The papers pertaining to Professors Thurston and Angell study of the strange events of 1925 are the best background on the Cult of Cthulhu and its activities I've yet found. Indeed, they are the only ones that seem to be based on actual events and eyewitness accounts. As is often the case with the occult, so much of what happens is shrouded in secrecy and shadow. The sober work of these two academics is the best material I have to work with to build my understanding of the Cult and its goals.
Their stories also help me understand the severity of the threat that I've now exposed myself to. Angell though quite aged, died under circumstances that his grand-nephew viewed as suspicious. In his last days, he was seen being jostled by a man who fits the profile I've now come to associate with a cultist. Shortly after leaving his own work on the matter to the library at Tufts, Thurston died under more suspicious circumstances, at only fifty three years old. Thurston wrote that he believed that his granduncle had been murdered and that he might meet the same fate. After my visit to Boston I know that I too am similarly marked for death.
My visit to Tufts University started much like my visit to Brown. I arrived up early, and wandered the stacks for a while, then at the appointed time I met with a librarian who took me to the special collections area of the library. He left me with the folio containing Professor Thurston's work and papers. I quickly separated out the ones that pertained to the Cthulhu cult. All of the materials from Angell's account were duplicated here, but just as I suspected, his grandnephew had picked up the trail and conducted an investigation of his own. Eager to continue the narrative, I did not immediately go to make photocopies of the materials like a good researcher, but started reading the originals instead.
The new materials dealt with a story originally found in the Sydney (Australia) Bulletin dated April of 1925. It told of a derelict ship picked up off of New Zealand whose sole surviving crew member, the second mate of another vessel which had been lost, told story that was strange enough to make international news. The survivor, name Johansen, told that his schooner had been attacked by a heavily armed yacht manned by unsavory characters from Dunedin(N.Z.). Though his ship was lost in the battle, the crew managed to board the yacht, killing the crew in the ensuing melee. Disoriented by a storm, the crew landed the strange ship on an even stranger island, at a latitude and longitude where there was supposed to be only open water. The rest of the crew died on the island, save Johansen and another man, whose dead body had been found on the captured yacht. What befell the other crew members, Johansen could never be brought to speak of. Those who saw him afterwards described him as horribly affected by his ordeal. Attempts to locate the island the crew had landed in proved fruitless.
None would have thought to connect this newspaper article with the strange events happening in America that year except for Thurston, and only he by chance. For the picture accompanying the story was of an idol found on the captured yacht, a replica of the one that Inspector Legrasse had recovered from the swamp ritual nearly twenty years before. He recognized it immediately, and set off to the South Pacific to continue his granduncles investigation and hopefully bring it to a conclusion. Arriving eventually in Australia, and speaking with the Admiralty about the episode and the personages involved, he discovered that Johansen had left after the incident for Oslo, Norway (for he was originally Norwegian).
Steeled by his resolve to see the investigation concluded, Professor Thurston set out for Norway. He went to visit Johansen at his some, but Johansen had not survived long after the events of 1925. His widow had a manuscript written by her late husband concerning those events, of which Thurston was able to convince her he was the intended recipient. In the manuscript, Johansen revealed the account he had refused to give to the Australian authorities. He tells of the unprovoked attack on his schooner blown off course by a storm, the boarding of the yacht, and finally the strange island.
Landing on the island where none was supposed to exist, the crew found an ancient city that was unlike anything they had ever seen. Built around and up a hill at the center of the island, the structures and layout of the city seemed to defy all human architectural tradition, and even basic earthly Geometry. Thurston surmised, and I agree, that this must have been the sunken city of R'yleh, where Cthulhu sleeps until he can rise and claim the Earth once again. Thurston connects the presence of the previously unknown island to an earthquake recorded a few days before in Chile and Australia.
The crew recognized how ancient and unusual the city on this island was, and though the place terrified them, it was quite plainly deserted. They hoped to find some valuable souvenirs to bring back with them after the loss of their ship. One of the crew eventually discovered a giant monolith with a heavy stone door. On the door, Johansen describes a likeness of Cthulhu that seems very similar to Wilcox's bas-relief. He told of an ancient city in his visions, and it now seems that he dreamed of the place Johansen and his crew visited, and carved this massive door upon awakening.
The crew managed to discern the door's operation, and it very slowly slid open. The men gathered anxiously, hoping for a chance to take from the tomb the riches of some ancient king. Instead, the door opened upon a stench and a visible blackness that obscured the sun as it poured from the portal. The keen-eared among the crew reported a nasty, sloppy sound coming from within, but they were still not prepared for what would come out of that doorway. A gelatinous, green creature bearing the squid-dragon likeness that could only have been Cthulhu himself squeezed through the portal after the men. Two of the men are said to have died of fright at that moment. The thing grabbed three more up in its claws. Another fell to his death off a cliff over the see trying to escape. Only Johansen and Briden, whose body was the corpse found with Johansen made it to their vessel. They built steam up and got the boat underway, hoping to escape from the ancient city and the evil they had awakened.
Cthulhu was having none of it. He slid into the water and gave chase, his giant form quickly closing the gap between himself and the ship. Johansen, knowing that the thing would overtake them, quickly gave the ship full steam and turned the wheel abruptly, drawing the ship into a head-on collision course with the unearthly terror pursuing it. In the moment before impact, Johansen was able to get his best look at the terrifying visage, which was so enormous that it came up nearly to be bow of the ship. Then there was a bursting like a gelatinous bladder, and a terrible stench and sound that the author lacked words to describe. Thinking he had slain the beast, Johansen looked towards the stern, only to find that the scattered bits of Cthulhu were slowly coalescing into their original form. He pushed onwards, widening the distance between himself and Cthulhu with the urgency of a man whose survival is at stake.
The death of his now completely mad companion and his rescue at sea follow just as they are described in the account from the Sydney Bulletin. The story now concluded, Thurston reflects in writing upon his investigation. He clearly takes Johansen's story for fact, and the madness of artists like Wilcox halfway around the world as corroborating evidence of the terrifying reality of this evil from the stars. I find that it beggars belief, but yet the story stirs something deep and primitive in me as well. Ever since I learned of Cthulhu and the Elder ones, I have been uneasy and afraid at all times. This would prove to be an advantageous state of mind that afternoon in Boston, for while I was considering Thurston's account and processing all I had learned, another patron entered the special collections area. It would be my first face-to-face encounter with a Cultist.
