“The stove!” cried Professor Keane, and fell back.
Above us, out of the chimney, came a spreading blackness, like smoke, gathering itself briefly there. Then it hurtled like a lightning bolt aloft, into the stars, in the direction of the Hyades, back to that place from which old Wizard Potter had called it into himself, away from where it had lain in wait for the Potters to come from Upper Michigan and afford it new host on the face of earth.
We managed to get Mrs. Potter out of the house, much shrunken now, but alive.
On the remainder of that night’s events there is no need to dwell—how the professor waited until fire had consumed the house to collect his store of star-shaped stones, of the reuniting of the Potter family—freed from the curse of Witches’ Hollow and determined never to return to that haunted valley—of Andrew, who, when we came to waken him, was talking in his sleep of “great winds that fought and tore” and a “place by the Lake of Hali where they live in glory forever.”
What it was that old Wizard Potter had called down from the stars, I lacked the courage to ask, but I knew that it touched upon secrets better left unknown to the races of men, secrets I would never have become aware of had I not chanced to take District School Number Seven, and had among my pupils the strange boy who was Andrew Potter.
THE SHADOW IN THE ATTIC
first published in Over the Edge, August Derleth, Arkham House, 1964
I
MY GREAT-UNCLE Uriah Garrison was not a man to cross—a dark-faced, shaggy-browed man with wild black hair and a face that haunted my childhood dreams. I knew him only in those early years. My father crossed him, and he died—strangely, smothered in his bed a hundred miles from Arkham, where my great-uncle lived. My Aunt Sophia condemned him, and she died—tripped on a stair by nothing visible. How many others might there have been? Who knows?
Who could do more than whisper fearfully of what dark powers were at Uriah Garrison’s command?
And of how much of what was said of him was superstitious gossip, baseless, and malicious, none could say. We never saw him again after my father’s death, my mother hating her uncle then and until the day she died, though she never forgot him. Nor did I, either him or his gambrel-roofed house on Aylesbury Street, in that part of Arkham south of the Miskatonic River, not far from Hangman’s Hill and its wooded graveyard. Indeed, Hangman’s Brook flowed through his grounds, wooded, too, like the cemetery on the hill; I never forgot the shadowed house where he lived alone and had someone in—by night—to keep his house for him—the high-ceilinged rooms, the shunned attic which no one entered by day and into which no one was permitted, ever, to go with a lamp or light of any kind, the small-paned windows that looked out upon the bushes and trees, the fan-lit doors; it was the kind of house that could not fail to lay its dark magic upon an impressionable young mind, and it did upon mine, filling me with brooding fancies and, sometimes, terrifying dreams, from which I started awake and fled to my mother’s side, and one memorable night lost my way and came upon my great-uncle’s housekeeper, with her strange emotionless, expressionless face—she stared at me and I at her, as across unfathomable gulfs of space, before I turned and sped away, spurred by new fear imposed upon those engendered in dreams.
I did not miss going there. There was no love lost between us, and there was little communication, though there were occasions on which I was moved to send Uriah Garrison a short greeting—the old man’s birthday, or Christmas—to which he never responded, which was as well.
It was, therefore, all the more surprising to me that I should have inherited his property and a small competence at his death, with no more annoying a provision but that I inhabit the house for the summer months of the first year after his death; he had known, clearly, that my teaching obligations would not permit occupancy throughout the year.
It was not much to ask. I had no intention of keeping the property. Arkham had even in those years begun to grow outward along the Aylesbury Pike, and the city which had once been so detached from my great-uncle’s home, was now pressing close upon it, and the property would be a desirable acquistion for someone. Arkham held no particular attraction for me, though I was fascinated by the legends that haunted it, by its clustering gambrel roofs, and the architectural ornamentation of two centuries ago. This fascination did not run deep, and Arkham as a permanent home did not appeal to me. But before I could sell Uriah Garrison’s house, it was necessary to occupy it in accordance with the terms of his will.
In June of 1928, over my mother’s protests and in spite of her dark hints that Uriah Garrison had been peculiarly cursed and abhorred, I took up my residence in the house on Aylesbury Street. It required little effort to do so, for the house had been left furnished since my great-uncle’s death in March of that year, and someone, clearly, had kept it clean, as I saw on my arrival from Brattleboro. My great-uncle’s housekeeper had evidently been instructed to continue her duties at least until my occupancy.
But my great-uncle’s lawyer—an ancient fellow who still affected high collars and solemn black attire—knew nothing of any arrangements Uriah Garrison had made, when I called upon him to investigate the provisions of the will. “I’ve never been in the house, Mr. Duncan,” he said. “If he made arrangements to have it kept clean, there must have been another key. I sent you the one I had, as you know. There is no other, to my knowledge.”
As for the provisions of my great-uncle’s will—these were barrenly simple. I was merely to occupy the house through the months of June, July and August, or for ninety days following my coming, if my teaching obligations made it impossible to take up occupancy on the first of June. There were no other conditions whatsoever, not even the ban on the attic room I had expected to see set down.
“You may find the neighbors a trifle unfriendly at first,” Mr. Saltonstall went on. “Your great-uncle was a man of odd habits, and he rebuffed the neighbors. I suppose he resented their moving into the neighborhood, and they for their part took umbrage at his independence and made much of the fact that, because he took walks into the cemetery on Hangman’s Hill, he seemed to prefer the company of the dead to that of the living.”
As to what the old man had been like in his last years, about which I asked; “He was a lusty, vigorous old fellow, very tough, actually,” answered Mr. Saltonstall, “but, as so often happens, when his decline came, it came fast—he was dead in just one week. Senility, the doctor said.”
“His mind?” I asked.
Mr. Saltonstall smiled frostily. “Well, now, Mr. Duncan, you must know there was always some question about your uncle’s mind. He had some very strange ideas which were, in a real sense, archaic. This witchcraft exploration, for one thing—he spent a good deal of money investigating the Salem trials. But you’ll find his library intact—and filled with books on the subject. Other than this obsessive interest in one subject, he was a coldly rational man—that describes him best. Unfriendly, and holding himself aloof.”
So Great-uncle Uriah Garrison had not changed in the years that had intervened between my childhood and my late twenties. And the house had not changed, either. It still had that air of watchful waiting—like someone huddled together against the weather, waiting for a stagecoach—nothing more recent, certainly, for the house was two hundred years old, and, though well kept up, it had never been invaded by electricity and its plumbing was archaic. Apart from its appointments, and some aspects of its finishing lumber, the house had no value—only the property on which it stood had considerable monetary worth in view of the expansion of Arkham along the Aylesbury Pike.
The furniture was in cherry and mahogany and black walnut, and I more than half suspected that if Rhoda—my fiancée,—saw it, she would want to keep it for our own house when we built one—and, what with the money the sale of the property and the furniture might realize, we should be able to build that house, leaving my salary as an English Department assistant and hers as an instructor in philology and archaeology to keep it up.
I had brought with me various books and papers necessary to the doctoral dissertation on which I was at work, and I knew that the shelves of the library of Miskatonic University, scarcely a mile from the house, would offer me all the additional assistance I might need; Thomas Hardy and the Wessex country hardly constituted a subject so obscure as to make necessary application to the Widener or some more expanded college library. So to that work I set myself until mid-evening of my first day in Uriah Garrison’s old house, when, being tired, I went to bed in what had been my great-uncle’s room on the second floor rather than in the guestroom on the ground floor.
II
Rhoda surprised me by coming to visit late the following day. She arrived without any prior notice, driving her own roadster. Rhoda Prentiss. It was, actually, a ridiculously prim name for such a lovely young lady, one so filled with excitement and so vigorously alive. I failed to hear her drive in, and was not aware of her until she opened the front door of the house and called out, “Adam! Are you home?”
I bounded out of the study where I was at work—by lamplight, for the day was dark and louring with squalls—and there she stood, with her shoulder-length ash-blonde hair damp with raindrops, and her thin-lips parted, and her candid blue eyes taking in what she could see of the house with lively curiosity.
But when I took her in my arms, a faint tremor ran through her body.
“How can you bear three months in this house?” she cried.
“It was made for doctoral dissertations,” I said. “There’s nothing here to disturb me.”
“The whole house disturbs me, Adam,” she said with unaccustomed gravity.
“Don’t you feel anything wrong?”
“What was wrong about it is dead. That was my great-uncle. When he was here, I admit, the house reeked of evil.”
“And it still does.”
“If you believe in psychic residue.”
She might have said more, but I changed the subject.
“You’re just in time to drive into Arkham for dinner. There’s a quaint old-fashioned restaurant at the foot of French Hill.”
She said no more, however much, as I saw by the small frown that held for a while, she was of a mind to say. And at dinner her mood changed, she spoke of her work, of our plans, of herself and of me, and we spent over two hours in the French House before we returned to the house. It was only natural that she should stay the night, taking the guest room, which, being below my own, enabled her simply to rap on the ceiling if she wanted for anything, or if, as I put it, “the psychic residue crowds you.”
Nevertheless, despite my jesting, I was aware from the moment of my fiancée’s arrival of a kind of heightened awareness in the house; it was as if the house had shaken off its indolence, as if, suddenly, it had come upon need to be more alert, as if it apprehended some danger to itself in somehow learning of my intention to dispose of it to someone who would unfeelingly tear it down. This feeling grew throughout the evening, and with it a curious response that was basically sympathetic, unaccountably. Yet, I suppose this should not have been so strange to me, since any house slowly assumes an atmosphere, and one of two centuries in age has undeniably more than a house less old. Indeed, it was the great number of such houses that lent to Arkham its chief distinction—not alone the architectural treasures, but the atmosphere of the houses, the lore and legendry of human lives come into being and spent in the relatively small confines of the city.
And from that moment, too, I was aware of something on another plane about the house—not that Rhoda’s intuitive reaction to it had been communicated to me, but simply that her arrival spurred events, the first of which took place that very night. I have thought afterward that Rhoda’s appearance on the scene hastened the happenings that were bound to take place in any event, but which would, in the normal course of circumstances, have taken place more insidiously.
We went to bed late that night. For my part, I fell asleep instantly, for the house was set well away from most of the city traffic, and there was nothing in the house of those settling and creaking noises so common to old houses. Below me, Rhoda still moved restlessly about, and she was still up and around when I drifted off.
It was sometime after midnight when I was awakened.
I lay for a few seconds growing to full wakefulness. What was it that had awakened me? A sound of breathing not my own? A nearby presence?
Something on my bed? Or all these things together?
I thrust forth a hand and encountered, unmistakably, a woman’s naked breast! And at the same moment I was aware of her hot, fervid breath—and then, instantaneously, she was gone, the bed lightened, I felt, rather than heard, her movement toward the door of the bedroom.
Fully awake now, I thrust back the light sheet covering me—for the night was sultry and humid,—and got out of bed. With hands that trembled a little, I lit the lamp and stood there, undecided as to what to do. I was clad only in my shorts, and the experience had unsettled me more than I cared to say.
I am ashamed to admit that I thought at first it had been Rhoda—which was only evidence of the mental confusion the incident had brought me to, for Rhoda was incapable of such an act; had she wished to spend the night in my bed, she would have said as much—she had done so before this. Further, the breast I had touched was not Rhoda’s; her breasts were firm, beautifully rounded—and the breast of the woman who lay next to me on my bed was flaccid, large nippled, and old. And the effect of it, unlike Rhoda’s, was one of shuddering horror.
I took up the lamp and stepped outside my room, determined to search the house. But at the moment of my entry into the hall I heard, drifting down as if from somewhere outside, high up over the house, the wailing and screaming of a woman’s voice, the voice of a woman being punished—only a drift of sound that grew more and more tenuous and was finally lost. It could not have lasted thirty seconds in all, but it was, in its way, as unmistakable as what I had felt beside me on my bed.
I stood, shaken—and in the end retreated to my bed and lay sleepless for over an hour, waiting for what might happen.
Nothing did, and when at last I slept again, I had begun to wonder whether I had not confused dream with reality.
But in the morning, the cloud on Rhoda’s face told me that something was wrong. She had got up to prepare breakfast for the two of us, and I came upon her in the kitchen.
Without a greeting, she turned and said, “There was a woman in the house last night!”
“Then it wasn’t a dream!” I cried.
“Who was she?” she demanded.
I shook my head. “I wish I could tell you.”
“It seems to me an extraordinary thing to have a cleaning woman in the middle of the night,” she went on.
“You saw her?”
“I saw her, yes. Why?”
“What did she look like?”
“She seemed to be a young woman—but I had a strange feeling that she wasn’t young at all. Her face was expressionless—fixed. Only her eyes seemed to be alive.”
“She saw you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“My great-uncle’s cleaning woman!” I cried. “That’s who it must have been.
I found the house clean when I came. You see how clea
n it is. He must never have left orders for her not to come again. I remember seeing her once when I was a child. He always had her in at night . . .”
“How utterly ridiculous! Uriah Garrison died in March—over three months ago. Only a cretin couldn’t tell by this time that he was no longer alive. Who pays her?”
Who, indeed? I could not answer.
Furthermore, in the circumstances, I could not tell Rhoda of my experience in the night. I could only assure her that I had not seen a woman in the house since that night in my early years when I had inadvertently caught a glimpse of the cleaning woman at her work.
“I remember having the same impression, too—the expressionlessness of her face,” I said.
“Adam, that was twenty years ago—perhaps more,” Rhoda pointed out. “It couldn’t be the same woman.”
“I shouldn’t think so. Still, I suppose it isn’t impossible. And in spite of what Mr. Saltonstall said, she must have a key.”
“It simply doesn’t make sense. And you’ve hardly been here long enough to hire anyone yourself.”
“I didn’t.”
“I believe it. You wouldn’t lift a finger to dust even if you were drowning in it.” She shrugged. “You’ll have to find out who she is and put a stop to it. It won’t do to have people gossiping, you know.”
On this note we sat down to breakfast, after which, I knew, Rhoda intended to be on her way.
But the troubled frown remained on Rhoda’s forehead, and she said very little during the meal, responding to my comments with only the briefest of monosyllables, until at last she burst forth with, “Oh, Adam—can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Something in this house wants you, Adam—I sense it. It’s you the house wants.”
The Lurker at the Threshold: Posthumous Collaborations Page 21
