Carnacki: The Edinburgh Townhouse and Other Stories

by William Meikle

  "Of course, after hearing his story, it was only polite of me to recount my own. Bernard got rather excited as I explained my area of expertise, the reason for my being in Edinburgh, what I suspected of the veil, and how I intended to stand vigil in the hallway for another night.

  "'It is no mere happenstance that we have met here, Mr. Carnacki,' he said. 'The house has brought us together for a reason.'

  "He insisted that he would join me in my attempt to delve into the house's secrets, and there was something so infinitely sad and forlorn about the poor chap that I did not have the heart to say no to him. Besides, he was proving do be good, if somewhat melancholy, company and proved a fine conversationalist once I got him nudged off the topic of death and the afterlife.

  "We had another pint of beer and a spot of early lunch in the bar before heading over to the house to start our preparations for the evening. On arriving at the townhouse, I found an iron bar on the doorstep. The good Sergeant had done the task I had set for him, but he had not had the strength of will to even open the door to leave the cold iron in the hallway."

  *

  "Bernard did not seem perturbed to see my chalk markings on the floor and asked some astute questions as to the nature of the electric pentacle as I set out my valves and wires and small battery. I smoked one of his overly perfumed cigarettes as I told him of my color theory, and how it has been tested in a variety of cases and situations, and he followed my train of thought easily enough despite the language differences.

  "But I could tell he also had other things on his mind. His gaze kept turning to the closed doors to the other apartments, and to the one on the left-hand side nearest the entrance in particular.

  "He stepped over in that direction, and even put a hand on the door, but was halted by a sudden sound from beyond the door on the opposite side of the hallway.

  "A snuffling, sniffing noise that I recognized only too well came from behind the cellar door."

  *

  Arkwright interjected into Carnacki's story again,

  "I knew it. I knew those blasted piggy blighters would be back. Give them what for, Carnacki."

  Of course, as soon as he realized he had broken the flow of the story, the poor chap was quite apologetic. Carnacki waved away his pleas for forgiveness away with a smile.

  "I was going to stop around this point anyway and ask if anyone needed to recharge their glasses or get a smoke lit. We have a way to travel yet tonight together, gentlemen, and fresh worlds, if not exactly to conquer, at least to investigate.

  "So come, let us try some of the new bottle of scotch I brought back with me from my sojourn. It is an Islay malt with which I am unfamiliar and I am keen to have a taste."

  The scotch did indeed prove to be most excellent, and we all partook of Carnacki's generosity in its pouring, then lit up fresh smokes and prepared for the next part of his tale.

  He kept us in suspense for a minute while refilling his old pipe and getting it lit, then continued.

  *

  "The beast on the other side of the door fell quiet.

  "Bernard and I held our breath, waiting to see if there would be a recurrence of the sound, but none came. We were still only in the early afternoon and hours away from darkness so I did not want to switch on the pentacle, for fear my battery would not last through what might be required of it in the night. I was, therefore, quite relieved when it appeared that silence and calm was once again going to be restored.

  "Bernard headed for the door on the left hand side again. This time there was no snuffling from the cellar, so he put out a hand and turned the handle. I was by his side as he pushed the door open. I expected to be looking into an empty room, but that was not the case at all.

  "There were people inside, but it was as if a glass wall was stretched over the doorway. We could not step forward, we only stand and watch, spectators watching a scene as if it were playing on a stage in front of us. And this was no magic lantern show, no flickering, jerky movement. This was as real as we are here and now. We saw it all in minute, sharp, detail. And although we could not pass through the plane of the doorway, we could hear the conversation from inside well enough.

  "We looked inside to see a small woman standing over a bulky man, who sat in a kitchen chair. They were both drinking. It was scotch, I could smell it, and they were smoking strong cigarettes, which I could also smell. There was the faintest hint of aniseed or liquorice wafting through to me, French, like the one I had been smoking earlier.

  "The woman looked to be barely five feet tall, the paleness of her face accentuated by jet-black hair that hung in a single long plait to tickle her waist. Her clothes were equally black, a floor-length dress giving her the appearance of a hole in the fabric of reality. She glided rather than walked.

  "'I am the concierge,' I heard her say, 'but you already know that. What you do not know is what that title means, here in this place.'

  "'I live here, in number one,' she said. 'But you could have number three if you like? Number six is empty, but you wouldn't like that. The last concierge had that one, and he wasn't as fastidious in his habits as some; it might be years before it's ready for somebody else.'

  "While she was speaking, I was trying to take in all the details of the scene, trying to fix it in my memory so that I could record it later.

  "Her apartment looked to have been transported wholesale from a continental townhouse of some antiquity; it was decorated with heavy wood furniture, mostly mahogany by the looks of it, and polished to within an inch of its life. There was dark red flock wallpaper, portraits of the long dead which were presumably family, and a thick crimson pile carpet that had seen its best days many decades before. A gas fitting in the wall provided the only source of light, sending flickering shadows dancing everywhere. Directly opposite the doorway there was a long wall covered totally in bookshelves housing leather-bound volumes that looked older still than the furniture. Dark velvet curtains, deep red, almost purple, were pulled shut, covering the windows that overlooked the street.

  "I was wondering at that moment which street I would be looking out over should I be able to enter and draw back the curtains; I suspected it would not be in Edinburgh."

  *

  "While I had been looking around, the conversation between the room's occupants was still ongoing.

  "'You will have questions?' the concierge said to the man.

  "'I will have questions,' he agreed. 'I will have many of them. Here is an easy one to start with. What in blazes is going on here? Something brought me here, I know that much. I felt its tug and pull in my head and in my gut. But what is it? Is it some kind of hypnotism or even some kind of drug?'

  "The woman replied with almost the same bally spiel that Bernard had given me in the bar bot n hour before.

  "'There are houses like this all over the world. Most people only know of them from whispered stories over campfires; tall tales told to scare the unwary," she went on. "But some of us, those who suffer…some of us know better. We are drawn to the places, the loci if you like, where what ails us can be eased. Yes, dead is dead, as it was and always will be. But there are other worlds than these, other possibilities. And if we have the will, the fortitude, and a sigil, we can peer into another life, where the dead are not gone, where we can see that they thrive and go on. And as we watch, we can, sometimes, gain enough peace for ourselves that we too can thrive, and go on.

  "'You will want to know more than why. You will want to know how. I cannot tell you that. None of us has ever known, only that the place is important, and a sigil and totem are needed. Those are the constants here.'

  "She puffed contentedly again for several seconds. Smoke went in, but very little, if any, came back out, soaked away and down inside her.

  "I wondered whether she might be full of the stuff, whether there might indeed be nothing inside her but swirling smoke.

  "I had to pay attention, for the concierge was speaking agai
n.

  "'If you still want to stay after what you have seen here today, you must agree to my terms,' she said. It wasn’t a question, and the man nodded in reply.

  "'How can I not stay? All I ever wanted is here, somewhere in this house. I need to be here, with her. It's all I'll ever need.'

  "'Then it's decided. You’ll take number three. Once we get you settled and your things moved in, there will be more rules, all of which are for your own safety while you are here. But first things first. You will need a sigil, for that is your connection to the Great Beyond, and it is the way that the Veil knows to allow you access.'

  "The man motioned at his belly. There was plenty of it under his shirt.

  '''You mean I’m to get cut? Here?'

  "She smiled.

  "'Wherever you want it. Cut, or tattooed, or even drawn on with pen and ink. It is the voluntary marking of the flesh that is the important thing. Don’t ask why. I can’t tell you. All I know is what I was told myself. Just putting it on paper doesn't work. In fact, it could open ways that the veil does not control, and that way lies madness, then death soon after. So it must be the sigil, and it must be on flesh. The fact that it works is all I know. It has to be taken on faith.'

  "'You do know what I do for a living?' the man said, rather too harshly. 'Faith is not normally a word in my vocabulary.'

  "'Then learn it,' she said, raising her voice. 'That, or leave right now and don't come back. I don’t really care either way. I’m not here to mother you, or be your confessor. I'm the concierge. If you want to talk, I’ll listen if I feel like it. But my job is to look after the house and make sure you continue to have access to the veil. That takes up most of my time. The occupants need to be able to look after themselves.'

  "'So at least tell me what this sigil has to look like?'

  "She went back to laughing. It suited her better than a frown.

  "'It can be anything you like, as long as it's yours,' she said, lighting a fresh smoke from the butt of the previous one. 'As long as it provides the required connection with that which you desire the most.'

  "'I want to get cut. That'll ensure it's permanent .I want it to be permanent. Do I have to do it myself?'

  "She laughed louder at that, and the glass in the light fixture tinkled in sympathy.

  "'Oh no. That would be barbarous. Of course, you can if you want to, but think of the potential for you to make a mess of it? Others have taken a more artistic approach and, if I may say so, I have a way with a blade myself that would make the experience much more pleasant than other methods you might choose. Would you allow me?'

  "She smiled again, but now she looked more like a predatory bird eyeing its prey.

  "The man stubbed out his cigarette and drained the Scotch.

  "'Let’s have at it then. I’m ready.'

  "'We’ll see about that,' she replied. She sucked another prodigious draw from her own smoke and stubbed it out before lifting a knife from a counter.

  "It was at that precise moment that the door of the room slammed shut with a bang that rang throughout the house. Silence fell around us once more. We looked at each other, neither of us able at that moment to articulate our thoughts as to what we had seen.

  "When Bernard pushed the door open again, it was to reveal an empty room, with no furniture, no people, and no concierge."

  *

  "Once again Bernard looked at me. It was not fear I saw in his eyes. It was wonderment.

  "'You saw too? You saw the lady? You heard the concierge?"

  "I nodded.

  "'I saw. But I have the feeling any message that was sent here was meant for you, rather than for me.'

  "Bernard fell quiet for a time at that. We smoked, each lost in our thoughts. I chose my pipe this time, having had my fill of the smell of aniseed. It was the young Frenchman who broke the silence, with a question I had been considering myself.

  "'I wonder if there are other scenes to be watched in the other rooms?'

  "Of course, after that, there was nothing for it but to go and have a look."

  *

  "There was still plenty of light so I had little trepidation in approaching the stairs, especially when I looked up the well to see the dome of a glass skylight high overhead at the top of the building. Thin watery sunlight washed all across the upper landing.

  "We decided to work from the uppermost level down. There were four floors, including the bottom one where we started, and the rooms were numbered, so that numbers seven and eight were on the top landing. I felt my blood pumping hard as I approached number eight, for the day had been rather weird and strange already, and it was still the afternoon.

  "I was having far too much excitement for one day to my liking.

  "But I need not have worried. The apartment beyond the door to number eight was empty and bare of any furniture whatsoever, a clean slate waiting for an occupant. Number seven proved equally empty, as did the two apartments on the next landing down. By the time we reached the door of number four, I was feeling confident that we were in for no further alarms on the way down.

  "We had found another empty apartment in number four and turned away when a cloud moved across the sun, casting dark shadows in the corners of the landing where we stood. I smelled it again; heavy, animal, must, and so thick I could almost taste it.

  "One of the shadows opposite us on the landing swirled and grew darker, and, from within it, something snuffled and sniffed at us."

  "I decided that discretion was the better part of valor at that moment. I led Bernard downstairs toward the pentacle, ready to step into the defensive circles should it be required, but as we reached the foot of the stairs the cloud passed on and sunlight washed across the stairs again. When I looked up to the landing, there was nothing up there but dancing motes of dust."

  *

  "I knew that the door to room number two, the one I had heard snuffling behind the previous night, didn't lead to a room at all. It led down to the cellar, and all of a sudden I was thinking of porcine beasts and dark shadows again. The sunlight most certainly was not going to pierce that far down. I took precautions before opening the door and when I finally did so, Bernard was behind me holding the lit lantern, and I had the hefty iron bar in my hand, its weight doing much for my feeling of security.

  "I opened the door slowly, half-expecting a snuffling swine thing to be there on the other side ready to pounce. But there was only quiet and dark.

  "We went down slowly. The stairs were old. They had not been renovated to the same standard as those in the main body of the house, and aged timbers creaked underfoot. We went down ten wooden steps, then a bottom six of stone. We were now below street level and the air here was colder, almost frigid. My breath steamed ahead of me, and I wished I had been wearing a heavier jacket.

  "The stone steps opened out onto a low-ceilinged basement that ran under the full extent of the old house. Most of the area was shored up with red brick, that was badly pointed and cracked in places, but the far wall from where we stood was rough-hewn stone, as if it had been hacked straight out of the bedrock. The whole area was cloaked in semidarkness, lit by dim sunlight coming in from two high windows up at the roof level. I wondered whether, perhaps, on another day, I might look up there and see a young, fresh faced, sergeant and his friends looking in.

  "It appeared that the contents of the old, pre-renovation house had been piled, willy-nilly down here to rot. White sheets covered aged, battered furniture, stacks of books had been piled up in the corners, old paintings and portraits sat stacked against the walls, and dusty mirrors reflected my own pale, tense expression back at me at every turn.

  "As you chaps know, I am used to quiet. Indeed, quiet is normal for an old building, but this felt deeper than that. It felt almost sepulchral, and to make any sudden noise down here would have felt like talking too loudly in a silent church. Nothing moved, and all I heard was the thudding of my heartbeat in my ears.

&
nbsp; "A heavy carriage rumbled along the road outside and I felt the vibration through my soles before the silence descended completely again. But it had achieved a purpose. It had reminded me that beyond the high windows, a whole city was going about its business. We might be alone in this cold basement, but help was always going to be close by if it were to be required.

  "I had started to relax a tad when something moved in the left-hand corner of the cellar. I was ready to head back for the stairs if there had been even the slightest hint of a snuffle or smell of a beast. But this proved to be something else entirely.

  "It started small; a tear in the fabric of reality, no bigger than a sliver of fingernail, appeared and hung there. As I watched it settled into a new configuration, a black oily droplet held quivering in empty air.

  "The walls of the cellar throbbed like a heartbeat. The black egg pulsed in time. And now it was more than obvious. It was growing.

  "It calved, and calved again, and even as it did so I realized I knew what I was looking at. This too I had seen before, and this too was another manifestation of the Veil, the gateway to beyond. I had been right in my surmise. The veil was indeed thin here, even perhaps too thin, given the ease with which reality flowed and distorted.

  "The room kept throbbing.

  "Four eggs hung in a tight group, pulsing in time with the rising cacophony of the chanting. Colors danced and flowed across the sheer black surfaces; blues and greens and shimmering silvers on the eggs.

  "In the blink of an eye there were eight.

  "We had no thought of escape, lost in contemplation of the beauty before us.

  "Sixteen now, all perfect, all dancing.