I looked up at the curious round leaves. I closed my eyes. A breeze stirred the branches, and their soft music made me sleepy again. And suddenly I saw the pale red sky and the three suns. The land of three shadows! Again there was the great temple. I seemed to be floating on the air, exploring the wonders of another world! The temple frightened me, and I knew that no man on earth had ever seen this place in his wildest dreams.
Again the vast doorway opened before me, and I was sucked into that black cloud. I seemed to be staring at a void I cannot describe: a dark, bottomless gulf with nameless shapes and creatures.
I was terribly afraid. I screamed and screamed, and felt that I would soon go mad. Then in my dream I ran and ran in terror, but I did not know what I was running from. I left that horrible temple and that hellish void because I knew I had to return…
At last my eyes opened. I was not under the tree. I was lying on a rocky slope, my clothes torn, my hands bleeding. I stood up in pain and recognized the spot – it was the slope from where I had first seen the blasted area! I must have walked miles – unconscious! I could not see the tree, and I was glad.
I looked at the sun. Late afternoon! Where had I been? I took out my watch. It had stopped at 10:34…
“So you have the shots?” Theunis asked, looking at me across the breakfast table. Three days had passed by since my return from Hell’s Acres. I had told him about the dream under the tree, and he had laughed.
“Yes,” I said. “They came last night. Haven’t had a chance to open them yet. Study them. Perhaps you’ll change your mind.”
Theunis smiled, drinking his coffee. I gave him the unopened envelope, and he quickly took out the pictures. He looked at the first one, and the smile faded from his face.
“My God, man! Look at this!”
I took the glossy picture. There was nothing special on it, so I could not understand what made Theunis so excited. It was the first picture of the tree. There it was, standing on the hill, with the jungle of grass where I had lain below it. In the distance were the snow-capped mountains.
“Here it is,” I said. “The proof of my story.”
“Look at it!” Theunis cried. “The shadows – there are three for every rock, bush, and tree!”
He was right. Below the tree lay three shadows. Suddenly, I realized that there was an abnormal element the picture. The leaves on the thing were too lush, while the trunk was twisted in the most unusual shapes. Theunis put the picture on the table.
“There is something wrong,” I muttered. “The tree I saw didn’t look like that…”
“Are you sure?” Theunis asked. “The fact is, you may have seen many things not recorded on this film.”
“It shows more than I saw!”
“That’s right. There is something terribly wrong with this landscape. Something I can’t understand. The tree seems to be too unreal to be natural!” He took the other pictures and looked through them.
I took the picture again and felt some uncertainty and strangeness. The flowers and grass grew in different directions. The tree seemed too clouded, but I noticed the huge branches that were ready to fall over, yet did not fall. And also many overlapping shadows… They were very queer shadows – too long or short when compared to the plants they fell below. The landscape hadn’t shocked me the day of my visit… But now there was an abnormal dark suggestion in it, something distant like the stars beyond the galaxy.
“Did you say you saw three suns in your dream?” Theunis asked.
I nodded, puzzled. Then it dawned on me[12]. My fingers trembled slightly as I stared at the picture again. My dream! Of course!
“The others are just like it,” Theunis said. “That same suggestion. I should be able to catch it, to see it in its real light, but it is too… Perhaps later I will figure it out, if I look at it long enough.”
We sat in silence for some time. A thought came to me suddenly: I should visit the tree again. “Let’s take a trip. I think I can take you there in half a day.”
“You’d better stay away,” said Theunis, thoughtfully. “I doubt if you could find the place again even if you wanted to.”
“Nonsense!” I cried. “Surely, with these photos…”
“Did you see any familiar landmarks in them?”
He was right. After looking through the shots carefully, I had to admit that there were none.
“A perfectly normal picture of a spot from nowhere. Seeing mountains from this low place is impossible, but wait!” Theunis muttered. He got off the chair and ran out of the room. I could hear him moving in our library, cursing loudly. Soon he came back with an old book. He opened it and looked at the odd characters.
“What is that?” I asked.
“This is an early English translation of the Chronicle of Nath, written by Rudolf Yergler, a German mystic and alchemist who borrowed some of his lore from Hermes Trismegistus, the ancient Egyptian sorcerer. There is a passage here that might interest you and help you understand why this tree is even further from the natural than you suspect. Listen.”
“So in the year of the Black Goat there came to Nath a shadow that should not be on Earth, and that had no form known to the eyes of Earth. And it fed on the souls of men. These poor men were blinded with dreams till the horror and the endless night lay upon them. They could not see what that Shadow was because the Shadow took false shapes that men know or dream of, and freedom seemed waiting only in the Land of the Three Suns. But it was told by priests of the Old Book that he who could see the Shadow’s true shape and live after seeing it might be able to send it back to the starless void. This could be done only through the Gem which Ka-Nefer, the High-Priest, kept sacred in the temple, but it was lost with Phrenes. Yet, at last, the hungry Shadow left Nath – only to come back again in the next year of the Black Goat.”
Theunis paused while I stared at him. Finally he spoke. “Now, I think you can guess how it all links up. According to the old legends, this is the so-called ‘Year of the Black Goat’ when certain horrors from the Outside are supposed to visit the earth and do harm. We don’t know what they are like, but they could be like strange mirages and hallucinations. I don’t like your story or the pictures. It may be pretty bad, and I warn you to be careful. But first I must try to do what old Yergler says. Fortunately, the old Gem he mentions has been found, and I know where I can get it. We must use it on the photographs and see what we see, and maybe make sketches. The Gem is more or less like a lens or prism, though one can’t take photographs with it. There’s a bit of danger, and the looker’s sanity might be harmed because the real shape of the shadow isn’t pleasant and doesn’t belong on this earth. But it would be a lot more dangerous not to do anything about it. So if you value your life and sanity, stay away from that hill and from the thing you think is a tree on it.”
I was more scared than ever. “How can there be someone from the Outside here?” I cried. “How do we know that such things exist?”
“You think in terms of[13] this small planet Earth,” Theunis said. “Surely it cannot measure the whole universe. There may be invisible creatures we have never dreamed of right under our noses. Modern science is studying the unknown and proving that the mystics were not so wrong.”
Suddenly I knew that I did not want to look at the picture again; I wanted to destroy it. I wanted to run from it. Theunis was suggesting something beyond… A trembling, cosmic fear gripped me and drew me away from the hideous picture because I was afraid I would recognize some object in it…
I looked at my friend. He was reading the ancient book with a strange expression on his face. Then he sat up straight. “Enough for today. I’m tired of this endless guessing and wondering. I must try to get the gem from