With the darkness of dusk once more covering the land, I turned back to my suitcase and began to unpack my things, an impression of oppression and evil suddenly hovering in the air. When I’d finished, I laid down on the bed and stared up at the canopy without really seeing it. Instead, I began to think over what I’d discovered since arriving in Woodhaven.
Why had my uncle decided to summon me after all these years? What, if any, were the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of his wife? Why was the mansion in such a sorry state? Who was Sean Stout and was it a coincidence that he was visiting my uncle at the same time I was? All of that and more swirled in my muddled brain; all that and the vision of the hill outside with its ghastly fill. Did it, beneath its noxious soils, hold the answers to my questions?
I was in a light sleep when I was awoken by a soft rapping at the door. When I answered it, I found Bruce silhouetted in the door frame, his figure stark in the persistent flashes of lightning.
“Dinner will be served in half an hour Master Simon,” he said, a clap of thunder punctuating his announcement. “The Master wishes me to inform you that you need not dress formally for the occasion.”
“Thanks, Bruce. I’ll be right down.”
“Very well, sir,” he said and was turning to retrace his steps to the staircase, when I thought of something else.
“Oh, Bruce…?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Will Mr. Stout be coming down?”
“Why, of course sir. Did you expect him to eat in the kitchen with me?”
“No, no, what I meant was, that maybe Uncle Giles would have wanted to dine with me in private to discuss his reasons for sending for me.”
“I don’t know when he intends to talk to you about that Master Simon, but likely it won’t be tonight.”
“Yes, well, thank you.”
Bruce turned on his heel and strode into the shadows almost before I could dismiss him. I noticed that he didn’t stop at Stout’s door indicating that he’d probably already told him about dinner before coming to me. Turning back to my room, I washed my hands and threw some water onto my face. Dabbing myself with a towel, I straightened out my clothes and then combed my hair. Finished, I stepped from my room and noticed the light under Stout’s door was still on, indicating that he hadn’t gone downstairs yet. I was glad because I didn’t want to be at a psychological disadvantage when I went downstairs, meeting at the same time a stranger and a man I hadn’t seen for years. I’d much rather have met them one at a time. And so, I headed for the dining room and found it all set for dinner with its long table laden with silverware and aromatic viands. A great chandelier hung suspended from a thick rafter that spanned the ceiling, casting scintillations of light in every direction. The table stretched the length of the room with well over a dozen chairs in place and Bruce, like another item of furniture, was standing statuesque at the rear of the room beside the servants’ door. At the head of the table, where two other places had been set to his left and right, was seated my uncle, Giles Wilcox.
He’d risen upon my entrance and I noticed immediately that he’d become greatly emaciated since the last time I’d seen him. He stood on shaking legs, and his once robust form had vanished. In its place now stood a spindly scarecrow, a shadow of its former self. Even the personal magnetism I used to sense in his presence seemed to be absent.
Then this person whom I barely recognized stretched out his hand to grip mine and I found that his grasp was as weak as a kitten’s.
From outside, thunder grumbled an introduction as he said, “Good evening, my boy. I trust your journey was an uneventful one?” Though weak, his voice at least, hinted yet of hidden reserves of strength.
“There were no problems, Uncle Giles.”
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve asked you here?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’ll explain everything tomorrow,” he said.
I hoped I’d managed to hide my disappointment.
“Yes, tomorrow…” The sound of a throat being cleared interrupted his next sentence. “Ah, Sean my good fellow, I’d like you to meet my nephew, Simon. Simon, my colleague, Sean Stout, explorer extraordinaire.”
Despite my uncle’s attempt at normalcy, I could tell that there was a note of tension in his voice, as though he were forcing himself to sound calm and relaxed.
Stout, on the other hand, was everything my uncle had been but no longer was. Physically fit and ramrod erect, his hair was streaked with gray as was a huge handlebar mustache that he smoothed with a finger. In a deep, booming voice, he broke the uneasy silence.
“You flatter me, Giles, I’m hardly your equal,” Stout said easily. “My accomplishments don’t even approach your own.”
“Don’t belittle yourself Sean,” replied my uncle. “Your treatises, essays and studies have been, and still are, objects of heated discussion in speculative circles. Why, your latest discovery, the Island of Mystery, is the biggest news in archeology these days.”
“You seem to be pretty up to date on my activities, Giles,” Stout replied as he advanced to the table.
For no good reason, I just didn’t trust Stout, but to keep the conversation from sinking into maudlin self-congratulation, I asked him to tell me more about his work.
“Do you know about Thor Heyerdahl, Mr. Cole?” I nodded. “Then you know that the reason for Heyerdahl’s Ra expedition was to prove that the ancient Egyptians were capable of crossing the Atlantic Ocean using only their own primitive sailing vessels. Needless to say, Heyerdahl succeeded, allowing speculation to proceed about whether the Egyptians could have influenced the Aztec and Inca civilizations here in the New World. His success, placed within the bounds of possibility that ancient Mediterranean cultures may indeed have once reached Central America.”
“Yes, but was has that to do with your own work?”
“I’m coming to that,” Stout said, his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to prove a similar theory: that it was possible that the people of Easter Island had originally sailed from some other point in the south seas. To that end, I constructed and launched my own primitive craft based on vessels used by the natives of Easter Island and sailed there from the nearest set of populated islands. What happened on that voyage was that my vessel intercepted a previously unknown current and was thrown hundreds of miles off course. Luckily I had prepared for a long journey and finally ground ashore upon a small basalt island scarcely as large as Easter Island, and similarly landscaped. I had a radio and called for help, but before it arrived, I discovered that the natives of the island spoke a pidgin French! They called their island L’isle Mystere and showed me tools of French origin that dated back to the early sixteenth century. In addition, I found hundreds of stone images similar in style to those of Easter Island plus thousands of small fetishes of exquisite workmanship far beyond the capabilities of the island’s natives.”
“Could they have been of French manufacture?”
“Absolutely not,” insisted Stout. “But the most interesting thing of all was the fact that all were carved of marble, although nowhere on the island is any to be found, including the surrounding ocean floor.”
“Do you have one of the figures on hand to show me?”
“As it happens, I do,” said Stout. “I brought a few for your uncle to study. You can take a look at those if you wish.”
“I will.”
“You know, Mr. Cole,” continued Stout, “there’s an interesting story that comes with my discovery of the fetishes. When I pulled the first one from its rocky moorings, a great buzzing sound like a horde of …”
At the mention of the final words, my uncle started and dropped his coffee cup and saucer with a clatter, cutting off further discussion. Immediately, Bruce entered the room and began to clean up as Uncle Giles leaned back, pale and shaken.
“I’m sorry gentlemen,” my uncle said. “I lost my grip. Shall we eat, then?”
The meal was then served and we all ate in sile
nce, Stout and I pretending as if we hadn’t noticed the look on my uncle’s face when he dropped the cup. But watching him, I thought I could still detect a shadow of fear upon his stony features.
After the meal, we retired to the study and Stout displayed a few of his findings to me.
“I think this item may interest you as I think it has a more than unusual resemblance to Teheclan, the Incan god of earth,” he began. “Notice the fine lines of his stern features around the jaw. A definite trait of the Incan deity. Even the headdress and robes are identical. This statuette and Teheclan are one and the same.”
“These objects also have a striking resemblance to the ancient fetishism of Easter Island,” added my uncle.
“A point we’ve discussed before,” said Stout just as Bruce came in.
“Just the man I want to see,” said my uncle. “About a drink of course. Gentlemen, what would it be?”
“Scotch would go down nicely,” said Stout.
“A whiskey and soda, thank you.”
“You heard them, Bruce. Pour.”
“Very good, sir.”
The next few seconds were occupied with the ritual of pouring, giving thanks and offers of health.
Finally after the first few tentative sips, my uncle reiterated, “So it seems we are agreed on the semblance and possible relationship between these curious fetishisms?”
“Who could deny the evidence?” asked Stout.
I was on the point of agreeing with them when the ring of the telephone interrupted me.
At the sound, I was surprised to see my uncle turn a deathly pale and for a moment was sure he was going to faint. But all that he did was to put down his drink and order Bruce away from the phone.
“Don’t answer it, Bruce,” he said before picking it up himself. “Hello? No…no. I didn’t. I refuse. No you can’t mean that. I’d sooner see you in hell!” At that he slammed the receiver and stammered, “You…you must excuse me. I have some very pressing matters to attend to.”
With that, he hurried from the room and up the darkened stairs.
“Please forgive my uncle’s seeming misbehavior, Mr. Stout,” I said, somewhat perplexed myself. “I assure you, I’ll get to the bottom of this tomorrow.”
“Quite excusable Cole,” Stout replied. “I’ve known your uncle all my life, and a man like him will surely begin to feel restless in retirement after a life of wandering the world’s byways.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “Well, I might as well call it a night myself. It was good to have met you.”
“And I, you.”
Downing the rest of my drink, I turned and left the room, thoughts of my uncle still uppermost in my mind. Why had he behaved in such a strange manner after getting that telephone call and why did he have the same reaction when Stout said something about the buzzing sound he’d heard? Could the two things have something in common? Whatever the answer, I was determined to get to the bottom of it on the following morning.
Then, another thought occurred to me: could Uncle Giles’s strange behavior be the reason he invited me to his home?
The next morning, I greeted the day by looking out over the treetops that swayed beneath my window and stretched to the foot of the hill beyond. The sky had a thick overcast that threatened more rain later in the day. The little cemetery on the hill lay dully in the grayish light and I determined to visit it later in the day.
Finishing my toilet, I left my room for my uncle’s study and, passing by Stout’s door, I saw that it was open. Evidently he was an early riser. Coming downstairs, I was making my way to the study when I met Bruce who was headed to the kitchen with a tray full of discarded breakfast dishes.
“Bruce, I was looking for my uncle, is he in the study?”
“The master is in his chambers at the tower, Master Simon.”
“Right, thanks.”
I reached the door to my uncle’s suite and knocked at the door. Receiving no answer, I entered and walked across the anteroom to the entrance to his private chambers. There, I knocked again.
“Who is it?” came my uncle’s voice, trembling and fearful.
“It’s Simon, Uncle Giles. I’d like to speak to you a moment.” The only reply was the sound of muffled footsteps as my uncle crossed the inside room and opened the door.
“Come in Simon…” he said, holding the door open for me. When I’d come in, he closed it quietly behind me. “Now, what is it that you’d like to talk about?”
The question took me by surprise. “Why, about your unusual behavior yesterday…”
“Unusual? I only felt ill, and wished to lie down a bit, that’s all. I’m all right now, I assure you.”
He was lying, I was sure of it, as sure as I was that he needed my help. “Uncle, please don’t evade the subject. I know the reason that you asked me to come visit is related in some way to your strange actions of last night. Why hide it?”
“It is true I haven’t been feeling well lately,” Uncle Giles admitted. “But it isn’t so serious as to have brought you all the way from New Jersey.”
“I live in Manhattan now, but that’s beside the point,” I said. “You’ve lost a dangerous amount of weight, you’re pale as a ghost and you shake as if palsied. It all has something to do with some damned buzzing…”
“Don’t say that!” Uncle Giles shouted suddenly, fear etched in every line of his haggard face, in the timbre of his voice. “Don’t ever say that! It’s not true, I tell you. It’s not true!” A pause. “No…no, it is…it is true…I…” he paused again and seemed to reconsider. Then, regaining a measure of self-control, he continued. “You’re right, I summoned you here for that reason. But I have the thing in hand now, nothing to worry about. I have everything under control…”
Try as he might, he’d failed to convince me that everything was, indeed, “under control.”
“Uncle Giles,” I said. “It seems to me that you’re worse than ever. Please confide in me. I want to help. I really do. But I have to know more. Tell me.” I tried to put as much sincerity into my voice as possible and was rewarded with Uncle Giles’ next words.
“What the hell,” he sighed. “I have to tell someone besides St…, I mean someone. Simon, I don’t want you to be startled by what you hear because it was not my doing. I’d been the victim of a conspiracy, a conspiracy to drive me slowly mad.”
“What sort of conspiracy?” My first reaction was much the same as anybody else’s would have been under similar circumstances, I thought my uncle was being paranoid.
“Be still!” said my uncle, his words charged with the old strength and power that I remembered as a youth. “Simon, man is not the sole intelligent species on this planet. Don’t…” He held up a hand, warding off my instinctive objection. “It’s taken me many years to convince even myself of the fact. But there’s more, there are forces bent on manipulating man and ultimately ruling him, forces I’d not suspected were so close at hand until my marriage to Ruth. Her presence gave me the final proof I needed; proof that also forced me to do away with her.”
The note of calm certainty in his voice came in stark contrast with the horror and astonishment his words inspired in me. “Are you saying that you killed her? You killed your own wife?”
“I was forced to do it,” he replied, almost as if he were talking to himself and not to me. “I had to get rid of that damned thing…”
“But, what is it, this…this…damned thing? Why did you feel the need to kill your wife?”
“I didn’t mean to at the time,” said Uncle Giles. “But afterward, I saw the necessity of it.”
He said it as if murder had been nothing more than taking out the trash or falling into bed at night.
“Here, before we go any farther, let me fix you a drink,” he continued in that maddeningly calm voice. “Whiskey and soda isn’t it?”
“Yes, thank you, I need it…” I held the glass with both hands and gulped. “So you hadn’t planned on killing her?” I asked.
“That’s right. Don’t you see?”
Actually, I didn’t see at all but I let him continue talking.
“I pushed her from the top of the stairs,” he said.
Would the horror never stop, I wondered?
“Don’t misunderstand me Simon,” he continued. “I still had deep appreciation for her, it was a very difficult thing to do. But it was either me or her and I’m only human.”
“But they say she lived for two days…”
“Yes, she broke her back, but miraculously, she survived for two days before finally succumbing,” explained Uncle Giles. “Can you imagine what she must have felt living under the same roof with the man who’d killed her? But as maddening as that might have been for her, it was worse for me. I lived those forty-eight hours as if they’d been spent in hell. I asked myself over and over again a thousand times ‘When will she die…When will she die, blast her!’ But at last the torture ended. With a last gurgle, she finally succumbed. I held a short wake for her in the front parlor…to satisfy the curiosity of the townsfolk…and then buried her on the hill.” He inclined his chin, vaguely indicating the outside of the house.
“And Bruce? Where was he through all this?”
“I’d given him a few days off after my wedding so he was gone when I pushed Ruth down the stairs. Luckily, when she injured her back and became paralyzed, her powers of speech were also impaired. Thank God for that! Bruce knows little or nothing of the affair.”
“But why, Uncle Giles? What could’ve been so threatening that you felt compelled to…?”
“It’s hard to explain…” Just then, he was interrupted by a knock at the door.
As he turned towards it, I noticed that his movements seemed stiff, as if he were reluctant to discover what was on the other side. At last he seemed to control himself and reached for the knob. When he opened the door, there was only Bruce waiting there.
Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois Page 31
