"The Mine on Yuggoth"

 

by Ramsey Campbell

originally published The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, Arkham House, 1964

Edward Taylor grew up a normal kid except he preferred reading Victorian horror novels to Winnie the Pooh and was way too interested in how witches and such did their tricks (fortunately, Harry Potter hadn't been invented yet).

In college, he started, which got everyone kicked out.  But by then Ed had inherited his folks' money and never had to work for a living, so he could cast spells to his black little hearts' content.

One thing that gets him excited is a formula for immortality that he gleans from an incomplete Revelations of Glaaki and a "horrible" book by Johannes Henricus Pott which has no title.  He comes to believe the secret is a contained made from a metal found on the planet Yuggoth, and that there are portals to Yuggoth to be found here on earth.  So he determines to find one and get himself to Yuggoth, though he's grossed out by the "lizard-crustaceans" (the Mi-Go one assumes?  Or maybe not?) and puzzled by a passage in Revelations about a pit which the Mi-Go stay away from, for fear of something in it.

Searching for a complete copy of Revelations leads him to Daniel Norton, a complete doofus who lives on a little sheep farm in Goatswood (why not Sheepswood?).  Norton, who mixes up his S's and z's,  calling Ed "young zur", babbles a lot about a slab in the woods near a rock formation called Devil's Steps where there may be a Mi-Go outpost.  Maybe.  But, having told him plenty, says he won't tell more till Ed goes to Devil's Steps and tries the "Voola ritual".  Which of course he does.  But the only effect is hearing "something vast stirring below his feet", which seems impressive enough!

Ed goes back to Norton demanding that he come help him, but Norton refuses, asserting that the Mi-Go are likely to nab them, take them back to Yuggoth, and feed them to "what they're afraid of ", and anything that scares the Mi-Go, Nort doesn't want to mess with.  So Ed demands he give him his complete Revelations, which he does, telling him to "keep away an' let me stop playin' round with things from Outside" (why he couldn't just stop, Ed or no Ed, is not clear but then he is established as being a dumbass).

Ed studies up, ignoring yet another warning in Revelations about a city of green pyramids and a nearby pit where something older than the Mi-Go lives that no mind can stand the sight of.  

Ed goes out to Devil's Steps and climbs the rock.  At the top he finds a plateau, three towers joined by catwalks, and an alien fungus growing all around them.  Which moves to greet or threaten him.

Inside the windowless towers, and finds the portal.  Passing through it, he finds himself changed - "it was as if his body had been torn into atoms and recombined".  As he had already expected, passing through the portal alters one's body so that it can survive and function on the other side.  A strange sound which might be an alarm rings out, but he ignores it.

He finds himself in some kind of alien city.  He begins to explore the city, which is all weird towers and shapes, and seems empty.  He finds an open area full of seats with metal discs on rods attached to either side of them.  Ed thinks this looks like a kind of cinema, and it looks "as if the space had been hurriedly vacated" (how, exactly?  Spilled Yuggothian popcorn?  It is not made clear).

Ed sits in one and discovers that a beam that passes between the two discs creates visions in the mind, either random or, if used properly, according to specific desires.  How does he find this out?  After seeing several weird-ass uninvited visions ("Great cobwebbed objects rolled from noisome caverns in the center of a phosphorescent morass, their mouths opening wetly as they hastened toward where a figure screamed and struggled in the mud."  Leave it to Campbell!), Ed thinks "what a waste", and is treated to (triggered by the word "waste") a vision of a Mi-Go (or whatever it is) taking a dump!

Putting 3+3 together, Ed decides to think about the mines he's seeking.  He's treated to a Yuggothian Google Maps vision.  But finds it will not look past a spot where the buildings end.

Still its enough.  He makes his way out to where the buildings come to a ledge, and a pit, surrounded by green pyramidal structures.  Just as he's trying to see further, as in how to get down into the pit, something comes crawling up from it - "something which slithered up from the rock ledge, glowing greenly.  It was vast and covered with green surfaces which ground together.." it knocks down buildings and "engulf(s) fleeing dwarven forms."  Ed, finally showing an ounce of brains, runs for it, back through the portal and back to the steps, which he manages to stumble down (impressive, since he had to use climbing equipment to get up).

Ed makes it home and tears the place up, burning most of his nefarious occult documents.  The coppers are called and find him raving about the Devil's Steps.  He's taken away to the funny farm where he spends all his time raving about the thing back on Yuggoth finding its way through the portal and hoo-boy will that be bad!  The docs keep his files under wraps.  It seems an X-ray shows that his lungs, which apparently did not properly re-transmute when he passed through the portal coming back, are not the lungs of a human being.

Well this is a nutty ride!  The amazing thing about early Campbell (he was just outta H.S. when Inhabitant was published) is how pulpy it is.  But its also wildly imaginative, and there are little hints of the oblique creepiness Campbell would later master (c.f. Ed's first visions from the alien "cinema".  On the other hand, there are some big lapses in logic - not least of which how completely Ed ignores the flashing neon sign in all his studies that says THERE'S SOMETHING IN A PIT THERE YOU DON'T WANT TO FUCK WITH!! - especially since Campbell reminds us of it three or four times.  Ed's rapid descent down the Steps is kinda hard to swallow since it's 200 feet high and it took him full rock-climbing to get up, and the Mi-Go scatology bit is both hilarious and very, very weird.  What in the hell was he thinking with that?

Finally it must be noted this ends up being yet another "nosy-scholar-pokes-into-things-he-shouldn't-and-goes-nutso" story of which the Cthulhu Mess-thos has plenty.  Its more imaginative than most and hints of Campbell's blossoming talent are there, but mostly its just weird, and kinda humorous.