James went back to his room. He ran the taps into his sink for a while to restore a vestige of hygiene, then cleaned his teeth. It was surprising how much more human he felt afterwards. He finished his tea, then peeled off his jeans and checked his knee. Reckon I’ll live. He dabbed at it with a damp towel until he’d removed the dried blood. Then, feeling oddly resourceful, he improvised a bandage using an old sock and sellotape.
After pulling on some fresh jeans, he turned his attention to his wall. He manhandled the chest of drawers away from it, and cleared a space on the sickly orange carpet. He started to tap the wall with his knuckles, listening intently. Working his way methodically from one side to the other, he detected no sign of hollow space. The wallpaper, old and peeling, called to him. He grabbed a loose corner and pulled. More paper underneath, which he picked at half-heartedly. It would come off easily enough if he soaked it and scraped it. The landlord probably wouldn’t be too delighted but, given the overall standard of décor, he’d probably never notice. And even if he did, it wouldn’t be the end of the world if he had to do a spot of papering. James rarely got the chance to work with his hands, but when he did he usually enjoyed it, and did a reasonable job. The only problem was that he didn’t have a scraper. There was a Homebase half an hour’s walk away. He was wondering whether it would still be open on a Saturday evening when his phone rang.
It was Mel, wanting to know why he hadn’t responded to her messages.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was unconscious.” It seemed the easiest answer.
“Serves you right after all that tequila. What are you doing tonight?”
James shrugged at his bedroom. “Haven’t decided yet.”
“Are you playing hard to get?”
“Sorry?”
“Jesus, some people really do have to have it spelled out for them, don’t they? My place, half an hour. Night in. Pizza and DVD. Bring a bottle of wine. Chardonnay. Bring your toothbrush as well. Do I need to draw you a picture?”
“God, no!”
“Good.” Mel hung up.
He looked at the intriguing wall, and then examined his priorities. He changed his socks, pulled on a cleanish shirt, pocketed his toothbrush, and set off for Mel’s.
♦
James returned to the question of the false wall on Sunday afternoon. After an incredible night at Mel’s, he’d somehow remembered to pick up a scraper and a plastic washing-up bowl at Homebase. Ralph was in the hallway when he came in.
“Is that so you can do the washing-up?”
“No.” Without further explanation, he filled the bowl with water and took it to his room. Using a discarded tea-towel as a sponge, he set to work. Soak, scrape. Soak, scrape.
There appeared to be four layers of paper. The bottom one was at least fifty years old. Possibly even antique. He scraped it off anyway. He wasn’t quite sure what he hoped to achieve, but he wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery, and this was a logical first step.
He’d been working away for an hour or so when a large section of the paper peeled away at once. With it came a cascade of plaster which seemed to have decayed into powder. James froze. His first thought was that the landlord would have a fit. Then he noticed something else. Under the plaster was some sort of stone. Carved into this was a strange design, roughly elliptical, about eighteen inches across at its widest point. It was entirely geometrical, formed of a dozen or so lines, some straight and some curved, branching and intersecting without logic or symmetry. For no apparent reason, it looked oddly forbidding.
There was a knock at his door. James started, and was seized with a sudden desire to keep his discovery secret. Fortunately, his chest of drawers would screen it from anyone standing in his doorway.
“Piss off if you support Arsenal,” he called.
Ralph took this as an invitation, as intended, and stuck his head round the door. He stared. “You’re stripping wallpaper.”
“I know.”
“OK – why are you stripping wallpaper?”
“So I can paint this wall. Then, while I watch it dry, I’ll get an insight into what you feel when you watch Arsenal.”
“Please yourself.” Ralph withdrew.
A little later there was another knock.
“Piss off if Ralph sent you.”
The door opened. “Ralph said you were redecorating.” Dave’s voice.
James didn’t turn round. He used his body as an extra barrier between his visitors and his wall.
“We were wondering if you needed psychiatric help.” That was Ron.
James turned his head. “Is Sam back yet?”
“No. Why?”
“Because if he is, invite him in for a gawp too. Get it over with.” He sighed, and relented. “If you must know, this wallpaper is driving me crazy. I never could stand this shade of green. Then the other day I spotted some mould, and decided that one of us would have to go.”
“Wilde, James?” asked Dave. “I’m impressed.” He didn’t sound it.
“You can re-decorate my room next, if you like,” said Ron. “I hate my wallpaper, too.”
“I hate the fact that you leave your bike in the hall where I keep tripping over it,” James said. He returned to his stripping. Ron and Dave took the hint.
♦
Two hours later, he’d cleared the entire wall. The floor was ankle-deep in fragments of soggy wallpaper mixed with powdered plaster. Beneath the strange design, the stone held two short lines of what was presumably writing, though in no script he’d ever seen. Other than that, it and the rest of the wall was bare. The remaining sections of plaster were pitted and cracked. If he’d been interested in decoration, it would have taken a lot of attention to ready it for new wallpaper. In other circumstances the job would have appealed, but his attention was drawn to the strange stone set into the brickwork. It was a dull grey, and smooth, almost silky, to the touch. A fair size too, about three feet tall, two feet wide and, if his estimate of the wall had been accurate, two and a bit feet from front to back.
James looked at the design and the inscription again. He traced some of the lines with his finger, and gasped. The incisions were deep, and their edges sharp – amazingly so, after so many years. He stared for a long time, wrapped up in the delicious mystery. There was no question of trying to forget about the stone.
He rummaged through what he optimistically referred to as his desk, and found paper and biro. Once he got the ink flowing, he copied the engravings as accurately as he could. He paid particular attention to the writing, if that was what it was. He made notes of the number of different characters, and which ones occurred more than once. There were no gaps to suggest breaks between words – wasn’t that a trick cryptographers used to defend against unfriendly decipherment? Perhaps it was some sort of code.
There was another knock on his door. He stood up, folded the paper and stuffed it in his back pocket, then opened the door.
It was Ralph. “Still stripping wallpaper?”
“Just about done. Nothing much to see.”
“No shit. Dave’s done a spag bol. Want some?”
It dawned on James that he was starving. Mel, though wonderful in many ways, watched her figure by pretending that breakfast was a myth. He’d been too busy with his wall to remember lunch. Dave liked to cook, and as long as his housemates slipped him a few quid for ingredients, was happy to rustle up something sustaining from time to time. His spaghetti bolognese was a favourite. It would have provoked a stream of obscenities from Gordon Ramsay, but it stuck to the ribs in a satisfying way.
“Sure,” James said, and was soon stuffing his face. Feeling the need for distraction, he asked Ralph about the previous night’s gig.
“Got thrown out,” Ralph said happily. He launched into a tale of ribald comments, thrown beermats,
and a near-confrontation with the posh totty’s even posher boyfriend. “Who’s gay,” Ralph informed everyone.
“If he’s her boyfriend, how can he be gay?” Dave objected.
“They’re both from Surrey,” Ralph said, as if that explained everything. On Planet Ralph, it probably did.
They heard the sound of the front door opening – Sam returning from his monthly visit to his parents. He wandered into the kitchen and said hello. “There’s some spaghetti, if you want it,” Dave told him. He didn’t offer the bolognese. Sam was finicky about meat preparation.
“Thank you, no,” Sam said. “I have already eaten.”
Sam was the quiet one. The one whose parents had been born in Bangladesh, and who had dedicated their lives to launching their son towards a bright future. A law student, he was studious and devout, but wore his faith with quiet dignity. He dressed like any other student, tolerated the booze and the bacon sandwiches, and winced whenever the television showed images of the more militant face of Islam. His actual name was long and complicated, and ‘Sam’ was the first syllable. Only his mother ever used the full version.
“While you’re all here,” James said, so suddenly that he surprised himself, “can any of you make anything of this?” He fished the paper out of his pocket and smoothed it flat on the table.
The others stared at it.
“What is it?” Ron asked.
“That’s what I want to know,” James said.
Ron sighed. “OK, then where did you get it?”
“I found it carved into a wall out Limehouse way,” James improvised. “Hey, I’m an architect. I look at old buildings. And this is old.”
“How old?” asked Dave.
“Hard to say. Stones from old buildings often get re-used in newer ones. This could be medieval, or even older.” The lies came surprisingly easy. His housemates seemed to find them plausible.
“Looks like a seal,” Ron said.
“Or a device,” added Dave. The others looked at him. “You know, ‘A youth who bore, mid snow and ice, a banner with a strange device.’” There was a silence. “Longfellow,” Dave added. James and Ralph exchanged a look. Dave was studying English, and was given to peppering his conversation with quotations from an astonishingly wide-ranging selection of authors, most of whom they’d never heard of. “A device is a heraldic design,” he said, sounding slightly defeated.
“Helpful,” said James. “And what about this underneath. Runes, maybe? C’mon, Ralph, you’re into that Tolkien stuff.”
“It’s not runes,” Ralph said. “Not Tolkien’s, nor the Norse ones his were based on. Not Greek either, nor Arabic.”
“Nor Hebrew,” Dave added. “I had a Jewish mate back home, and his parents made him study Hebrew for his bar-mitzvah. He taught me to write my name.”
“What about you, Sam?” James asked. “Mean anything to you?”
Sam stared at the paper for a long time. “No, friend James,” he said at last. “I do not know what this script means, but I do not like it.”
“Why not? It’s not Bengali or Punjabi or anything?”
“No. I have never seen anything like it. But it troubles me. I do not know why, but it troubles me. It is haram. Not holy. I beg you, do not go back to the place where you found it. Please excuse me. I must go and pray.”
Sam really did pray five times a day, but he did so quietly in his room, and the other boys granted him both space and respect.
♦
James escaped to his room, pleading tiredness and disrupted sleep patterns. Rest proved elusive however, and he found himself sitting on the end of his bed, staring at the stone. His phone rang, but he ignored it.
How to approach the mystery? He could see two lines of attack. The first was the history of his house. As an architecture student with access to the University library, he felt that shouldn’t be too hard to uncover – in the morning, anyway. The other was the writing, if that was what it was.
He logged onto the net, and found a site that listed a surprising number of scripts, both historical and modern. Latin, Greek, Norse, Cyrillic, Arabic, Phoenician, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Babylonian cuneiform, various oriental characters, ideograms, pictograms, ancient inscriptions from Africa that defied interpretation. None of them matched the stone in his wall.
“My wall,” he muttered, under his breath. “My stone.” He continued staring at it. He got the strangest feeling that it was staring back, mocking him, defying him to penetrate its mystery. Various solutions – each more fantastical than the last – presented themselves to his whirling imagination. By midnight, he was prepared to believe it was the work of Zillons from the planet Thark.
Desperate for sleep, he lay down on his bed. Each time he closed his eyes however, he felt compelled to open them and gaze at the stone again. That was when he noticed its strangest characteristic that he’d yet discovered. It glowed.
James’s room never grew fully dark. He was not a big fan of curtains, and although Harstow Road was neglected, it did have street lights. So it took him a long time to notice the stone’s faint luminosity. It had been totally undetectable in daylight, and even past midnight, it took James a while to convince himself that he wasn’t imagining things. He closed his curtains, and laid his pillow against the bottom of his door to block any light from the hall. He even turned off his laptop. Then he sat cross-legged in front of the stone.
There was no doubt about it. A very faint bluish glow emanated from the stone. James racked his brains – were there any naturally luminous rocks? He couldn’t remember hearing about any. Unless it was radioactive.
The thought made him leap back in alarm, but he kept his eyes on the stone. Then he noticed the craziest thing of all. The glow, weak as it was, was strongest around the device and the inscription.
“No,” he said aloud. “That’s just too weird. I’m tired and I’m seeing things. I need some sleep.”
Still he sat and stared, however. He just couldn’t take his eyes off the glowing stone. Finally, deep into the small hours, oblivion finally overwhelmed him. With it came troubled dreams. He woke early, unable to remember any details, save that someone had been calling to him from a very long way away.
♦
The University’s head librarian seemed surprised to find James waiting outside when she arrived at eight forty-five the next morning. She looked at him doubtfully, which seemed fair enough, given that he was bleary-eyed and unshaven, and had slept in his clothes.
“Are you all right, young man?” she asked him.
“Er, yes, sorry,” he mumbled. “Bad night. But there’s something I’ve just got to look up. Archives. Historical maps. London Borough of –”
The librarian held up her hand. She did not look unsympathetic. “That’s all very well,” she told him, “but we don’t open to students until half past nine, as you can see.” She gestured at the sign on the door, and James nodded in acknowledgement. Three or four other library staff arrived as she spoke, including the large security guard who’d once caught Ron trying to make an unauthorised withdrawal. “In the meantime,” the head librarian continued, “I suggest you get yourself a cup of coffee.” And a shower, her expression seemed to say.
James took her advice, and had a coffee. He also visited a washroom, where he splashed his face with water and regarded his reflection critically. He’d seen worse. He’d felt worse. Then he headed back to the library.
The library was well-stocked with historical maps of London. Whilst they were reluctant to let just anyone get their dirty hands on them, the maps had all been scanned, and were available electronically. James worked backwards through time. Harstow Road had existed in its present form in 1936, which meant it had survived the Blitz. A map from 1912 showed each house individually, including his own, and another from 1880 agreed with it. The stree
t had certainly existed in 1832, as Horstowe, though he couldn’t tell if his house had been built by then. The eighteenth century proved an elusive era, but a plan drawn up in 1667 to document the re-building of London after the Great Fire showed that his district had then been a rural area outside the city.
On a whim, he tried looking further back, and got lucky with a fifteenth-century charter delineating the various farming interests in the area. Right where his house now stood was a forested area called Hobstone Wood.
A frisson ran down his spine. “Stone” was a fairly common place name element in English. Hobstone might be a corruption of Hob’s Town. But what if it really meant Stone in this instance? Especially since the name was attached to a wood, and not a town. Then there was the other element: Hob. An old name for the Devil. Was he reading too much into things, or was he on the verge of something?
He checked his watch, and was amazed to find that it was after three. He stood up, stretching to relieve the cramp in his back and legs. Then he finally noticed the message his stomach had been sending him for some time. Another skipped breakfast, another missed lunch. He recalled there being a cafeteria in the basement of the library, so he headed down there.
♦
James was standing with a loaded tray, looking for a free table, when a voice hailed him.
“Jamie lad, over here.” Angus, flame-haired and bearded, was the rising star of the chess club. He’d once beaten James in sixteen moves despite starting the game without his queen. Prodigious drinker, too. James sat down opposite him.
Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Page 6
