by S. T. Joshi
This situation lasted for a year. We were moving at several times light speed, so it appeared to us that all the stars had collapsed into a single point of brightness in front of us. The art of the religious became highly stylized, showing various bipeds of a type unknown to us, who wrapped up their dead or occasionally decapitated their dead and gave them the head of a non-sentient beast. These images were said to be of the future or “heaven.” The hybrid bodies also had the multi-colored spines in them. During one sleeping period the religious horde attacked. We slew most of them, but they damaged our armor with a strange acid. Dreams began to leak into our minds.
The glory of Gla’aki Awakening!
There I have thought His Name! Zodacare od zoderamu Gla’aki! Zim! Zim!
I am trying not to think of Him. I am trying not to host His Desires. I can feel his itch to lose the spines, each full of His Essence. I dream of other worlds and other ways of being as strange to me as sight would be a creature without eyes, or as xlyth would be to a creature without nandeemi. Gla’aki was with others before this universe was even created as a game board. I can dream of their moments of death, their moments of rebirth. I can dream of the ecstasy they felt merging with Gla’aki. I can dream of the future when He shall smash the crystal trapdoor we made from him and swim into a cold lake on another world. I can dream of his joy meeting his younger brother Vulthoom.
I take the dream suppressor, but it has no effect. A few of the highest caste have pieced together anti-dream armor from fragments that survived the attack. The blue tongues have driven us from the city, from the portal through which we can view our Lord. But this has no meaning. We are building a Dream Bore that will eat through their force field. We know it will denude this little world of atmosphere, but that does not matter. Our small five-space minds will dissolve into Him. We will help find His way on a new world—one that He senses teems with Class IX and Class X sentients. It will be a world rich in servitors.
Our attack comes after the next sleeping period. Many of our kind will die. It is no matter. I will leave this dream shard as my testimony. It will help others attune to Gla’aki; they are not as evolved as we on this new world, but they will do until Gla’aki can evolve a race of (at least) Class II sentients.
* * *
And at last I became me, James Gresh again. I was safely locked away. I had no job at this point, no home, no car, no Amanda. My mom had died and with some irony I discovered that Bart’s parents were paying for my upkeep. I watch TV (although I have been known to have panic attacks if I see a Vulcan or an elf on the screen). Some of Giger’s art is a little spot-on for me as well. I enjoy my time in the garden. I know Gla’aki slumbers fitfully in the dead city beneath the lake. I know that if I ever got away from this place I would seek Him out; that I would beg to have one of Spines pierce me. My doctors have some amusingly Freudian interpretations of that. And in a sense they are not wrong: it is all about ecstasy—just far, far more than they can ever conceive.
Most days I am sad for humans because I know the day will come when He will burst through the crystal trapdoor that holds part of his being in check. I know that humans will literally last only days when this happens. I know religion and magic are diseases that He and His Relatives have given us. But then the Dreams come and I say the words and make the gestures that affect the warp and weave of space-time. I know He will make a better race to follow us, more self-aware, with a greater sensory range. I hope they will serve Him well.
I wait. I love. I wait. I love. I wait.
The Mystery of the Cursed Cottage
DAVID HAMBLING
David Hambling lives in Norwood, South London, the setting for his web of Lovecraftian tales. These focus on the 1920s and include the collection The Dulwich Horror and Others and the Harry Stubbs adventures—The Elder Ice, Broken Meats, and Alien Stars. He is otherwise known as a science and technology journalist and cat lover.
SURREY, ENGLAND 1928
THE INSPECTOR LED THE WAY THROUGH THE WOODS, followed by the two civilians, with the stout constable bringing up the rear. The inspector walked at the brisk pace of a man who knew the path well and expected the others to keep up, a man who did not care that green buds tipped every twig in Seesin’s Copse, or that the bluebells were peeping out from the forest floor. Late spring sunshine turned the crisp layer of oak leaves on the ground to gold, but the path had been trodden soggy and black by the passage of many feet.
“It’s muddy in places—I should have warned you,” said the inspector, glancing back to Miss Belhaven. “But I see you have good walking shoes. Of course, a psychic would foresee the conditions!”
Miss Belhaven laughed politely.
“Does either of you read detective fiction?” asked the inspector.
“I’m afraid not,” said Blake. “Although I have studied a few unusual real-life criminal cases.”
“A pity. This is as close to the perfect locked-room mystery as you’re likely to find.”
This perfect mystery was, of course, the reason Blake and Miss Belhaven had been dragged out to this spot. The invitation to Blake to assist the police with their enquiries had been a blunt one, falling barely short of a threat if he failed to cooperate. Blake doubted whether Miss Belhaven had come entirely of her own free will either.
“Are you a criminologist, Mr. Blake?” she asked, speaking to him for the first time. Her accent was decidedly lower middle class, but social distinctions meant little to Blake. He had already warmed to her as a fellow victim, and did not care for the way the inspector chafed her about psychic powers. He felt the shared pain of being laughed at for “strange” ideas.
“Not a criminologist, just an academic,” he said. “A mere schoolteacher, really. And call me William, please.”
Blake wondered what she made of him. He was tall and athletic but walked with a limp; though not yet thirty, he looked years older. His clothes were of good quality, but he dressed carelessly. Blake supposed that, to her, he must look like an eccentric scholar.
“I’m Elizabeth,” she said.
“And did the inspector say you were a psychic?”
“Some people say I have a gift for sensing vibrations,” she said, carefully reciting the phrase. Mockery had made her cautious. “I’m not a professional medium. You don’t happen to know the Norwood Theosophist Circle?”
“You see that there?” said the inspector, pointing to an old tree stump. “That is recent.”
Blake realised the inspector was not indicating the stump itself but a carving on it—a rough shape chiselled into the wood suggestive of three intersecting circles.
“What is it?” asked Miss Belhaven.
“A pagan rune or sigil, I believe,” said Blake. “Patterns like this date back to the pre-Celtic Bronze Age. I don’t know the meaning of this particular one.”
“Stage dressing is the technical term,” said the inspector with a thin smile. He allowed them a few seconds to take in the carving before marching on again.
“If you’re a schoolteacher,” Miss Belhaven asked, “why did the police ask you—?”
“Didn’t you know? It was Mr. Blake who solved the mystery of the Dulwich Horror,” cut in the inspector. “People died, and there was all sorts of supernatural talk until Mr. Blake put a stopper on it with a proper scientific explanation. A feat which we are hoping he will be able to repeat. Now here we have it, the actual cottage, the ‘Cursed Cottage’ as our press like to call it.”
The low whitewashed building seemed to have sprouted under the oaks like a strange mushroom. It was roughly rectangular, the mossy roof set atop it like a lid on a saucepan. The cottage had been spruced up with fresh paintwork and new windows and door, but there were old bones beneath the painted skin.
“It’s what you might call a ‘rude dwelling,’” said the inspector in the manner of a tour guide. He proceeded to lead them in a circuit around the cottage while PC Robertson remained outside the front door, feet planted apart, looking at once as f
irmly rooted as the old oaks on every side.
“It’s a genuine wattle-and-daub construction, which is of some relevance. Three windows, all of them secured tightly, one door ditto, and the chimney has been bricked up. There’s just a flue for the stove with a diameter of three and a half inches. One door, which was securely locked and barred from the inside—as you see, it was broken down. No trap-doors or hidden tunnels anywhere. My men know how to conduct a search. They also measured the inside and outside dimensions of the building, and you may rest assured there are no concealed cavities.”
“And the well—” Blake nodded towards the stone well, which showed signs of recent repairs.
“We sent a man down it on a rope and dragged it,” said the Inspector. “Not a thing.”
Behind the cottage was a small, untended vegetable plot. Further into the trees stood a lopsided wooden privy.
“We made a pretty thorough inspection,” said the inspector. “And nowhere did we find the slightest trace of Mr. Potter.”
As they came back around to the front, the inspector directed them to go in. “The interior has been left as nearly as possible how we found it,” he said.
The cottage was unexpectedly small, a dingy one-room affair that smelled of mildew. The ceiling was low, and with three of them inside it felt crowded.
“You will notice the bars on the windows,” said the inspector, touching one with an index finger, still addressing them as a tour guide. “The new plaster ceiling”—he rapped it with his knuckles—“is completely intact, and the tiles on the roof above show no sign of being moved. We broke into the cavity anyway, but there’s nothing there but dust and rat bones. The walls, being made of mud and sticks . . . it’s not a brick wall where somebody could remove a few bricks, crawl through the hole, and replace them afterwards with quick-setting mortar. The walls have not been breached.”
“I see,” said Blake, as the nature of the locked room became more clear. The cottage was almost hermetically sealed. No wonder the police had been puzzled by Potter’s disappearance.
“And, as a final point, the missing man’s spectacles and watch are there on the shelf by the bed. We have it on good authority that he was blind as a bat without his glasses and never went anywhere without them. The only spare pair are in his overnight case by the washstand. His wife and his optician confirm there is no other. Oh, and of course the key is still in the lock, on the inside.”
Having completed the tour, the inspector took a final look around and drew up the cottage’s one chair. From an inner pocket he drew a much-folded newspaper which he passed to Blake. “The rest of it is in the newspaper—you can read for yourself.”
With that, the inspector sat down, put his feet up on a stool, took out his pipe, and proceeded to light it. The guided tour was over.
“Just to make it clear,” the inspector added as an afterthought. “I’m looking for an explanation of how Potter disappeared from inside here. An explanation which does not involve dematerialisation, astral travel, elemental spirits, higher-dimensional beings, or disintegration rays. We’ve got plenty of those sort of explanations already, thank you. I want something I can deliver to the chief inspector with scientific backing.”
Blake sat on the bed. After a moment Miss Belhaven seated herself next to him, and together they read the double-page spread beneath the banner headline “Curse of the Witch’s Cottage Claims Victim!”
Seesin Coppice had been sold recently. The cottage was part of the property, but the old woman who lived there had no tenancy agreement. Mrs. Attwater had lived without rent for longer than anyone could remember. Potter, the new owner, was a city man, and had no patience with the farmers who told him that Mrs. Attwater was a fixture and should not be disturbed. He promptly evicted her, planning to turn the cottage into a holiday retreat.
“It’s a pretty spot for a holiday,” said Miss Belhaven. “So peaceful and quiet, with the flowers, and the wind in the trees. You’d never think it was so close to London.”
Mrs. Attwater was supposed to be a hundred years old. She lived a solitary life and was locally believed to be a witch. Parents would scare their children by telling them that Old Mother Attwater would boil them up in her cauldron and eat them if they did not behave. During the eviction proceedings, Mrs. Attwater had been forced to leave the cottage and travel to the county court, where she had met Potter in the entrance hall. She shouted abuse at him for stealing her home and swore that he would never have it, pointing her finger at him and uttering a malediction in a strange tongue.
He had surprised witnesses by responding in no less abusive terms, and adding a few words in the same peculiar language. The outraged old woman had dropped dead on the spot of an apoplexy.
“The witch had died,” noted the newspaper. “But like that of Tutankhamen, her curse retained its potency. Potter— bravely or foolishly—decided to tackle this curse head on!”
Potter had the cottage renovated and redecorated, and announced that he would spend a weekend there himself to show that the curse meant nothing. A local farmer was the last to see him, visiting on the Friday evening with a jug of milk. He said that Potter had seemed cheerful, but noted how quickly the door was locked and barred behind him after he left.
The next morning, when the farmer came with a basket of new eggs for the gentleman’s breakfast, the door was still barred and there was no reply. The curtains were open, and from the window the farmer could see that Potter was not in his bed. He thought that Potter must have had an attack and must be lying on the floor below his line of sight. He hurried to the village to raise the alarm.
The local doctor and the village policeman came back to the cottage with the farmer, and the three of them broke down the door. They were amazed to find no sign of Potter inside.
The story of the disappearance might have gone no further than the village, but a London journalist turned up the same morning. He had written up Mrs. Attwater’s death and had the idea of interviewing the cottage’s new owner and asking if he had seen any ghosts or other supernatural manifestations. With a little embellishment, a haunted house will always make a good story. The journalist was disappointed at the modern appearance of the cottage, but soon found a much better story. The farmer, the doctor, and the police officer all spoke freely to their sympathetic listener of their puzzlement.
The journalist filed a lengthy and colourful report. There was no sign of Potter anywhere. The missing man’s family and business contacts confirmed that he had not been seen. The story of the mysterious disappearance from the cursed cottage was taken up by several other papers. Technically, no crime had been reported, but the chief inspector decided it would be politic for the force to produce a solution to the mysterious disappearance of Mr. Potter.
An investigation was carried out, but no solution was forthcoming. In the subsequent weeks, dozens of members of the public wrote in with their own solutions. The newspapers squeezed more pages out of it with each new suggestion, and there was a danger that the matter would escalate and become the talk not just of the county but of the entire country.
“There’s very little information about Potter himself in this article,” said Blake.
The inspector moved his pipe from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Not much to tell. He’s been in the property business for some time. Lives in Croydon, a perfectly respectable man—as far as anyone knows. No money troubles that might make him want to vanish. He’s made a practice of finding undervalued properties, buying them up, doing them up, and selling them. He has a wife at home, who is as mystified as everyone else, and a couple of children. We are in the process of looking for some ‘other woman,’ which—I’m afraid, Miss Belhaven—generally turns out to be the reason for a married man disappearing.”
“But you haven’t had any luck,” said Blake.
“Not yet, Mr. Blake,” said the inspector. “But we won’t stop looking. He’s gone somewhere, and my money says he slipped out of here and
is in Paris with some chorus girl right now. Laughing at us.”
“You don’t believe he came here to prove that there wasn’t a curse?”
“I believe that if you wanted to make your disappearance look mysterious, then it’s better to be last seen in a haunted cottage than on a platform at Waterloo Station with a suitcase. The whole thing is staged.”
“He can’t have staged Mrs. Attwater’s death,” said Blake. “Without that there wouldn’t be any cursed cottage.”
“He took advantage of the situation. He saw the possibilities.”
“Old women don’t curse people,” objected Miss Belhaven. “That must have been made up by the paper.”
“Journalistic licence,” supplied Blake. “Like the rat that appeared out of her clothing and ran away when they took her to the ambulance.”
“That was horrible,” she said, with a small shudder.
“As a matter of fact, both parts of the story are genuine,” said the inspector. “She did indeed curse Potter very much as described. And the old woman did have a pet rat on her. Both of the stretcher bearers commented on it—as you can imagine they might! I don’t say she was a witch: the allegations about cauldrons, boiling children, and casting spells have not been substantiated and I daresay never will be. But I’m sure keeping a rat would be enough to get her branded a witch round these parts. A very unhygienic practice, to be sure.”
