“What?” said George.
“Imagine the lily pads are flat,” I said. “They see each other as circles. The tennis ball is another circle to them, but one that keeps changing in size as it bobs up and down.”
“And how does that explain anything?” asked George.
“Your creature,” said Daniel. “It’s shifting because what you see is a changing cross-section. That’s how it moves too. If you imagine the surface of the pond as being all crumpled up—”
“This is all Greek to me,” said George. “What happened to that house?”
“Warping,” said Daniel. “Stretching in the next dimension. It warps our space to make room, and some things can’t take it.”
“Bloody theoretician,” snapped George. “Can’t you tell me how to stop it?”
“We will when we can,” I said, but George was already stamping off. Tom was still watching the tennis ball. I suspected he was thinking about the implications of photographing another dimension. Daniel shrugged.
“I’ll see what I can find on extra-dimensional geometry,” he said.
Exhausted and famished, head still buzzing with strange ideas, I made my way back to my lodgings and devoured a plate of fish pie which Mrs Hall had kept in the oven for me. The Halls sat by the grate, and the parrot perambulated from one end of its perch and back to the other with long, deliberate steps.
I exchanged a few words with Mr. Hall over the disaster of the collapsing house. He had seen the rubble, but only fit young men were drafted in to help, so he had watched from the sidelines and talked to the other bystanders. He was puzzled and shaken in equal measure. He could not make sense of it. He said subsidence was unheard of around here, and shook his head at the idea of an earthquake. Surely it could not have been an explosion?
Mrs Hall knitted quietly and nodded pleasantly. I was surprised when her husband mentioned that the dead couple had both been from the church.
“That’s right,” said Mrs Hall, nodding and continuing to knit away with great energy. She had known them well and met them at church for thirty years, said her husband. But she was no more troubled by the news than if I had told her they had bought a new sofa.
Afterwards, when she went to make the cocoa, he leaned over and spoke to me sotto voce.
“She’s not well,” he said.
With a glance towards the kitchen, he held up her knitting for me to see. It had started out as a cardigan for a baby, but partway through it had degenerated, mutated. She had used a confusion of different wools, and extra arms of different sizes and shapes had grown on it. It showed signs of unravelling and re-knitting, and changes of style. I could see her mind losing its way and wandering hopelessly, repeating the patterns she knew, trying to recover the familiar but becoming ever more monstrous with each attempt.
“It’s that church,” he said.
When Mrs Hall returned with the tray, I was looking through the Illustrated London News and her husband was feeding nuts to the parrot. She went back to her knitting.
That night I lay awake. A large glass of port had done nothing to soothe my nerves, and the images of the day washed back and forth through me like a tide. Tom’s pictures, Daisy’s strange automatic writing, George looking grim… the collapsed house, that alien paving, Mrs Hall’s deranged knitting. It was all a twisted and distorted parody of the real world.
I drowsed, but I swear I did not sleep, and when a squawk sounded downstairs I was instantly wide-awake. The parrot was as good as a guard dog, and his noise meant someone was near. An undercurrent of dread washed through my soul; something fearful was afoot. I strained my ear to hear an intruder and caught a soft, unidentifiable noise from the direction of the stairs. The parrot squawked again below.
I could hear Mr. Hall’s voice. I distinctly caught the words “I’ll see to it,” and their bedroom door opening. The click of a switch, and a strip of light appeared under my door. Then nothing.
After a long minute I could not stand any more. In spite of the dread, I got up and opened the door, to find a ghastly tableau.
Mr. Hall was standing at his door in his pyjamas, and Mrs Hall behind him. They were both dumbstruck, eyes fixed on something at the end of the hall beyond. At first I could not see anything. There was nothing there. But there was something there, a living thing which I had encountered once before. I smelled it before I saw it—that vile, fishy, sweaty odour I first encountered in the church.
It would be quite wrong to call the thing invisible, but it was difficult to see. It absorbed and reflected light like any other physical object and so in that sense it was visible. It was not even camouflaged. But your eyes kept sliding off it when you tried to look, seeing around it but not seeing the thing itself. It was not my eyes, I think, but my mind which rejected it, failed to make sense of what they were seeing. It is said that Australian natives failed to react to Captain Cook’s ship because they were incapable of seeing something so alien to their experience. What I was seeing was a thousand times more alien.
I could not assign any true colour or shape to it. It was pale, with the pallor of something that shuns daylight. From what I later gleaned, I might call it something like a monstrous toad, a bloated, rounded monstrosity. Its shape was not fixed but changed constantly, like a bundle of pulsing, writhing worms. Its size was impossible. It seemed somehow both tiny and yet gigantic. If you pushed me I would say it was as big as a man, because it seemed to fill the hallway. It could not have been much larger.
It was the thing I had disturbed under the bed at the Whatley house. Now it had come here for something. It was facing the Halls.
They were paralysed in place, fixed I knew by that Medusa-stare looking through them. Mr. Hall seemed merely horrified, but Mrs Hall wore an expression of stark terror mingled with something else—ecstatic madness, perhaps? Her face was distorted out of all recognition; she did not look human at all but as though some possessing demon’s features had superimposed themselves on her.
Perhaps if I had quicker wits I would have seized a poker or a paper knife and attacked the thing. I knew that if it looked at me I too would be paralysed. Or perhaps I could have flung myself back and slammed the door on it. But then those eyes saw me, and a convulsion of space overtook me and I was rooted to the spot.
I could see a whirling stone wall spinning towards me, but it was spinning the way the world spins when you are drunk, as though the movement was all in my head. I was falling towards it and was about to be smeared on it like a fly on the windscreen of a speeding car but—
“Gachhaa! Gggaachaa! Ggggachaaa!”
The shrieking and squawking parrot flew past me, and I had a sense or a glimpse of the thing disappearing downstairs, flowing or flying rather than running. It seemed to pass through the closed front door, like a stream of grey quicksilver which ran through the cracks around the door.
The parrot continued to shriek and squawk, and the Halls were chasing after the bird, trying to catch it and calm it down. It was a few minutes before the bird was caught and quieted. Mrs Hall went to heat some milk to help us sleep, and I had a word with Mr Hall while we checked pointlessly the house was secure.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “What was it?”
“Something bad,” I said. “It’s connected with the church, but I don’t really understand how.”
“There are some bad things about,” he said. “I know, in my time I’ve seen them with my own eyes, things you wouldn’t believe. But that beat them. It just looked at you with those bloody great eyes …”
“Is Mrs Hall all right?”
“I don’t think the missus is any the worse for it,” he said. “But she’s no better. Thank God for that bird, that’s all I say. I told you he was as good as a guard dog.”
For once I could not disagree. The parrot’s feathers were fluffed up and he looked about him with a savage air.
We had our hot milk with a medicinal slug of brandy. In spite of the unsettling experience
which should have left our nerves jangling for days, all three of us seemed to get over that ghastly intrusion in the next quarter-hour as we sat around sipping hot milk. As soon as the monstrous thing was out of sight, it was hard to remember it properly, hard to believe it had not all just been a dream. We talked idly about the weather, and as I went back upstairs to bed I remembered with a jolt why we were up. I wondered if the others had forgotten already.
On Sunday morning I met Jessica for tennis. We attracted a few spectators who admired her athletic grace, and those fast, powerful serves that whipped past me two times out of three. It was a warm day and I was sweating profusely after the first set. I usually won a couple of games, but this time I barely scored a point. Jessica’s speed and strength, the sheer intensity of her playing, were extraordinary. I called a halt because of the heat, in an attempt to save the remnants of my masculine pride. We sat in the shade gulping down barley water.
I told her about the intrusion and she nodded quietly, saying little, fitting her racket back in its press.
“Of course, what I was thinking,” I said, “what I was wondering…a minute more and maybe the house would have come down about our ears like the other one.”
“And the parrot scared it off?”
“I suppose so. Startled it, I imagine—the way I startled it the first time.” She was not openly sceptical, but I could tell she had her doubts about my story. Jessica had an active, calculating mind and she would have brought it to bear with some detailed questions, rather than passing quickly in to the subject of the previous day’s disaster.
We had both bought the local newspapers and scoured them for details of the collapsing house. They told us virtually nothing we did not know, simply describing the respected banker and the respectable street with no previous history of sinkholes or subsidence. The theory of a gas explosion was given an airing, but there were no eyewitness accounts and certainly no mention of monstrous eyes staring out of the window before the event.
“I think George has it, more or less,” said Jessica. “Everything I turned up has the Whatleys being linked with black magic and witchcraft since the year dot. And your vicar said the same. This is some dreadful thing they’ve called up. You know he found the meaning of that odd text of Daisy’s—it means ‘In his house in R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.’ Cthulhu is a pagan deity, or a devil. He doesn’t have horns coming from his head; he has tentacles.”
“So this other place is R’lyeh,” I said. “And the thing that lives there is Cthulhu. Demons make no sense, but other dimensions, with intelligent, non-human inhabitants—”
“That’s just your way of putting it,” she said, echoing George. “But I’m not sure if George has the right answer.”
“Does he have an answer?”
She put the empty bottle in her bag and stood up, looking at me as though I were an idiot. I stood up next to her; even in tennis shoes she was as tall as I.
“George is going to fight it,” she said. “Spiritually exorcise it, or physically attack it if he can. I’m not sure if he has the right tools for the job.”
“If he’s going to hold up a crucifix and hope it shrivels up like a vampire, he’ll be disappointed,” I said. “That’s superstitious nonsense, and Hollywood made most of it up.”
“Quite,” said Jessica. “But on the other hand we do know that whatever rituals the Whatleys used were efficacious. The magic—if you’ll accept my terminology—works. Even if it goes against Christian teaching, we have to use it.”
“How…?”
“There are some ancient inscriptions from the Temple of Dagon,” she said. “In the British Museum. They’re kept locked away because they’re so blasphemous from a church perspective. I’ve been allowed to copy some, ‘for my studies.’ I wanted you to know.”
Of all of us, Jessica was the most conventionally religious. It was a terrible step for her to go anywhere near the occult.
“But Jess, that’s crazy,” I said, regretting the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean …”
She swished her racket to and fro before tucking it under her arm.
“We’ve all gone a bit crazy the last few weeks,” she said at last. “Especially Tom. And Daisy, and poor George. Maybe I have too. I think we’re all under the same influence; we just respond in different ways. Forgive my methods, William dear, just promise that you’ll be with us. As George says, he has need for all our different strengths.”
“I don’t want you involved in anything dangerous,” I said.
“Nonsense,” she said. “You know that a woman’s place is fighting alongside her man, not cowering behind him.”
“Well, I’ll be with you,” I said. “If it comes to that.”
“I knew you would be,” she said, breaking into a sunny smile. Jessica’s smiles were rare and lovely as summer sun.
We stood there for a few seconds, grinning at each other like idiots. Bonds can be forged over the unlikeliest things, and a life-or-death struggle against alien horror may not be the strangest.
“Oh, and I want you to have a look at these,” she said, drawing a small portfolio from her bag. It contained a dozen small but intricately detailed architectural drawings.
“You’ve been busy,” I said.
“Do let me know what you think,” she said. “I’ve got to go. Sophie wants me for a council of war.”
With that she gave me a peck on the cheek and picked up her bag. I watched her tanned legs walking away, still digesting her words. What did she mean about a woman alongside her man—did that mean she considered herself attached to me? And about us all being a bit crazy. Did that mean she thought I had dreamed or hallucinated that monstrous thing? And what did she mean about Tom and the others being crazy?
I knew then that I had been too wrapped up in my own thoughts to notice much about the others; I assumed the rest of the group were going about their business as usual. I did not realise how deeply we were getting enmeshed.
Her drawings were splendid: Jessica had sketched out ideas for a tropical honeymoon resort. There were dozens of villas interlocking in a way that gave everyone privacy and the best views as if each couple were the only one there. The resort was arranged so that the tennis courts were tucked away, and there were private dining areas with views of the beach or the mountains.
I enjoyed a fine Sunday lunch of roast pork and two veg with the Halls, with no mention of the night’s events. The parrot was livelier than usual, and Mr. Hall kept feeding him little tidbits of crackling. Afterwards, although they had said nothing about it, a motor car drew up with one of the Halls’ daughters and her husband. Apparently it had been arranged for Mrs Hall to spend a few days away with them in Stoke Newington. She took a small travelling case and a bag of knitting with her, and waved goodbye cheerfully if absently.
“She’ll be much better away from here,” said Mr. Hall.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I don’t get on with them lot,” he said, nodding towards the departing car. “Besides, I’ve got to stay here and look after you.”
I went looking for George, but he was not in his rented rooms or any of his other haunts. I tried Tom and was surprised to find Daisy in at his apartment. She said he was busy in his darkroom and not to be disturbed.
I walked around the church and the old Whatley house. That thing, that toad-like, bloated thing, must be in there somewhere. It occurred to me that it did not like daylight. George probably intended an expedition to hunt it down, with whatever weapons he thought suitable. It would not be an easy task; the thing moved like water and I was not sure that it had any solid substance that we could harm. Its gaze was enough to paralyse you, and if it could make a solid building collapse like a house of cards, what else could it do?
VI
I spent the rest of the afternoon leafing through the Hall’s Encyclopaedia Britannica, a second-hand 1901 edition, but for once I did not need the most up-to-date information.
I was looking at legendary beasts and the like for some sort of correspondence. It seemed to me that this thing could not be unique, that folk like the Whatleys must have summoned similar things in the past. It would have been called witchcraft, and the thing would be seen as some sort of hellish creature—in fact, much the same sort of interpretation that George was putting on it. And if they had been here before, then someone must have tried to slay one. So, following Durkheim and Graebner, I looked for traces of the historical truth behind the folklore, seeking ways to kill our monster.
But as a scientific guide to the biology of monsters, stories of dragon slayers are useless. I read about serpents and dragons and wyrms and wyverns, dispatched either by noble knights or humble but crafty sons of blacksmiths or foresters. Some of the beasts did evoke a little of the chill of that alien thing, but they all died a little too easily.
The cockatrice held my attention. It was an unnatural creature, born of a toad and a snake. It was not large, but it exuded a subtle venom that turned the countryside around it into a wasteland, and, in particular, it was difficult to kill because if you looked it in the eye, you were turned to stone. Could this be a folk memory of our creature? It was not clear how you killed a cockatrice, but one story had a knight using a mirror shield and reflecting its gaze back on itself.
That night Mr. Hall busied himself about the place. He double-locked and bolted the front door and wedged it. He even hammered in a nail so the letterbox could not be opened. He shut all the windows fast, in spite of the summer warmth. He positioned the parrot’s perch just inside the front door and quietly instructed it to keep watch. The bird did not seem troubled. He hung a heavy brass trinket, a Hindu sunwheel, on a loop of cord over the door handle.
“A bit of juju I picked up in India,” he said, almost apologetically. “It’s not Christian exactly, but it’s a matter of taking practical measures, Mr. Blake.”
“Of course,” I said.
The Dulwich Horror & Others Page 6
