Haggopian and Other Stories (60 page)

“Lower your head,” she commanded. “Carefully down the steps. This way. Almost there…”

“Cassilda,” he said, holding tightly to her hand. “I’m dizzy.”

“The wine!” she laughed.

“Wait, wait!” he cried, dragging her to a halt. “My head’s swimming.” He put out the hand that held the bottle, found a solid surface, pressed his knuckles against it and steadied himself. He leaned against a wall of sorts, dry and flaky to his touch, and gradually the dizziness passed.

This is no good, he told himself: I’ll be of no damn use to her unless I can control myself! To her he said, “Potent stuff, your local wine.”

“Only a few more steps,” she whispered.

She moved closer and again there came the sound of sliding silk, of garments falling. He put his arm around her, felt the flesh of her body against the back of his hand. The weight of the bottle slowly pulled down his arm. Smooth firm buttocks—totally unlike Julia’s, which sagged a little—did not flinch at the passing of fingers made impotent by the bottle they held.

“God!” he whispered, throat choked with lust. “I wish I could hold on to you for the rest of my life…”

She laughed, her voice hoarse as his own, and stepped away, pulling him after her. “But that’s your second wish,” she said.

Second wish… Second wish? He stumbled and almost fell, was caught and held upright, felt fingers busy at his jacket, the buttons of his shirt. Not at all cold, he shivered, and deep inside a tiny voice began to shout at him, growing louder by the moment, shrieking terrifying messages into his inner ear.

His second wish!

Naked he stood, suddenly alert, the alcohol turning to water in his system, the unbelievable looming real and immense and immediate as his four sound senses compensated for voluntary blindness.

“There,” she said. “And now you may remove your blindfold!”

Ah, but her perfume no longer masked the charnel musk beneath; her girl’s voice was gone, replaced by the dried-up whisper of centuries-shrivelled lips; the hand he held was—

Harry leapt high and wide, trying to shake off the thing that held his hand in a leathery grip, shrieking his denial in a black vault that echoed his cries like lunatic laughter. He leapt and cavorted, coming into momentary contact with the wall, tracing with his burning, supersensitive flesh the tentacled monstrosity that gloated there in bas-relief, feeling its dread embrace!

And bounding from the wall he tripped and sprawled, clawing at the casket which, in his mind’s eye, he saw where he had last seen it at the foot of her couch.
Except that now the lid lay open!

Something at once furry and slimy-damp arched against his naked leg—and again he leapt frenziedly in darkness, gibbering now as his mind teetered over vertiginous chasms.

Finally, dislodged by his threshing about, his blindfold—the red mask and black silk handkerchief he no longer dared remove of his own accord—slipped from his face… And then his strength became as that of ten men, became such that nothing natural or supernatural could ever have held him there in that nighted cave beneath black ruins.

• • •

Herr Ludovic Debrec heard the roaring of the car’s engine long before the beam of its headlights swept down the black deserted road outside the inn. The vehicle rocked wildly and its tyres howled as it turned an impossibly tight corner to slam to a halt in the inn’s tiny courtyard.

Debrec was tired, cleaning up after the day’s work, preparing for the morning ahead. His handful of guests were all abed, all except the English Herr. This must be him now, but why the tearing rush? Peering through his kitchen window, Debrec recognised the car—then his weary eyes widened and he gasped out loud. But what in the name of all that…? The Herr was naked!

The Hungarian landlord had the door open wide for Harry almost before he could begin hammering upon it—was bowled to one side as the frantic, gasping, bulge-eyed figure rushed in and up the stairs—but he had seen enough, and he crossed himself as Harry disappeared into the inn’s upper darkness.

“Mein Gott!” he croaked, crossing himself again, and yet again. “The Herr has been in
that
place!”

• • •

Despite her pills, Julia had not slept well. Now, emerging from unremembered, uneasy dreams, temples throbbing in the grip of a terrific headache, she pondered the problem of her awakening. A glance at the luminous dial of her wristwatch told her that the time was ten after two in the morning.

Now what had startled her awake? The slamming of a door somewhere? Someone sobbing? Someone crying out to her for help? She seemed to remember all of these things.

She patted the bed beside her with a lethargic gesture. Harry was not there. She briefly considered this, also the fact that his side of the bed seemed undisturbed. Then something moved palely in the darkness at the foot of the bed.

Julia sucked in air, reached out and quickly snapped on the bedside lamp. Harry lay naked, silently writhing on the floor, face down, his hands beneath him.

“Harry!” she cried, getting out of bed and going to him. With a bit of a struggle she turned him on to his side, and he immediately rolled over on his back.

She gave a little shriek and jerked instinctively away from him, revulsion twisting her features. Harry’s eyes were screwed shut now, his lips straining back from his teeth in unendurable agony. His hands held something to his heaving chest, something black and crumbly. Even as Julia watched, horrified, his eyes wrenched open and his face went slack. Then Harry’s hands fell away from his chest; in one of them, the disintegrating black thing seemed burned into the flesh of his palm and fingers. It was unmistakably a small mummified hand!

Julia began to crawl backwards away from him across the floor; as she did so something came from behind, moving sinuously where it brushed against her. Seeing it, she scuttled faster, her mouth working silently as she came up against the wall of the room.

The—creature—went to Harry, snatched the shrivelled hand from him, turned away…then, as if on an afterthought, turned back. It arched against him for a moment, and, with the short feelers around its mouth writhing greedily, quickly sank its sharp teeth into the flesh of his leg. In the next instant the thing was gone, but Julia didn’t see where it went.

Unable to tear her eyes away from Harry, she saw the veins in his leg where he had been bitten turn a deep, dark blue and stand out, throbbing beneath his marble skin. Carried by the now sluggish pulsing of his blood, the creature’s venom spread through him. But…poison? No, it was much more, much worse, than poison. For as the writhing veins came bursting through his skin, Harry began to melt. It went on for some little time, until what was left was the merest travesty of a man: a sticky, tarry thing of molten flesh and smoking black bones.

Then, ignoring the insistent hammering now sounding at the door, Julia drew breath into her starving lungs—drew breath until she thought her chest must burst—and finally expelled it all in one vast eternal scream…

The Hymn

One of my most recent stories, “The Hymn” was written in July/August 2003, specifically for a new “pulp”,
H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror
. So here we are as I write this, two years or more later, and the No. 3 issue—allegedly a”Lumley issue”—still hasn’t appeared. History repeats! Presumably it will have appeared, at least by the time you read “The Hymn” in this current collection.*

*I received my copies 1st November 2006.

There were six of us—eight, if I include the two men in the cell. Not a cell as in a prison, more a large partitioned room or apartment—or rather a closed, controlled environment with all the necessary life-support systems; also a fail-safe which could be brought into play to cancel the said life-supports in the unlikely event that such action became imperative.

The cell’s walls, floors and ceilings were of welded five-inch thick carbon steel plates, buttressed on the outside; the inlet and outlet conduits, as few as possible, had bores of no more than two inches; the entire structure—its adjuncts and supporting complex—was subterranean in a mountainous region, thus making use of a nuclear shelter left over from a war that had never come to pass. There had been lesser wars, certainly, but not the BIG ONE that we had all been afraid of back in the early ’60s.

Actually, it was during the aftermath of one of those so-called “lesser” wars (as if there ever was any such thing) that the events leading to my current position as director and coordinator of T.M.I. or “The Mythos Investigation” had taken place—but to speak of that now would be to jump the gun as it were, and anyway it will come up later, wherefore it better serves my purpose to proceed with my description of the subterrene facility, also to explain something of my fellow observers, and then to let the principal participants in the experiment, our human guinea pigs in the cell, tell the story in their own words.

So, there was myself: a Foundation Member (I’m afraid I can say no more on that subject), also one other Foundation Member, an elderly colleague; there were two men from military intelligence, both high-ranking, inferior only to the highest governmental authorities; there was a female psychiatric specialist, and finally a technician, a man who—having been responsible for the design and construction of the cell, its adjuncts and surroundings—was completely familiar with its workings. He knew how to run the place, and just as importantly how to shut it down. As for myself and my elderly colleague: we were there by virtue of our alleged expertise in certain matters of grotesque myth and legend.

With regard to the names and physical descriptions of the team: I deem these particulars unnecessary; at this late date I see no reason to compromise anyone. And details of the precise location of our sub-sierran venue are likewise out of the question, since I have no doubt it remains a much guarded secret to this day.

And so back to the cell:

The cell had no windows…it wasn’t required that the men inside should be able to look out. That would be a distraction, and they certainly wouldn’t want to see us looking in. We were, of course, “looking in”, though not through windows as such; for even one-way viewports would not have allowed total visual access. But recessed into the interior walls, ceilings and various fittings were tiny closed-circuit cameras each with an exterior screen. Audio was similarly available, indeed absolutely necessary.

The cell was equipped with small bedrooms, bathrooms, cooking facilities, and a large refrigerator containing enough food and drink for several weeks. Lighting was of course artificial; it could be switched off in the bedrooms, so that our subjects might sleep. But even there we were not to be excluded: bedroom cameras could be switched to infrared. It was of the utmost importance that we should be able to see them—and perhaps even listen to them—when they slept.

As to their names: while I am certain that their real names may be found in Foundation archives, where I have no doubt they are kept secure, I shall nevertheless provide them with pseudonyms…. Letters such as this one may not be as safe as Foundation records. They were Jason and James. On the other hand, I will give them at least something of physical descriptions, if only to enhance the reader’s mental picture of them during the discoursive passages to follow.

They were of a height, perhaps five-nine or ten; also of an age, say thirty-two, with Jason the elder by five or six months. Jason was a redhead, outspoken, careless in both dress and attitude, often flippant but never insulting. Lanky and jaunty if a little lopsided in his gait, he had green eyes, a long straight nose and gaunt cheeks. James was quite Jason’s opposite. Admitting to a sedentary lifestyle, he had wisps of thinning, prematurely grey hair on a bulbous skull, sharp, permanently narrow and penetrating blue eyes, a small mouth and receding chin, all set on a burly, powerful if under-utilized frame. In short, and if in the near future he did not take up some form of exercise, he could expect to go to seed. Also, where Jason was invariably plain speaking James frequently tended to more elaborate prose, perhaps to affect a semblance of personal mystery, an esoteric éclat or occult ambiance.

And why not? Since by his own admittance James was “psychically endowed”, for which reason he’d become one of our guinea pigs of course. As for Jason: at first he had seemed bewildered by the whole thing. But he had been unemployed, and we had made him an irresistible offer.

Their induction had come following various checks and controls. First: they were just two out of two and a half thousand applicants who answered our ad in national broadsheets. Second: after discarding the sad, mistaken, lying, wannabe, and lunatic two thousand four hundred, the finalists had undergone an exhaustive series of parapsychological tests, which further narrowed the field. Both James and Jason had passed with flying colours, once again to the latter’s apparent astonishment. Third: during Zener Card testing at a government establishment, they had been brought into close proximity with an “alien artefact”; this had been caused to occur while they slept in a dormitory unaware of what was happening and under close, covert observation. Both of them had experienced troubling dreams, indeed nightmares.