by Brian Lumley
The road narrowed to a mere strip of tarmac threading in and out of the trees and shrubs, and again I knew the cobwebby gloom of enclosed and silent places. As I came round the bole of a great tree I saw the fork in the track and made a rapid decision. It was not that I was going too fast, simply that I was not expecting two tracks, and by the time I had taken the left of the forks it was already obvious that I was on the poorer surface. But now the trees were too close together, offering no opportunity to turn, so that I had to carry on or back up. I did not like to reverse if I could possibly help it. I had only to get stuck in a position where I could move neither forward nor back and the rest of my journey would be on foot! And I was not yet sure how much farther I had to go. Still, there was no proof that this was not the track down which my brother had his house, and there seemed only one way to resolve the matter for sure. I drove carefully on.
In another fifty yards the track petered out altogether and I found myself driving through short grass. There remained, though, signs of a trail of some sort, and the trees were thinning slightly, so that soon I was able to turn back the way I had come.
It was there, deep in the woods down that little used trail, as I made the turn to carry me back to the fork in the track, that I saw the old quarry. Those emanations that had bothered me since driving into Boresby were very strong there, disquieting influences which seemed to pulse through the very air. Dust motes danced in the beams of sunlight filtering through the high branches as I stopped my machine and climbed out to go and stand on the lip of the old stone quarry. The silence was absolute, with not even the soft cooing of wood-pigeons to disturb the lethal-seeming hush.
On three sides the quarry’s rock face was steep and almost overhanging, but on the fourth, the farther side, a break in the sloping face had let through the mud and stagnant water of a wooded bog. Possibly this had stopped work in the quarry originally. Now the excavation was filled to a level some thirty feet beneath the lip with ooze and reeds, but directly beneath where I stood the water had apparently filtered itself into comparative clarity, so that I could make out mechanical shapes beneath the surface. There was the glint of chromium and the gleam of sunlight on sunken glass. Automobiles!—an unknown number. Perhaps at some time long past, this place had been used as a tip for broken-down cars. Yet from the little I could see the vehicles beneath the quarry water did not seem particularly aged.
Finally, unable to bear the quiet any longer, I gave a loud hoot of derision at my own strange fancies and climbed back into the driving seat of my car. And yet I was glad to pull away from that spot. Even the echoes of my scornful cry had seemed dulled and had died too quickly away.
Soon I was on the right track again and could hardly have penetrated another half-mile into the forest when I saw the obviously homemade sign, with lettering in Arnold’s unmistakable scrawly style, nailed to a tree. He had never been much good with a paintbrush:
HOME BREWED BEER—
—ALL DAY LONG
Oh!—that would be Arnold, all right; hadn’t he always fancied himself as a bit of a specialist when it came to home-pressed wines and beers? But what on Earth was he thinking of, putting a sign like that here, with this place allegedly “out of bounds” and him the official Preserver of the Sanctity, so to speak? Why! The sign was a positive attraction to trespassers, an invitation condoning woodland offences! Or perhaps the road was only restricted during certain seasons of the year?
The trees were much more thinned-out here, but that oppressive, shut-in feeling persisted in bothering me. Away through the trees, up a grassy track, stood a thatch-roofed cottage with a high, square towerlike building behind. Thin smoke drifted upwards from a brick chimney. I left my car, walked up the track through the trees to the door of the cottage, and knocked. There was no answer, but the weight of my knuckles was sufficient to cause the door, already slightly ajar, to swing fully open.
“Arnold? Are you there?” Inside, a passage split the cottage into two sections. My eyes were immediately attracted to the wall at the far end of the passage, to a massive door with four great hinges down one edge and a small-paned window in its upper section. I made calculations in my head, coming to the conclusion that the door must lead directly into the base of the tower behind the cottage proper. Come to think of it, what would that tall building be? Why, of course! It must be a watchtower for forest fires; it reached easily to the height of the surrounding trees. Yes, that would be the answer. But that aside, where was Arnold?—and what was that sickly, cloying scent that kept wafting to my nostrils? Difficult to place, that smell, yet I knew it from somewhere. One thing for sure, though, whatever the odour was it did not belong here in this setting—or did it?
I walked slowly down the passage, calling Arnold’s name once or twice as I went and receiving no answer. He was obviously out, but perhaps would be back shortly. Two doors at the left of the passage were open and I glanced into the rooms as I passed. A toilet and a bathroom. I passed the bedroom next, pausing briefly to stare at a framed photograph on a dusty bedside table which smiled at me with the faces of Helen and young Alan, before coming to a closed door on the right. A few more paces brought me to the great door at the end of the passage. It was locked and had no doorknob. I tried to peer in through the small-paned window, but the glass was stained a dull brown on the other side, so that all I could make out was a gloomy outline or two. That smell I had noticed before seemed to be issuing from somewhere behind the massive door. Possibly Arnold used the base of the tower as a sort of storeroom. If so it seemed to me that something he had stored in there had gone bad. I retraced my steps to the closed room, turned the doorknob and pushed the door open.
“Arnold?” It seemed pointless calling his name again, but nonetheless, out of plain courtesy, I did so as I entered the room. Just inside the door I stopped dead to gaze astonished about me. What on Earth ... ?
There was a window looking out on the grass track I had walked to the outside door, but the light coming in through that window had to fight its way past disordered stacks of books... or rather, magazines! Hundreds of them, all of the same theme, heaped on a dusty table, littered a score deep across the surface of a desk in front of the window, piled on chairs and stacked on the floor; packed bulging into bookshelves along the wall facing the door—car magazines! The Motor-Car, Racing Machines, Autocar, The Motorist, Man Transport, The British Motorist, Road Travel, and dozens of others some of which dated back at least five years.
There are fanatics and fanatics, but what kind of a man, for what possible reason, should want so many books—most of them way out of date—on any one subject? Obviously my brother was no collector in the normal sense of the word, for the magazines were simply scattered about indiscriminately, with no sign of sorting or filing. Indeed, some of the publications were still in their brown-paper subscription envelopes, unopened. I threw down the half-dozen envelopes brought from the post office on top of the rest and moved over to a cabinet relatively clear of Arnold’s hoard. The cabinet occupied a space roughly in the centre of the room from where I could stare about me in complete bewilderment. The very walls, other than the one with the bookshelves, were literally covered with automobile photographs, the great majority of them showing cars coming head on towards the viewer.
Some warning mechanism ticked away madly in the back of my mind, telling me that something was very wrong here. “Arnold!” I uselessly called out again, “Where are you?” I opened the cabinet to peer in surprise at the tape recorder and amplifier it contained. I could not remember my brother as being much of a music lover. On a second shelf beneath the tape recorder a number of small green bottles stood. Suddenly I felt thirsty. And why not? Homebrewed beer, no less! I pulled the cork from one of the bottles, raising it to my lips. The sweetly acrid smell of beer from the uncorked bottle was appetizing and I almost drank, but there was a second scent, one which—hinting as it did of something far more toxic than mere alcohol—caused me to sniff suspiciously. Drugged?
Or was I imagining things again? Possibly the beer had been over-brewed. And anyway, why should Arnold drug his own products? Nevertheless I recorked the bottle and put it back on its shelf without tasting the contents.
I stood there, undecided for a moment, then I decided to get my mind from its morbid turn by sampling Arnold’s taste in music. Perhaps, wherever he was, the sound of his tape recorder playing would alert him to my presence. I switched the instrument on. For the first few inches the tape was blank, so that when the recorded section finally came round the sound reproduction system was fully warmed up. I staggered then, as a sudden scream of revving auto engines, a grinding of gears and blast of horns, an utter cacophony of mechanical sounds belched into me from the amplifier with a force which was as physical as it was unexpected. Through the hellish racket I somehow found the volume control and managed to turn the thing down.
As the incredible, mindless noises subsided, a new sound came to my ears. Apparently the tape recorder’s wiring was also connected to some outside source—though why that should be I could not even guess—for I could now hear, from the direction of what could only be the upper reaches of the towerlike structure, the sound of a powerful motor and a rattling as of chains moving over pulleys. As the sound from the amplifiers reached a new height—a pitch which would have been unbearable had I not toned the thing down—there came a long scream of brakes and then... silence. Having reached the end of the short tape, the machine had automatically commenced rewinding. The sound of the motor high in the tower had also ceased, but now there came another sound from that direction: a rushing of chains and a whirring of well-oiled gears, and the very ground beneath my feet suddenly shook to a tremendous crash that threatened to bring the whole house down about my ears. Then, almost immediately, the recording of motor horns, brakes, clashing gears, and revving engines started all over again as the tape began its second playing, and again the clank of chains and the throb of a powerful motor from the tower added voice to the general clamour.
Inexplicable though it was, the whole thing was too much for merely human nerves. I quickly switched the tape recorder off. Silence fell in the house as the motor in the tower likewise shut down.
What was I to make of it all? I felt keyed up to screaming point; everything was far too odd, too strange. I wanted to see Arnold and the sooner the better! There were many things here for which I would like an explanation. Not that it was really my business, but Arnold was, after all, my brother, and if there was anything wrong ... well, I wanted to know.
I went shakily back out into the passage, noting that the smell from the heavy door seemed to have grown stronger—as if something rotting had been stirred—and made my way to the outside door. I felt strangely relieved to be out of the house, and I called Arnold’s name yet again as I walked round the cottage on the uncropped grass to the towering structure behind.
There was another door in the far wall of the tower, a great strong thing similar to the door at the end of the passage, and it was from this massive entrance, standing slightly ajar, that the cloying smell definitely issued. The door opened outwards and I found myself holding my breath as I pulled it a little further open to lean my head and shoulders inside. I had expected a staircase leading up, but none such existed. Instead the floor looked dark and squelchy, the walls were bare and stained; there was nothing, only the bare bricks of the walls and weak light filtering down in dusty beams from above. No, there was something. In a small recess in the opposite wall there was a second amplifier—the twin of the one in the cabinet in the cottage.
My eyes slowly accustomed themselves to the gloom. I twisted my neck to look up into the top of the tower. There was a square of light, its centre mostly blocked off by a slowly turning dark mass which occasionally bumped against the walls ... like a weight suspended on a thread.
Then I gasped in amazement. The turning thing high above me was a car—a badly battered and twisted wreck of a car! Strips of... stuff... hung from its bent axles and from the splayed, tyreless wheels, and the entire bottom looked clogged with dark lumps of mud or—
The smell! I knew now where I had known that special odour before—in the gutted villages of Germany in the war years!
I jerked my eyes down to stare hard at the pulpy floor, then back up to bulge at the crusher hanging above, down again to the now discernible mass of... of... human debris!
A car hanging in a tower with pulped flesh clogging its underside; a floor slimy with the ooze and filth of God-only-knows how many mangled bodies...
Nightmare!
I gagged, jerking my head back out of that monstrous tower, fighting down the waves of nausea and bone-jellying terror which I felt welling inside. What had happened here? What—
The cough was low, polite, enquiring.
I whirled about, shock stiffening the short hairs on the back of my neck, causing my lips to pull back in what must have looked a bestial snarl. I saw him—but not really—my mind still picturing in camera detail the contents of the towerlike structure, making of this intruder on the horror merely a blurred image. A rustic, at least at first glance, trundling a wheelbarrow. He wore Wellingtons, farmer fashion, and his wide-brimmed hat was more a sunshade. Beneath that hat dull blue, almost disinterested pools of desolation gazed out at me from a face I knew of old. But the old character behind that face had gone completely, was replaced now by a sort of gaunt vacancy. Even then I could not accept the truth.
“Arnold,” I finally croaked, “terrible accident... get help ... the police ... bodies, pulped ... a car, suspended ...”
“Accident, Nigel?” he asked dully.
“Yes,” I replied, noting for the first time the fragments of dried, decaying offal, strips of skin, and bits of gristle clinging to the terribly stained interior of the wheelbarrow’s bucket, seeing in sudden clarity the ghastly state of Arnold’s Wellingtons. “A terrible ... accident ... ?”
I lay back limply against the wall. “My God!”
“You’ve caught me at a bad time, Nigel,” he told me, listlessly amiable, ignoring my exclamation of horror and loathing, “I was just doing a little house cleaning.” Then his eyes brightened hideously and he leaned closer. “Nigel,” his voice now sounded clotted and gutteral, “is that your car out front?”
<
~ * ~
RISING
WITH SURTSEY
It appears that with the discovery of a live coelacanth—a fish thought to have been extinct for over seventy millions of years— we may have to revise our established ideas of the geological life spans of certain aquatic animals...
—LINKAGE’S WONDERS OF THE DEEP
~ * ~
Surname Haughtree
Christian Name(s) Phillip
Date of Birth 2 Dec 1927
Age (years) 35
Place of Birth Old Beldry, Yorks.
Address Not applicable
Occupation Author
WHO STATES: (Let here follow the body of the statement)
I have asked to be cautioned in the usual manner but have been told that in view of my alleged condition it is not necessary.... The implication is obvious, and because of it I find myself obliged to begin my story in the following way:
I must clearly impart to the reader—before advising any unacquainted perusal of this statement—that I was never a fanatical believer in the supernatural. Nor was I ever given to hallucinations or visions, and I have never suffered from my nerves or been persecuted by any of the mental illnesses. There is no record to support any evidence of madness in any of my ancestors—and Dr. Stewart was quite wrong to declare me insane.
It is necessary that I make these points before permitting the reading of this, for a merely casual perusal would soon bring any conventionally minded reader to the incorrect conclusion that I am either an abominable liar or completely out of my mind, and I have little wish to reinforce Dr. Stewart’s opinions ...
Yet I admit that shortly after midnight on the 15th November
1963 the body of my brother did die by my hand; but at the same time I must clearly state that I am not a murderer. It is my intention in the body of this statement—which will of necessity be long, for I insist I must tell the whole story—to prove conclusively my innocence. For, indeed, I am guilty of no heinous crime, and that act of mine which terminated life in the body of my brother was nothing but the reflex action of a man who had recognized a hideous threat to the sanity of the whole world. Wherefore, and in the light of the allegation of madness levelled against me, I must now attempt to tell this tale in the most detailed fashion; I must avoid any sort of garbled sequence and form my sentences and paragraphs with meticulous care, refraining from even thinking on the end of it until that horror is reached ...
Where best to start?
If I may quote Sir Amery Wendy-Smith:
There are fabulous legends of Star-Born creatures who inhabited this Earth many millions of years before Man appeared and who were still here, in certain black places, when he eventually evolved. They are, I am sure, to an extent here even now.
