by Brian Lumley
That should have been the end of it, but such has not been the case. Perhaps I alone am to blame. The police in Penicuik listened to my story, locked me in a cell overnight and finally conveyed me to this place, where I have been now for more than a week. In a way I supposed that the actions of the police were understandable; for my wild appearance that night—not to mention the ghastly, naked corpse in the Range Rover and the incredible story I incoherently told—could hardly be expected to solicit their faith or understanding. But I do not understand the position of the alienists here at Oakdeene.
Surely they, too, can hear the damnable music?—that music which grows louder hour by hour, more definite and decisive every night—the music which in olden days summoned the pool-thing to its ritual sacrifice. Or is it simply that they disagree with my theory? I have mentioned it to them time and time again and repeat it now: that there are other pools in the Pentlands, watery havens to which the thing might have fled from the destruction of its weedy retreat beside the now fallen seat of the McGilchrists. Oh, yes, and I firmly believe that it did so flee. And the days are long and hot and a great drought is on the land….
And perhaps, too, over the years, a very real curse has loomed up large and monstrous over the McGilchrists. Do souls have a flavour, I wonder, a distinctive texture of their own? Is it possible that the pool-thing has developed an appetite, a taste for the souls of McGilchrists? If so, then it will surely seek me out; and yet here I am detained in this institute for the insane.
Or could it be that I am now in all truth mad? Perhaps the things I have experienced and know to be true have driven me mad, and the music I hear exists only in my mind. That is what the nurses tell me and dear God, I pray that it is so! But if not—if not….
For there is that other thing, which I have not mentioned until now. When I carried Carl from his studio after the pool-thing left him, I saw his finished painting. Not the whole painting but merely a part of it, for when it met my eyes they saw only one thing: the finished face which Carl had painted on the dweller.
This is the nightmare which haunts me worse than any other, the question I ask myself over and over in the dead of night, when the moonlight falls upon my high, barred window and the music floods into my padded cell:
If they should bring me my breakfast one morning and find me dead—will my face really look like that?
Table of Contents
Cover
Foreword
What Dark God?
Back Row
The Strange Years
Kiss of the Lamia
Recognition
The Thief Immortal
Necros
The Thing from the Blasted Heath
Uzzi
Haggopian
The Picknickers
Zack Phalanx is Vlad the Impaler!
The House of the Temple
Table of Contents
Cover
Foreword
What Dark God?
Back Row
The Strange Years
Kiss of the Lamia
Recognition
The Thief Immortal
Necros
The Thing from the Blasted Heath
Uzzi
Haggopian
The Picknickers
Zack Phalanx is Vlad the Impaler!
The House of the Temple
