Gothic Lovecraft

by Lynne Jamneck

  He’d quickly learned that once his heartbeat began to elevate, he was able to read clearly the pages of the volume left to him by his late father. The language was certainly antique and, he thought, overly reverential. Clearly some of the beings referred to as “gods” could be no such thing.

  Once the solution had taken hold of him, his mind became illuminated from within. He supposed that this was because the preparation was enhancing his pineal gland’s natural secretions. He ran his eyes over the pages of the book. Some of the strange glyphs now became jumbles of letters that were either indecipherable or simply unpronounceable. They made little sense to him as words, but somehow he was able to divine their meaning.

  Yet, despite his enhanced abilities, some symbols still retained their mystery. And there was an insistence upon a type of geometry that was entirely unfamiliar to him from his schooling. He did his best, but a true understanding of it still eluded him.

  He knew some were words of death, but others were invocations and imprecations of great power. He could sense that the book was the key to an undreamt-of realm of hidden abilities and powerful allies, concealed just beyond the veil of the reality he saw about him. He knew his own world was partly illusion—any fool could see that—but how to tear away its mask and reveal its true face was a secret that he dearly wished to learn.

  If he’d had that knowledge some years earlier, he might have been able to save his father from the wasting disease that had taken him. Instead, he and his mother and sisters had been forced to watch helplessly while the filthy thing had hollowed his father out while he still lived, dying a little more each day.

  Richardson had become sickened by the two years his family spent praying to a God who didn’t hear them, or didn’t care.

  The doctors were stuck for a diagnosis, and the spectacle of his severely ailing father had strengthened Richardson’s resolve to study medicine. For he was determined to do better than those men of medicine who had failed his father so badly.

  Even the odd deformity of the middle finger of his right hand had not deterred him. When Mr. Killian, the surgeon and principal anatomy teacher, had told him he’d never be able to wield a scalpel properly, he’d learned to do so with his left hand instead.

  He’d determined that nothing, and no one, was going to stand in his way.

  The strange summer of lingering mists and unseasonal thunder almost passed Richardson by unnoticed as his fascination with the arcane book grew.

  An odd, unhealthy smell clung to the volume, and its cover had a decidedly clammy feel to it. Richardson speculated that the binding might actually be some sort of skin, though what sort of animal it came from was uncertain.

  How it had come to be in his father’s library was unknown, and it struck him from time to time that it was an odd thing for a churchman to own.

  At first, it had seemed like any other book to Richardson. Then, some months after his father’s death, a former colleague of the old man had called to pay his respects to Richardson’s mother. His father’s books lay scattered around, in the process of being sorted through. One particular book had caught the visitor’s eye. The man, a Norwegian pastor named Saknussemm, commented on the volume and drew Richardson to one side, advising the boy to destroy it without delay.

  Richardson had protested, naturally feeling proprietorial toward his late father’s possessions. But the pastor had persisted, hinting that the book was a seventeenth-century transliteration of a scroll from ancient Damascus. He went on to say that all copies of the book had been ordered to be destroyed by Pope Urban VIII. Richardson thought this an odd comment coming from a Protestant clergyman and decided to ignore the man’s advice.

  The following year when Richardson, convinced of the book’s value, had tried to sell the volume to an Edinburgh book dealer, he was shown the door with a glare that could not have been any more icy if he’d threatened to kill the man’s entire family in front of him.

  His curiosity piqued still further, Richardson had found references to the mysterious indecipherable text in libraries in Edinburgh and Oxford. These references, scant as they were, convinced him that he possessed something that could be a great asset to him, if not also a tool of great power.

  It was not until he took up the study of medicine that the key to unlocking the book’s mysteries had accidentally presented itself.

  On the first occasion that Richardson had administered the solution to himself, he had expected a certain amount of sensory disorientation. But he was dismayed at how little about his surroundings had actually changed. Perhaps he’d got the quantities wrong while preparing the solution, he thought. But then his eyes happened to fall upon a pile of books that lay on his rickety shelf.

  Most of his small collection of books had maintained their mundane appearance while he was under the influence of the solution. But one, tucked at the bottom of a tottering pile of texts, seemed to glow and writhe oddly within his vision. Richardson reached down and carefully drew out the strange old book that he’d inherited from his father.

  He was astonished to see that the ruined cover had been restored to a soft fine-grained brown leather. He’d been right on that count, at least, but what animal it had come from was still not apparent. Near the top, picked out in gold leaf, sat the words “Al Azif.” Whoever had translated the work had obviously kept the original title; maybe because it was beyond their skills to render it accurately into another language. Yet, though he spoke not a single phrase of Arabic, Richardson sensed that the title meant “The Voice of the Tempest,” or something very like it.

  Richardson reached out and, as he had done several times before, opened the volume at random. Astonished, he realised that the words were drawing him in as bold new ideas took shape in his mind.

  It was as if a secret eye had been opened within his brain—one that saw through the surface of mundane reality to the truth behind it. His experiments had proved him right! He ran his hands over the book with a barely suppressed sense of ecstasy, as if electricity were transferring itself from his fingertips directly to the centre of his mind.

  He had no idea what this book had to do with his father’s pallid religion or how or why his father came to possess it, but he knew instinctively that, just like a scalpel, if it could be wielded skilfully it could do much good.

  Richardson’s dreams that night were half-formed things, vague yet insistent, as if struggling to see a reflection in a mirror covered in cobwebs. The sense that something was coming from a vast distance away clung to his sleep. There was an ocean to cross, vast mountains to overcome, but whatever it was wouldn’t give up. It was on a peculiar quest to find him and him alone. And when it arrived, it would come with a tremendous gift, he felt.

  Yet, as relatively benevolent as the dream had been, there was something appalling about it that clung to Richardson all the next day.

  Once when under the influence of the solution, Richardson had been disturbed by his landlady, Mrs. Mackenzie. The woman was a widow and, while not unattractive, had clearly grown old before her time. She seemed fond of Richardson and treated him very like a son.

  She had come into his room and begun talking about some mundane subject when suddenly she stopped. Something about Richardson’s manner had alerted her to the fact that he was somehow different. “Not himself,” she had put it. This had made Richardson laugh—for he’d never felt more like himself.

  He remembered going right up to the woman and staring at her, causing her to draw cautiously back a step or two as he continued to peer at her closely. Her skin seemed to be alive with tiny crawling creatures, normally invisible. The concentrated pineal secretions had transformed her from a mere person into a fascinating collection of fauna. Rather than a single person, she appeared to him like a walking menagerie, and he wondered if his own skin was similarly infested.

  The woman had soon left, declaring Richardson to be ill and claiming that she would call a doctor to him. She must soon after have realised the absurdity
of her words as no doctor had shown up. If he had, thought Richardson later, I could have told him a thing or two.

  The next morning Richardson had woken late. Distractedly grabbing a number of books, he had rushed out to his class, not stopping for breakfast or to wash.

  In the corridor he had collided with Macfarlane, who cursed him for a clumsy clod before stooping to help him retrieve his books. By chance Macfarlane’s hand alighted on the strange old volume. Richardson’s heart climbed up to block his throat when he realised that he must have picked it up in error.

  Macfarlane turned it over in his hands. On his face was a look of disgusted fascination. “What’s this?” he demanded.

  Richardson reached out to retrieve the volume, only for Macfarlane to hold it out of his reach. “It’s a religious volume,” Richardson offered.

  Macfarlane looked down his nose at the book, which now fell open in his broad palm. “Indeed. And what language is this?” he quizzed, scanning the unfamiliar glyphs that filled the pages.

  “It’s Greek,” replied the student.

  Macfarlane smiled cruelly. “I know Greek, my boy. This is not Greek.”

  Macfarlane was only a few years Richardson’s senior, and the younger man detested being called “boy.” “It’s a very old form of Greek,” protested Richardson. “You must understand, Macfarl—Mister Macfarlane, my father was a churchman and a scholar. He owned many obscure volumes of old lore and religious thought.”

  “If you say so, Richardson.” Macfarlane equally disliked any attempt to put him in his place. “And you claim to understand this scrawl, do you?”

  Richardson looked sheepish. It took him several seconds to answer, “Yes… after a fashion.”

  “You are an extraordinary fellow,” said Macfarlane, handing back the book. “It looks and smells as though you’ve literally dug this thing up.” Then he dusted off his hands and walked away.

  In his darker moments Richardson dearly wished that one day he’d see Macfarlane’s head sitting on the dissecting table before him. He even speculated on how hard he’d have to press the scalpel blade into the soft spongy mass before all that had been Macfarlane, all the arrogance and cruelty and worldliness, began to seep out, ready to be collected and analysed. Not very hard, he wagered.

  The cold corpse eye of the west moon looked down on Richardson as he left his lodgings that late summer night. His landlady had taken to her bed long ago and the cold, narrow streets were empty at this late hour.

  With the pineal solution flowing through his veins, the grey city about him was transformed. Colours formed and flowed in peculiar pools, streaming down the walls to gather and swirl along the gutters.

  The paving beneath his feet throbbed with a previously unnoticed vitality, as if the city were a living thing. If he stared down for long enough he sensed a great dark river flowing beneath everything, connecting each thing to every other thing. But he also sensed that it was filled with corruption and that to know it too well would lead to despair and emptiness. He must not get dragged under. So instead he raised his eyes to the blazing sky above, filled with its glittering supernal lanterns. He was almost sure he could see the dark star-winds, blowing life like a spore from shore to cold celestial shore.

  He felt as though the thin veil of reality had been saturated with an acid that was now dissolving it, revealing the more beautiful truth behind it. Yet he also knew that the night’s task that lay ahead would be grisly and require strong nerves.

  Though he was no longer a religious man, something deep within Richardson balked at what was required of him. Dissecting a cadaver in the cold light of medical knowledge was one thing; to do it under the moon’s icy glare was quite another.

  The book had quite clearly stated several times that the ritual needed to be performed in a burial ground and that certain materials would be required. As he headed toward the city’s largest cemetery, Richardson pushed his doubts aside, musing that tonight he would find the secrets that he’d been longing to know for so long. Tonight or not at all.

  As he approached a crossroads, something caught his eye in an alleyway off to his left. He was taken aback to see a naked figure moving toward him out of the gloom. At first he put the remarkable sight down to a restless sleepwalker, venturing abroad from the safety of his bed. Yet as the figure stepped into a pool of moonlight, he saw that he’d been mistaken.

  The man took several more steps toward him before Richardson allowed the truth to dawn on him. The figure was that of his dead father.

  Richardson began to walk away, uncertain whether his mind was not now unhinged. The strange figure began to walk beside him. Yet the man he saw before him was no animated corpse, come back to claim an unspecified revenge like some spectre from a penny dreadful. For his father had undergone a transformation.

  He had clearly been dissected. Yet although he had been reduced to sections or collops of meat, still he hung together and walked like a man, keeping pace with Richardson.

  From the top of his father’s head grew a strange extrusion like a young sapling. Richardson recognised at once that this was the true form of the pineal gland, though he was slightly disconcerted to note its grey fungous nature.

  He pondered what role the gland might play after death. Was it the true seat of the soul? he wondered.

  Richardson noted his own calmness with a small pang of pleasure. He put this down to the very pineal preparation that now coursed through his veins. If he had seen the awful sight of his dead father walking abroad at any other time, he was convinced he would have dropped down dead from shock.

  What had been his father put its hand on his arm and turned him around. Richardson sensed that the creature had something important to say to him.

  He could clearly see the partly bisected tongue working in the gap left by several extracted teeth. But no sound came forth. “I-I’m sorry, Father. I cannot hear you,” apologised Richardson to the phantasm.

  In his left hand Richardson carried a small sack containing a short-handled spade, the book, and a small lantern that he would need to read it by. His father pointed to the sack, mouthing wordlessly, as if he sensed the presence of the book. Richardson peered at him for a moment, but there were no words for him to hear and no expression was discernible on what was left of the man’s face.

  He shook his head and, turning, resumed his path. The paternal phantom fell into step again beside him. It seems he will be accompanying me on my night’s deeds, mused Richardson.

  Against his will, Richardson shuddered as the moonlit shadow of a church steeple fell on him, imparting a feeling of cold and immense distance. On the horizon, heavy clouds massed, moving toward him against the night wind.

  Soon the moon was blotted out by swift-moving dark clouds and, within minutes, the first peal of thunder filled the air. Richardson knew deep within him that this was a particular kind of thunder, one that had rolled around the earth since life had begun.

  Once more his father detained him by placing the remains of his hand on Richardson’s sleeve. The phantom seemed more agitated this time, gesturing in an odd manner in an attempt to win his son over. The uncanny semaphore meant nothing to Richardson and eventually he was forced to snatch his sleeve away. His father seemed more resigned to his failure this time.

  As the thunder rolled overhead, it suddenly struck Richardson that perhaps his intuition of the title of the ancient book had been wrong after all. Maybe “The Voice IN the Tempest” was closer to the original meaning. For he was almost certain there was something in the crashing sound that called to him, urging him onwards.

  The cemetery now lay directly ahead, and Richardson reached into his sack to retrieve the lantern in readiness.

  At this, the figure of his father fell back, trailing a step or two behind him. When Richardson noticed and looked round, it was clear he was unwilling to follow and began walking away. Richardson called after him once but, eliciting no response, turned his mind instead to the task ahead.


  He walked the last few yards slowly, resting for a moment as he reached the huge gateposts.

  As Richardson pushed open the gate to the cemetery he saw he would not need his lantern after all. He was met by the sight of several corpses standing above their graves, burning like spectral candles set ablaze to aid his task.

  Illuminated by the benevolent light of his curious guardian angels, Richardson selected a relatively recent grave and began to dig. The work went easily, as if he had been granted added strength. The harsh sound of the spade scraping against the gravestone, striking off a shower of sparks, sounded like a symphony of dark desire to him. He felt on the verge of an extraordinary new life, with the path ahead filled with towering achievements.

  Once the coffin was above ground, he dragged its contents free and opened the book. Its instructions were clear if unpleasant. He spent some minutes rearranging parts of the coffin’s grisly contents, then began intoning the challenging and prolonged ritual.

  Barely twenty minutes had passed when the noctilucent glow of the corpse candles flickered, faded, and then was gone. They had disappeared completely, as if blown away on the thin night breeze.

  With the moon masked by clouds, Richardson was left in almost total darkness. He fumbled in his sack, managing at last to light the small lantern. By its glow, he saw that the marvellous tome had become a mouldering codex of unreadable antiquity once more. The syllabary of secrets had leaked away, draining out of his blood along with the false miracle of his serum; it had run its course and been purged from his system too quickly this time. But he hadn’t finished the ritual …

  Looking down at the destruction he’d wrought on the disinterred corpse, he was seized by a feeling of sickness. The decaying, dismembered limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, while a constellation of bone splinters stuck upright from the ground, spelling out the name of a black, unholy thing.