This strange phrase was the key to the recollection which excited and disturbed Professor Angell. He questioned the sculptor with scientific interest. Then he studied with the great interest the bas-relief which the young man made. He did it half-dreaming and clad only in his night clothes. Wilcox afterwards said that my uncle blamed his old age, because he did not recognize hieroglyphics and pictorial designs fast enough. Many of his questions seemed highly inappropriate to his visitor, especially those which tried to connect the things with strange cults or societies. Wilcox did not understand the promises of silence, which professor offered him in exchange for an admission of membership in some widespread mystical or paganly religious society.
Professor Angell became convinced that the sculptor was indeed ignorant of any cult or system of cryptic lore. So he asked his visitor to supply him with future reports of dreams. This bore regular fruit. After the first interview the manuscript records daily visits of the young man. During these visits he related shocking fragments of nocturnal imaginery. He was always talking about some terrible Cyclopean pictures of dark and dripping stone, with a subterrene voice or intelligence shouting monotonously enigmatical uninscribable gibberish[22]. The two sounds were frequently repeated are rendered by the letters Cthulhu and Rlyeh.
The manuscript continued. On March 23, Wilcox did not come. He was ill with an obscure fever. They took him to the home of his family in Waterman Street. He cried out in the night, and arouse several other artists in the building. He showed since then only alternations of unconsciousness and delirium. My uncle at once telephoned the family. From that time he watched the case closely. He was calling often at the Thayer Street office of Dr. Tobey who treated Wilcox. The young mans febrile mind, apparently, was dwelling on strange things. The doctor was shuddering as he spoke of them. They included not only a repetition of his former dreams. They also concerned gigantic things miles high which walked or lumbered about.
He never fully described these objects. He used occasional frantic words. After Dr. Tobey repeated them, the professor was convinced that they were identical with the nameless monster. This monster Wilcox tried to depict in his dream-sculpture. Reference to this object, the doctor added, was invariably a prelude to the young mans lethargy. His temperature was quite normal. It was strange, indeed. But the whole condition was rather like true fever and not a mental disorder.
On April 2 at about 3 P.M. every trace of Wilcoxs illness suddenly ceased. He sat upright in bed. He was surprised to find himself at home. He was completely ignorant of what happened in dream or reality since the night of March 22. His physician declared that he recovered and he returned to his quarters in three days. But he was not able to help Professor Angell. All traces of strange dreaming vanished with his recovery. My uncle kept no record of his night-thoughts after a week of pointless and irrelevant descriptions of usual visions.
Here the first part of the manuscript ended. But the references to different notes gave me much material for thought. The notes were the descriptions of the dreams of various persons. They were covering the same period as that in which young Wilcox made his strange visits. It seems that my uncle was inquiring amongst nearly all the friends whom he was able to ask. He was asking for nightly reports of their dreams, and the dates of any notable visions for some time past. He received so many responses, that it seemed impossible to handle them without a secretary. This original correspondence was not preserved. But his notes formed a thorough and really significant digest. Average people in society and business gave an almost completely negative result. But sometimes they mentioned some formless nocturnal impressions, between March 23 and April 2. This was the period of young Wilcoxs delirium. Four cases of scientific men gave vague descriptions of strange landscapes. In one case there was mentioned a dread of something abnormal.
The answers of artists and poets were more interesting. I suspect that if we decide to compare the notes there will be some panic. But the original letters were absent. So I suspected that there were some leading questions[23], or somebody edited the correspondence. That is why I continued to feel that Wilcox was deceiving the old scientist. The responses from esthetes told disturbing tale. From February 28 to April 2 many of them dreamed very bizarre things. The intensity of the dreams was immeasurably stronger during the period of the sculptors delirium. Over a fourth of them[24] reported scenes and half-sounds like those which Wilcox described. Some of the dreamers were afraid of the gigantic nameless thing which became visible at the end. One case was very sad. A widely known architect had great interest toward theosophy and occultism. He went violently insane on the date of young Wilcoxs seizure. He died after continuously screaming for several months, asking for help. He wanted to be saved from some escaped denizen of hell. My uncle did not mention their real names, so I was unable do personal investigation. I traced down only a few so I was unable to make personal investigation myself. And it is well that no explanation ever reached those people.
The cuttings from newspaper articles were about cases of panic, mania, and eccentricity during that period. Professor Angells collection was tremendous, probably he hired a cutting bureau[25]. The sources were scattered throughout the globe. Here was a nocturnal suicide in London, where a man leaped from a window after a shocking cry. Here was a letter to the editor of a newspaper in South America, where a fanatic pretold future from his visions. An article from California described a theosophist colony. People in white robes were preparing for some glorious fulfillment which never arrived. Articles from India spoke of serious native unrest toward the end of March 2223.
The west of Ireland, too, was full of wild rumour and legendary stories. A fantastic painter named Ardois-Bonnot offered a blasphemous Dream Landscape in the Paris spring salon of 1926. The recorded troubles in insane asylums were very numerous. And it is a miracle that nobody found something common in them. Then I was rationalistic, so I set them aside. Now I am simply unable to do so. But I was then convinced that young Wilcox knew of the older matters mentioned by the professor.
II. The Tale of Inspector Legrasse
The older matters made the sculptors dream and bas-relief significant to my uncle. They formed the second half of his long manuscript. Once before, it appears, Professor Angell saw the hellish outlines of the nameless monstrosity. Once before he thought about the unknown hieroglyphics, and heard the ominous syllables which can be written only as Cthulhu. And the horrible connection that he discovered made him ask young Wilcox about his dreams.
It was in 1908, seventeen years before, when the American Archaeological Society held its annual meeting in St. Louis. Professor Angell, because of his authority and knowledge, had a prominent part in all the meetings. And some outsiders offered him questions for correct answering and problems for expert solution.