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.Ofthe latter, I have sought them out, both Men & Women, & upon Examination havein all Cases discovered them to be Users of Divination, Observers of Times,Enchanters, Witches, Charmers or Necromancers.All claimed to work theirWonders through Intercourse with dead & departed Spirits, but I fear thatoften such Spirits were evil Angels, the Messengers of the Dark One & yet moreancient Evils.Indeed, among them were some whose Powers were prodigious, whomight at Will inhabit the Body of another, even at a great Distance & againstthe Will & often unbeknown to the Sufferer of such Outrage.Moreover, I have dreamed it that of the aforementioned most ancient of Evils,there is One which slumbers in Deeps unsounded so nearly Immortal that Life &Death are one to Him.Being ultimately corrupt, He fears Death's Corruptionnot, but when true Death draws nigh will prepare Himself until, fleeing Hisancient Flesh, His Spirit will plumb Times-to-come& there cleave unto Flesh of His Flesh, & all the Sins of this Great Fathershall be visited upon His Child's Child.I have dreamed it, & my Dreams havebeen His Dreams who is the greatest Dreamer of all.Cthulhu, then would be reincarnated in the womb of his daughter, to be rebornas her child.To Dagon would go the honor of fathering this blasphemy, Hydrawould be nurse and handmaiden, Cthylla herself would raise the hybrid horrorwith Cthulhu's monstrous mind and psyche.Then in the waxing strength of ayoung adult - pointless, horrible even to conjecture what characteristics thisthing might have! - he could again commence the influencing of men's minds,and this time from a location very close indeed to vast centers of human life.Cthulhu, alert again, powerful, would be sending out his hellish dreams from the deeps beneath Devil Reef, unsuspected - for of course officially he wouldbe dead!Having told me so much, even though I pressed him for further details, Peasleewould say no more on the subject of Cthulhu's reincarnation.It seemed to methat there was more he could have told me, certainly, but that it was of suchimportance and of so ultimately secret a nature that he simply dared notmention it, not even to me.Furthermore I could see that he was biting histongue, presumably for having said too much already.In any case, the latenessof the hour saved him from any further embarrassment: he used it as an excuseto take his departure.PART TWO 1Of Visions and Visits(From de Marigny's notebooks)Less than a week later Peaslee visited me again, this time to wish me luck forthe future and to say farewell for the time being.There was work waiting forhim in America.Before he left we talked of Titus Crow once more and then,finally, the old man asked me if I had any plans with regard to the WilmarthFoundation.Did I want to come back into the organization? If so, there wouldalways be a place for me.I thanked him but turned his offer down.I had myown interests, my own discoveries to make in this 'new world'.It was only after a further period of six weeks in the hospital, with at leasthalf of that time taken up with physiotherapy, the retraining of my poor,unaccustomed muscles, that I was finally allowed to sign myself out and go myway as a free man.In fact the last few weeks had seemed like a sort ofimprisonment, and I was very glad when I was at last able to get back into theworld, albeit a world with which I was greatly out of touch.During those frustrating weeks there had been one regular visitor at thehospital, however, a lady whose presence helped combat the tedium of waitingout my time until the doctors would give me a clean bill of health: my dearold part-time housekeeper, Mrs Adams, who could only ever speak of Titus Crowas 'that dreadful Crow person', for in her eyes Titus had always been to blamefor dragging me into whatever adventures overtook us.My hospital, I haddiscovered, was on the outskirts ofAylesbury; Mrs Adams, when she finally knew my whereabouts, traveled up dailyfrom London just to spend an hour or so with me.She had kept my place goingall this time, visiting the house twice a week for ten long years in myabsence.As she herself put it: 'I knowed you'd be back sooners-laters, Mr'Enri, sir.' And now, though I was still using a walking stick, now I wasback.Fortunately I had all but dissolved my small but lucrative antique businesssome time after joining the Foundation, and so very little had wanted orwasted for my absence.I intended now to revive my lifetime interest inbeautiful old books, pottery and furniture, but first I would spend a few dayssimply getting used to the feel and atmosphere of my old home again.While the house itself was the same as ever, the district had seemed to changeenormously.'Progress', as they call it, waits for no man - not even atime-traveler.Indeed, especially not a time-traveler! Out walking in a neckof the city I'd once considered my own, it was as if I trod the streets ofsome strange, foreign place.New buildings, alleys, posters; a well-rememberedold cinema had been replaced by a shopping arcade; even the faces weredifferent, where shops I'd once used had now passed into new hands ordisappeared completely, demolished.The underground was the same, and yet wasnot the same, but that didn't bother me much: its system had always beenbeyond my comprehension.And in all truth I had not used the tube since firstlearning of the existence of the burrowers beneath; and because of them,despite all Peaslee's assurances, I did not intend to use it again.Not that I ventured far from my house during those first few weeks out of thehospital.I did not, except to make one very special trip to Leonard's-Walk Heath late in November.Blowne House, Crow's strange, foreboding bungalowretreat, had once sprawled on the heath.All Icould find now was a shattered ruin, a drab and desolate skeleton of a house.The bricks of the old chimney were crumbling onto rotten floorboards; thecreepers of wild brambles made slow but steady incursions throughout thesurrounding gardens; nettles grew in threatening clumps along the drive.Inanother five or six years it would almost seem as if the place had never been
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