Strange Eons (6 page)

“Good God!”

“Serves me right for being in such a hurry. Flight attendants got me into an ambulance and over to Dr. Holton’s office. He took X-rays and put on a cast. Drove me home himself. I can’t get around without crutches, but Holton is sending a practical nurse to look after me for a few days.”

“Then we won’t be seeing each other tonight.”

“Don’t worry, I’m all right. Come on over and bring the envelope.”

“Can’t we get together tomorrow instead? You need some rest.”

“Look, I think I’ve found the answer to all this, and I want you to hear it before I lose my voice entirely. How soon can I expect you?”

“Give me an hour.”

“I’ll be waiting.

The night air was oppressively warm and still. Keith loosened his jacket as he drove along Melrose, then turned south into a side street where old frame bungalows rose boxlike from the shadows of weedy and untended lawns.

Waverly’s house was larger and better preserved than its neighbors, set well back from the sidewalk in a fenced yard, but in the moonless dark it looked no more inviting than the surrounding structures. Keith parked behind a white van, puzzling at its presence until he remembered Waverly’s mention of a practical nurse.

Thus he was prepared when, in response to his ring, the front door opened and a stranger’s voice asked him to enter.

Moving into the hall he confronted a smiling young black man in a leisure suit. “Mr. Keith?” said the nurse. “I’m Frank Peters.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Keith lowered his voice. “How’s the patient?”

“A little under the weather. He’s been taking some of those pain pills the doctor left, but his throat’s giving him a hard time. I phoned in a prescription for cough-medicine—now that you’re here I’ll run down to the pharmacy and pick it up.”

“Good idea.”

“He’s waiting for you in the study. Try not to let him talk too much.”

Keith nodded and started down the hall as the young man left, closing the front door behind him. “See you later,” he said.

The study was dim and it took Keith a moment for his eyes to adjust to the semidarkness; the lamp on the desk had been turned down to low. Waverly sat in a big chair at the far corner, his left foot resting on a hassock and encased in a plaster cast. Despite the stifling warmth he wore a longsleeved woolen bathrobe and a neck-scarf, but that portion of his pale features not covered by the beard bore no trace of perspiration.

He nodded as Keith entered. “Thanks for coming—it’s good to see you.”

“Sorry I can’t return the compliment.” Keith surveyed his host. “You look like you’ve had a rough time of it. And you sound awful.”

“Never mind, I’ll be all right now that you’re here. Help yourself to a drink if you like.”

“No thanks.” Keith seated himself in a chair beside the desk. “I’m not staying long—you’re supposed to take it easy.”

“Then I’ll be brief.” Waverly blinked at his visitor from behind the dark glasses. “Did you bring the package?”

Keith extracted the brown envelope from his jacket.

“Good.” Waverly nodded his approval. “You can open it now. We’re safe here.”

Taking a letter opener from the desktop, Keith slit the flap and extracted a yellowed oilskin, sealed at one end. Waverly watched, expressionless, as the opener slashed and the oilskin fell away, exposing a single creased sheet of folded notepaper.

Placing the sheet on the desk, Keith unfolded it and stared down.

“Well?” said Waverly, softly.

“It’s some sort of map.” Keith frowned. “I can’t make out the details—the ink is faded. Mind if I turn up the lamp?”

“The details aren’t important.” Waverly shook his head. “What I want to know is—do you recognize the handwriting?”

Keith squinted, then looked up in surprise. “Lovecraft’s!”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course. Nobody could duplicate his penmanship. I saw specimens in that book you showed me,
Marginalia.
Didn’t that include a map too?”

“Yes. A street plan of Arkham.” Waverly cleared his throat, then chuckled hoarsely. “Can you imagine drawing up such a thing, inventing all those street names and then lettering them in just as though they actually existed? The man had a strange sense of humor.”

“You think he did this as a put-on?”

“Of course.” Waverly peered at Keith through the dark lenses. “Remember the letter he wrote giving another author permission to use him as a character in a story? He even included signatures of imaginary witnesses, written in German, Arabic and Chinese. Then HPL compounded the fake by writing a sequel to the other author’s story—killing
him
off. He even used his own home in Providence as the setting, just to make it seem more authentic. Lovecraft was an inveterate and elaborate practical joker. Once you realize this, it explains everything.”

“I don’t follow you,” Keith said. He picked up the creased sheet of notepaper for a closer inspection, but Waverly’s words distracted him.

“That picture you bought—Upton painted it, but that didn’t inspire Lovecraft’s story. I think it was the other way around. The story was done first, and then HPL had Upton illustrate what he’d written. How he would have laughed if he knew the way we were taken in! For a while he almost had us believing in ghouls and all that morbid nonsense in the Cthulhu Mythology he invented.” Waverly chuckled again. “Don’t you see? It’s all a hoax.”

The air beneath the beamed ceiling was close. From somewhere down the hall came the faint sound of footsteps—probably Peters had returned from the pharmacy with the prescription.

Keith ignored the sound, staring at the figure seated in the shadows. “You’re forgetting one thing,” he said. “Santiago and Beckman were murdered. It can’t be a hoax.”

“Yes it can.” Waverly’s voice rose suddenly, sharp and shrill. “Peters—get the map!”

Keith turned.

The black man advanced upon him from the doorway. He wasn’t smiling now, and he held a revolver in his hand.

“Give it to me,” he said.

Keith took a step backwards, but Peters bore down upon him, his weapon aimed and ready to fire. “Give it to me,” the black man muttered.

Then the hand holding the revolver began to shake.

There was a rumbling, and the whole room shook; the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Keith felt the house shudder and sway with a sudden cracking sound that merged with the black man’s scream as the overhead beams started to fall.

Keith turned, clutching the map in his hand, and ran for the doorway.

Then the rumbling rose to a roar, the ceiling came crashing down, and he knew no more.

When he opened his eyes again, all was silent. Silent and dark and very still.

Earthquake. They’d predicted another one, and it had come.

Keith stirred cautiously, relief flooding through him as he discovered his limbs moving without pain. There was a numb sensation behind his left ear—he must have been struck by a piece of rubble from the ceiling. Large chunks of plaster weighed heavily against his chest; he pushed them aside and sat up. The crumpled map was still clutched in his right hand.

But the black man no longer held a revolver. He was lying behind Keith, pinned under a huge beam, his skull crushed to a pulpy mass.

Keith rose, turning away from the sickening sight. He groped his way through the debris littering the floor, searching for a glimpse of Simon Waverly in the shadows at the far corner of the room.

Miraculously, the chair had not been damaged. But it was empty now—or almost empty.

Through the darkness Keith stared down at the things that rested on the seat. They were three in number; three objects furnished with metal clamp attachments.

Three unmistakable objects—the face and hands of Simon Waverly.

The nightmare didn’t end.

It continued in the street, where dazed figures stumbled from partially demolished bungalows or frantically fought to reenter them in search of the missing.

Numbed by shock, Keith noted that the white van no longer stood at the curb before Waverly’s house. But the Volvo was there and apparently undamaged; he turned the key in the ignition and it started up immediately.

Keith drove into a night that was now neither dark nor still. Shattered dwellings turned to torches, lighting his way through the city that screamed in pain.

He was not alone; traffic constantly increased as others commandeered cars to escape from conflagration or explosions generated by leaking gas mains. Water pipes had burst and flooded Melrose, and Keith skirted the arterial until he found a safe crossing point. He turned west at Fountain Avenue, swerving frequently to avoid hitting those who ran or plodded or merely stood stunned and irresolute in the street.

Highland Avenue was clogged with northbound vehicles headed for the freeway; on La Brea the sirens wailed as police cars, ambulances and fire-trucks raced on emergency errands.

But as he drove further west there was less evidence of violent destruction. Apparently the quake had hit hardest at the central city, and Keith offered a silent prayer that his own area might have escaped the worst tremors.

How long it took for him to move through canyon traffic he did not know; by the time the Volvo started to climb up into the hills he was soaked with perspiration. But there was little sign of the quake’s effect visible here—the houses stood firm on their hillside slopes and only a few trees had fallen to partially block the roadway. Keith drove around them, noting gratefully that there was no sign of brush fires, and the shriek of sirens had here subsided to a distant echo.

When at last he reached home he breathed a sigh of relief; the house seemed untouched. Keith parked the Volvo and went inside, sniffing for possible gas leaks. Detecting none, he switched on the hall light and found it worked. The curious numb feeling persisted, but he forced himself on a tour of inspection, checking for possible damage.

A few glasses had broken in the kitchen cupboards but the refrigerator’s contents were intact. The electric stove worked, and the faucet in the sink operated normally. Only the jagged crack in the wall above it gave evidence of the quake’s impact here.

In the den, figurines had toppled inside their cabinet; Keith didn’t bother to inspect them. Several of the tribal carvings hung askew on the wall, and the shrunken head no longer dangled.

As it grinned up at him from the floor with sightless, slitted eyes and mocking mouth, another image suddenly superimposed itself upon his vision—the flabby, hideous mask of human flesh that was the face of Simon Waverly.

Then numbness gave way to panic. Turning, Keith opened the liquor cabinet and groped amongst the unbroken contents until he found a brandy bottle.

He carried it into the bedroom, switching on the light to assure himself no harm had been done here. Kicking off his shoes, Keith sank down upon the bed, twisted the seal from the bottle and, for the first time in his life, drank himself into merciful oblivion.

It must have been close to noon when he awoke with a pounding head and a consuming thirst. Aspirin and water helped ease physical distress, but the feeling of panic remained.

Emerging from the bathroom, he went to the nightstand and picked up the phone. He’d already started dialing the police number before he realized the line was dead. Apparently the quake had knocked out service in the area.

Keith moved into the living room and turned on the television set. It functioned, and after a moment of warm-up the welcome image of a commentator filled the screen. He congratulated himself on finding a news broadcast so quickly, then decided that every local channel must be carrying continuous reports of last night’s disaster.

During the next hour he learned enough to piece together a coherent account of the tragedy, which struck the city with 7.1 force on the Richter scale.

The major effects were felt in the downtown area, where great shards of window glass had razored down from tall buildings and shattered storefronts. Luckily the inner city was practically deserted at the time, and few were killed or injured in the streets. But panic prevailed in theaters as fixtures and chandeliers fell; scores had been trampled in the rush to escape. Several hospitals were scenes of calamity, and the destruction in private homes was severe. Fire damage was considerable, although no widespread conflagration was reported. Los Angeles County had been officially declared a disaster area and the National Guard was assisting in the search for victims amidst the hazards of escaping gas and fallen power lines.

Keith turned the volume down and went into the kitchen to make coffee. His head was hurting again, but this was probably due to last night’s blow from falling rubble.

The realization brought with it what he had thus far succeeded in forestalling—a full recollection of the happenings at Waverly’s house.

And with recollection came recognition.

Those final moments in Waverly’s study paralleled Lovecraft’s story.
The Whisperer in Darkness.

Even the situation had its similarities. Lovecraft’s narrator became involved with Henry Akeley, a scholar who believed that winged creatures from another planet were hiding in the lonely Vermont hills near his home. Confiding his fears in correspondence, he invited the narrator to visit him and bring along the photographic and recorded evidence he’d sent as proof. When the narrator arrived he was met by a stranger claiming to be Akeley’s friend, and taken to the house where the presumably ill scholar awaited him to whisper reassurances in darkness. Realizing at last that Akeley’s supposed friend was a human ally of the winged creatures who lured him here to get hold of the evidence, the narrator managed to escape. But before leaving, he too made the shocking discovery of a human face and hands resting on the chair his friend had supposedly occupied.

There were differences, of course. In the story it was implied that the dead scholar had been impersonated by one of the winged creatures wearing human hands and face in a dreadful disguise.

Keith shook his head. He felt certain he had not been deceived by some monstrosity from outer space, whispering to him in imitation of human speech. But using Lovecraft’s story as a guide, it seemed alarmingly simple to surmise what really happened.