in the dimly lit interior reading room of the Miskatonic University Library. Armitage was unclasping an old book, perhaps ten by seven inches and quite thick, and probably quite old. Two other books were propped up on stands, but not yet opened. Armitage cleared his throat and said:
"Ladies and gentlemen, I know you have been through a lot, both recently and on your various trips. I know I should have sought you out previously in this capacity, but I frankly did not realize that you had delved so deeply into these strange alien beings that seek out our planet and its riches. Now, the beings you dispatched, did they look something like this?" Armitage pointed at a drawing in the book.
The book seemed to emit a musky odor, and Bowers sneezed before once again reaching for his nitrous oxide. Armitage continued: "The ancient folklore, while cloudy, evasive, and largely forgotten by the present generation, is of a highly singular character, and obviously reflects the influence of still earlier Indian tales. This material, moreover, closely coincides with tales which I had personally heard from elderly rustics in the mountains of New Hampshire. Briefly summarized, it hinted at a hidden race of monstrous beings which lurked somewhere among the remoter hills—in the deep woods of the highest peaks, and the dark valleys where streams trickle from unknown sources. These beings are seldom glimpsed, but evidences of their presence have been reported by those who have ventured farther than usual up the slopes of certain mountains or into certain deep, steep-sided gorges that even the wolves shunned.
These things seem content, on the whole, to let mankind alone; though they were at times held responsible for the disappearance of venturesome individuals—especially persons who built houses too close to certain valleys or too high up on certain mountains. Many localities came to be known as inadvisable to settle in, the feeling persisting long after the cause was forgotten. People would look up at some of the neighboring mountain-precipices with a shudder, even when not recalling how many settlers had been lost, and how many farmhouses burnt to ashes, on the lower slopes of those grim, green sentinels.
But while according to the earliest legends the creatures would appear to have harmed only those trespassing on their privacy; there are later accounts of their curiosity respecting men, and of their attempts to establish secret outposts in the human world. There are tales of the queer claw-prints seen around farmhouse windows in the morning, and of occasional disappearances in regions outside the obviously haunted areas. Tales, besides, of buzzing voices in imitation of human speech which made surprising offers to lone travelers on roads and cart-paths in the deep woods, and of children frightened out of their wits by things seen or heard where the primal forest pressed close upon their dooryards. In the final layer of legends—the layer just preceding the decline of superstition and the abandonment of close contact with the dreaded places—there are shocked references to hermits and remote farmers who at some period of life appeared to have undergone a repellent mental change, and who were shunned and whispered about as mortals who had sold themselves to the strange beings. In one of the northeastern counties it seemed to be a fashion about 1800 to accuse eccentric and unpopular recluses of being allies or representatives of the abhorred things.
As to what the things were—explanations naturally varied. The common name applied to them was “those ones”, or “the old ones”, though other terms had a local and transient use. Perhaps the bulk of the Puritan settlers set them down bluntly as familiars of the devil, and made them a basis of awed theological speculation. Those with Celtic legendry in their heritage—mainly the Scotch-Irish element of New Hampshire, and their kindred who had settled in Vermont on Governor Wentworth’s colonial grants—linked them vaguely with the malign fairies and “little people” of the bogs and wraiths, and protected themselves with scraps of incantation handed down through many generations. But the Indians had the most fantastic theories of all. While different tribal legends differed, there was a marked consensus of belief in certain vital particulars; it being unanimously agreed that the creatures were not native to this earth.
The Pennacook myths, which were the most consistent and picturesque, taught that the Winged Ones came from the Great Bear in the sky, and had mines in our earthly hills whence they took a kind of stone they could not get on any other world. They did not live here, said the myths, but merely maintained outposts and flew back with vast cargoes of stone to their own stars in the north. They harmed only those earth-people who got too near them or spied upon them. Animals shunned them through instinctive hatred, not because of being hunted. They could not eat the things and animals of earth, but brought their own food from the stars. It was bad to get near them, and sometimes young hunters who went into their hills never came back. It was not good, either, to listen to what they whispered at night in the forest with voices like a bee’s that tried to be like the voices of men. They knew the speech of all kinds of men—Pennacooks, Hurons, men of the Five Nations—but did not seem to have or need any speech of their own. They talked with their heads, which changed color in different ways to mean different things, and with strange clicking sounds.
All the legendry, of course, white and Indian alike, died down during the nineteenth century, except for occasional atavistical flareups. The ways of the Vermonters became settled; and once their habitual paths and dwellings were established according to a certain fixed plan, they remembered less and less what fears and avoidances had determined that plan, and even that there had been any fears or avoidances. Most people simply knew that certain hilly regions were considered as highly unhealthy, unprofitable, and generally unlucky to live in, and that the farther one kept from them the better off one usually was. In time the ruts of custom and economic interest became so deeply cut in approved places that there was no longer any reason for going outside them, and the haunted hills were left deserted by accident rather than by design. Save during infrequent local scares, only wonder-loving grandmothers and retrospective nonagenarians ever whispered of beings dwelling in those hills; and even such whisperers admitted that there was not much to fear from those things now that they were used to the presence of houses and settlements, and now that human beings let their chosen territory severely alone.
The Vermont myths differed but little in essence from those universal legends of natural personification which filled the ancient world with fauns and dryads and satyrs, suggested the kallikanzari of modern Greece, and gave to wild Wales and Ireland their dark hints of strange, small, and terrible hidden races of troglodytes and burrowers. No use, either, to point out the even more startlingly similar belief of the Nepalese hill tribes in the dreaded Mi-Gou or 'Abominable Snow-Men' who lurk hideously amidst the ice and rock pinnacles of the Himalayan summits."
"But what would these strange... Mi-Go do with some form of radioactive technology on top of a hydro-electric power plant? They sure seem to have left those hills, right?" Jules Pollack was quite anxious to find out, but he also wanted to get to the bottom of this, since he needed a drink.
"There were ancient and elaborate alliances between the hidden outer creatures and certain members of the human race. How extensive these alliances were, and how their state today might compare with their state in earlier ages, we had no means of guessing; yet at best there was room for a limitless amount of horrified speculation. There seemed to be an awful, immemorial linkage in several definite stages betwixt man and nameless infinity. The blasphemies which appeared on earth, it was hinted, came from the dark planet Yuggoth, at the rim of the solar system; but this was itself merely the populous outpost of a frightful interstellar race whose ultimate source must lie far outside even the Einsteinian space-time continuum or greatest known cosmos. It seems quite likely that the blasphemous were attempting to rein in the awesome energies of the Cobalttorium-G to built a gatewat or a portal between our planet and distant Yuggoth, or perhaps even more remote and distant places. The Mi-Go would then be able to access our world at their leisure for God knows what nefarious purpose. You see, if these aliens become more interested in affairs here on Earth, we might find ourselves in a most difficult and desperate situation!"
"But why, o why were they going to send our brains into thee void?" Moira was still shuddering at the thought of a seemingly gleeful space crustacean cutting into her forehead.
"Well, since you mentioned it..." Armitage reached in under the sturdy table and, to the horror of the investigators, pulled out a Mi-Go brain canister featuring an intact brain.
"I acquired this specimen from Professor Jones of the Religion Department. His son had apparently, well, stolen, the cylinder from an almost abandoned monastery in the remote parts of Tibet where it had been kept for at least two centuries. And yes, we have tried to contact the brain through wiring and electricity, but it seems to be dead, or perchance dormant. This could have been you, Miss Baker!"
"But why were they so interested in me?" Mackie shifted in her chair, The wounds were still hurting quite a bit.
"You are, after all, quite the scholar, no matter what the likes of Professor Thornton-Smythe might say, and judging from your accounts, you have encountered avatars of such strange multi-dimensional existences as Yog-Sothoth, and other weird beings of sea and land. Your knowledge would be quite valuable to the Mi-Go, and knowledge is something they truly respect - and collect." Armitage put down the brain cylinder and covered it with heavy velvet cover before continuing. "Mr. Lake, is it not quite the irony that you nevertheless managed to destroy the Topsfield Power Plant? I do wonder how the Mi-Go could spy into what seems to be various alternative futures. Were the naked triplets part of this precognition device? We will never find out now, unless we find other examples of Mi-Go technology, or some other source. Oh, I also have this to show you." Professor Armitage reached into his jacket and pulled out a small box with a strange scalpel-like object.
"So who or what did I actually shoot in the head then? Otto Argo seems to have been some form of automaton, not unlike what is stalking Howard." Lake could not help looking over his shoulder at the mention of the weird killer that remained at large.
"I really do not know. Is Otto Argo merely a construct? Was he once a human? Is there still an original Otto Argo? We cannot know for sure. Anyway, before we part ways, I would like to recommend that you take a trip out of town, preferably a longer trip. There are old and strange groups and powers who would probably like to engage you in a wide variety of particularly unpleasant ways, not too mention that both mayor Bryce, councilman Bedford Duvall and the Arkham PD are more than a little upset due to the destruction of the Topsfield Power Plant. I may have managed to pull a few strings to avoid lengthy prison sentences, but there is only so much I can do."
The weary investigators had many difficult decisions to make. Also, whatever happened to Bogislav Klimnik, the terrified doctor, and was the man-machine hunting Lake still around?
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