The Moon Pool & Dwellers in the Mirage. Abraham Merritt
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know damned well they did.”
“They spoke of Ataga’hi. Does that mean anything to you.”
“Not a thing.”
“It didn’t to me — then. It does now. Ataga’hi was an enchanted lake, in the wildest part of the Great Smokies, westward from the headwaters of the Ocana-luftee. It was the medicine lake of the animals and birds. All the Cherokee knew it was there, though few had seen it. If a stray hunter came close, all he saw was a stony flat, without blade of grass, forbidding. But by prayer and fasting and an all-night vigil, he could sharpen his spiritual sight. He would then behold at daybreak a wide shallow sheet of purple water, fed by springs, spouting from the high cliffs around. And in the water all kinds of fish and reptiles, flocks of ducks and geese and other birds flying about, and around the lake the tracks of animals. They came to Ataga’hi to be cured of wounds or sickness. The Great Spirit had placed an island in the middle of the lake. The wounded, the sick’ animals and birds swam to it. When they had reached it — the waters of Ataga’hi had cured them. They came up on its shores — whole once more. Over Ataga’hi ruled the peace of God. All creatures were friends.”
“Listen, Indian, are you trying to tell me this is your medicine lake?”
“I didn’t say that at all. I said the name of Ataga’hi kept coming into my mind. It was a place that appeared to be a stony flat, without blade of grass, forbidding. So does this place. But under that illusion was — a lake. We saw a lake. It’s a queer coincidence, that’s all. Perhaps the stony flat of Ataga’hi was a mirage —” He hesitated: “Well, if some other things the ancestors mentioned turn up, I’ll shift sides and take your version of that Gobi affair.”
“That lake was the mirage. I’m telling you.”
He shook his head, stubbornly.
“Maybe. But maybe what we see down there now is mirage, too. Maybe both are mirage. And if so, then, how deep is the real floor, and can we make our way over it?”
He stood staring silently at the valley. He shivered, and again I was aware of the curiously intense quality of the cold. I stooped and caught hold of my pack. My hands were numb.
“Well, whatever it is — let’s find out.”
A quiver ran through the valley floor. Abruptly it became again the shimmering blue lake. And as abruptly turned again to nibbled rock.
But not before I had seemed to see within that lake of illusion — if illusion it were — a gigantic shadowy shape, huge black tentacles stretching out from a vast and nebulous body . . . a body which seemed to vanish back into immeasurable distances . . . vanishing into the void . . . as the Kraken of the Gobi cavern had seemed to vanish into the void . . . into that void which was — Khalk’ru!
We crept between, scrambled over and slid down the huge broken fragments. The further down we went, the more intense became the cold. It had a still and creeping quality that seeped into the marrow. Sometimes we dropped the packs ahead of us, sometimes dragged them after us. And ever more savagely the cold bit into our bones.
By the frequent glimpses of the valley floor, I was more and more assured of its reality. Every mirage I had ever beheld — and in Mongolia I had seen many — had retreated, changed form, or vanished as I drew near. The valley floor did none of these things. It was true that the stones seemed to be squatter as we came closer; but I attributed that to the different angle of vision.
We were about a hundred feet above the end of the slide when I began to be less sure. The travelling had become peculiarly difficult. The slide had narrowed. At our left the rock was clean swept, stretching down to the valley as smoothly as though it had been brushed by some titantic broom. Probably an immense fragment had broken loose at this point, shattering into the boulders that lay heaped at its termination. We veered to the right, where there was a ridge of rocks, pushed to the side by that same besom of stone. Down this ridge we picked our way.
Because of my greater strength, I was carrying both our rifles, swung by a thong over my left shoulder. Also I was handling the heavier pack. We came upon an extremely awkward place. The stone upon which I was standing suddenly tipped beneath my weight. It threw me sideways. The pack slipped from my hands, toppled, and fell over on the smooth rock. Automatically I threw myself forward, catching at it. The thong holding the two rifles broke. They went slithering after the escaping pack.
It was one of those combinations of circumstances that makes one believe in a God of Mischance. The thing might have happened anywhere else on our journey without any result whatever. And even at that moment I didn’t think it mattered.
“Well,” I said, cheerfully, “that saves me carrying them. We can pick them up when we get to the bottom.”
“That is.” said Jim, “if there is a bottom.”
I cocked my eye down the slide. The rifles had caught up with the pack and the three were now moving fast.
“There they stop,” I said. They were almost on the rubble at the end.
“The hell they do,” said Jim. “There they go!”
I rubbed my eyes, and looked and looked again. The pack and the pushing rifles should have been checked by that barrier at the slide’s end. But they had not been. They had vanished.
CHAPTER VI.
THE SHADOWED-LAND
There had been a queer quivering when rifles and pack had touched the upthrust of rock. Then they had seemed to melt into it.
“I’d say they dropped into the lake,” said Jim.
“There’s no lake. They dropped into some break in the rock. Come in-”
He gripped my shoulder.
“Wait, Leif. Go slow.”
I followed his pointing finger. The barrier of stones had vanished. Where they had been, the slide ran, a smooth tongue of stone, far out into the valley.
“Come on,” I said.
We went down, testing every step. With each halt, the nibbled plain became flatter and flatter, the boulders squatted lower and lower. A cloud drifted over the sun. There were no boulders. The valley floor stretched below us, a level slate-grey waste!
The slide ended abruptly at the edge of this waste. The rocks ended as abruptly, about fifty feet ahead. They stood at the edge with the queer effect of stones set in place when the edge had been viscous. Nor did the waste appear solid; it, too, gave the impression of viscosity; through it ran a slight but constant tremor, like waves of heat over a sun-baked road — yet with every step downward the bitter, still cold increased until it was scarcely to be borne.
There was a narrow passage between the shattered rocks and the cliff at our right. We crept through it. We stood upon an immense flat stone at the very edge of the strange plain. It was neither water nor rock; more than anything, it had the appearance of a thin opaque liquid glass, or a gas that had been turned semi-liquid.
I stretched myself out on the slab, and reached out to touch it. I did touch it — there was no resistance; I felt nothing. I let my hand sink slowly in. I saw my hand for a moment as though reflected in a distorting mirror, and then I could not see it at all. But it was pleasantly warm down there where my hand had disappeared. The chilled blood began to tingle in my numbed fingers. I leaned far over the stone and plunged both arms in almost to the shoulders. It felt damned good.
Jim dropped beside me and thrust in his arms.
“It’s air,” he said.
“Feels like it —” I began, and then a sudden realization came to me —“the rifles and the pack! If we don’t get them we’re out of luck!”
He said: “If Khalk’ru is