The Collected Short Fiction

by Ramsey Campbell

  If I had not been a victim of circumstances, I would never have gone to ancient Temphill. But I had very little money in those days, and when I recalled the invitation of a friend who lived in Temphill to become his secretary, I began to hope that this post—open some months before—might still be available. I knew that my friend would not easily find someone to stay with him long; riot many would relish a stay in such a place of ill repute as Temphill.

  Thinking thus, I gathered into a trunk what few belongings I had, loaded it into a small sports car which I had borrowed from another friend gone on a sea voyage, and drove out of London at an hour too early for the clamorous traffic of the city to have risen, away from the cell-like room where I had stayed in a tottering, blackened backstreet house.

  I had heard much from my friend Albert Young, about Temphill and the customs of that decaying Cotswold town where he had lived for months during his research into incredibly superstitious beliefs for a chapter in his forthcoming book on witchcraft and witchcraft lore. Not being superstitious myself, I was curious at the way in which apparently sane people seemed to avoid entering Temphill whenever possible—as reported by Young—not so much because they disliked the route, as because they were disturbed by the strange tales which constantly filtered out of the region.

  Perhaps because I had been dwelling upon these tales, the country seemed to grow disquieting as I neared my destination. Instead of the gently undulating Cotswold hills, with villages and half-timbered thatched houses, the area was one of grim, brooding plains, sparsely habited, where the only vegetation was a gray diseased grass and an infrequent bloated oak. A few places filled me with a strong unease—the path the road took beside a sluggish stream, for instance, where the reflection of the passing vehicle was oddly distorted by the green, scum-covered water; the diversion which forced me to take a route straight through the middle of a marsh, where trees closed overhead so that the ooze all around me could barely be seen; and the densely wooded hillside which rose almost vertically above the road at one point, with trees reaching toward the road like myriad gnarled hands, all wearing the aspect of a primeval forest.

  Young had written often of certain things he had learned from reading in various antique volumes; he wrote of “a forgotten cycle of superstitious lore which would have been better unknown”; he mentioned strange and alien names, and toward the last of his letters—which had ceased to come some weeks before—he had hinted of actual worship of trans-spatial beings still practiced in such towns as Camside, Birchester, Severnford, Goatswood and Temphill. In his very last letter he had written of a temple of “Yog-Sothoth” which existed conterminously with an actual church in Temphill where monstrous rituals had been performed. This eldritch temple had been, it was thought, the origin of the town’s name—a corruption of the original “Temple Hill”—which had been built around the hill-set church, where “gates,” if opened by now long forgotten alien incantations, would gape to let elder demons pass from other spheres. There was a particularly hideous legend, he wrote, concerning the errand on which these demons came, but he forebore to recount this, at least until he had visited the alien temple’s earthly location.

  On my entrance into the first of Temphill’s archaic streets, I began to feel qualms about my impulsive action. If Young had meanwhile found a secretary, I would find it difficult, in my indigence, to return to London. I had hardly enough funds to find lodging here, and the hotel repelled me the moment I saw it in passing—with its leaning porch, the peeling bricks of the walls, and the decayed old men who stood in front of the porch and seemed to stare mindlessly at something beyond me as I drove by. The other sections of the town were not reassuring, either, particularly the steps which rose between green ruins of brick walls to the black steeple of a church among pallid gravestones.

  The worst part of Temphill, however, seemed to be the south end. On Wood Street, which entered the town on the northwest side, and on Manor Street, where the forested hillside on the left of the first street ended, the houses were square stone buildings in fairly good repair; but around the blackened hotel at the center of Temphill, the buildings were often greatly dilapidated, and the roof of one three-story building— the lower floor of which was used as a shop, with a sign—Poole’s General Store—in the mud-spattered windows—had completely collapsed. Across the bridge beyond the central Market Square lay Cloth Street, and beyond the tall, uninhabited buildings of Wool Place at the end of it could be found South Street, where Young lived in a three-story house which he had bought cheaply and been able to renovate.

  The state of the buildings across the skeletal river bridge was even more disturbing than that of those on the north side. Bridge Lane’s gray warehouses soon gave way to gabled dwellings, often with broken windows and patchily unpainted fronts, but still inhabited: Here scattered unkempt children stared resignedly from dusty front steps or played in pools of orange mud on a patch of waste ground, while the older tenants sat in twilit rooms, and the atmosphere of the place depressed me as might a shade-inhabited city ruin.

  I entered into South Street between two gabled three-story houses. Number 11, Young’s house, was at the far end of the street. The sight of it, however, filled me with foreboding—for it was shuttered, and the door stood open, laced with cobwebs. I drove the car up the driveway at the side and got out. I crossed the gray, fungus-overgrown lawn and went up the steps. The door swung inward at my touch, opening upon a dimly-lit hall. My knocks and calls brought no answer, and Istood for a few moments undecided, hesitant to enter. There was a total absence of footprints anywhere on the dusty floor of the hall. Remembering that Young had written about conversations he had had with the owner of Number 8, across the road, I decided to apply to him for information about my friend.

  I crossed the street to Number 8 and knocked on the door. It was opened almost immediately, though in such silence as to startle me. The owner of Number 8 was a tall man with white hair and luminously dark eyes. He wore a frayed tweed suit. But his most startling attribute was a singular air of antiquity, giving him the impression of having been left behind by some past age. He looked very much like my friend’s description of the pedantic John Clothier, a man possessed of an extraordinary amount of ancient knowledge.

  When I introduced myself and told him that I was looking for Albert Young, he paled and was briefly hesitant before inviting me to enter his house, muttering that he knew where Albert Young had gone, but that I probably wouldn’t believe him. He led me down a dark hall into a large room lit only byan oil lamp in one corner. There he motioned me to a chair beside the fireplace. He got out his pipe, lit it, and sat down opposite me, beginning to talk with an abrupt rush.

  “I took an oath to say nothing about this to anyone,” he said. “That’s why I could only warn Young to leave and keep away from—that place. He wouldn’t listen—and you won’t find him now. Don’t look so— it’s the truth! I’ll have to tell you more than I told him, or you’ll try to find him and find—something else. God knows what will happen to me now—once you’ve joined Them, you must never speak of their place to any outsider. But I can’t see another go the way Young went. I should let you go there—according to the oath—but They’ll take me sooner or later, anyway. You get away before it’s too late. Do you know the church in High Street?”

  It took me some seconds to regain my composure enough to reply. “If you mean the one near the central square—yes, I know it.”

  “It isn’t used—as a church, now,” Clothier went on. “But there were certain rites practiced there long ago. They left their mark. Perhaps Young wrote you about the legend of the temple existing in the same place as the church, but in another dimension? Yes, I see by your expression that he did. But do you know that rites can still be used at the proper season to open the gates and let throughthose from the other side? It’s true. I’ve stood in that church myself and watched the gates open in the center of empty air to show visions that made me shriek in horror. I’ve taken
part in acts of worship that would drive the uninitiated insane. You see, Mr. Dodd, the majority of the people in Temphill still visit the church on the right nights.”

  More than half convinced that Clothier’s mind was affected, I asked impatiently, “What does all this have to do with Young’s whereabouts?”

  “It has everything to do with it,” Clothier continued. “I warned him not to go to the church, but he went one night in the same year when the Yule rite had been consummated, andThey must have been watching when he got there. He was held in Temphill after that. They have a way of turning space back to a point—I can’t explain it. He couldn’t get away. He waited in that house for days before They came. I heard his screams—and saw the color of the sky over the roof. They took him. That’s why you’ll never find him. And that’s why you’d better leave town altogether while there’s still time.”

  “Did you look for him at the house?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I wouldn’t go into that house for any reason whatever,” confessed Clothier. “Nor would anyone else. The house has become theirs now.They have taken him Outside—and who knows what hideous things may still lurk there?”

  He got up to indicate that he had no more to say. I got to my feet, too, glad to escape the dimly-lit room and the house itself. Clothier ushered me to the door, and stood briefly at the threshold glancing fearfully up and down the street, as if he expected some dreadful visitation. Then he vanished inside his house without waiting to see where I went.

  I crossed to Number 11. As I entered the curiously-shadowed hall, I remembered my friend’s account of his life here. It was in the lower part of the house that Young had been wont to peruse certain archaic and terrible volumes, to set down his notes concerning his discoveries, and to pursue sundry other researches. I found the room which had been his study without trouble; the desk covered with sheets of notepaper— the bookcases filled with leather- and skin-bound volumes—the incongruous desk lamp—all these bespoke the room’s onetime use.

  I brushed the thick dust from the desk and the chair beside it, and turned on the light. The glow was reassuring. I sat down and took up my friend’s papers. The stack which first fell under my eye bore the headingCorroborative Evidence, and the very first page was typical of the lot, as I soon discovered. It consisted of what seemed to be unrelated notes referring to the Mayan culture of Central America. The notes, unfortunately, seemed to be random and meaningless. “Rain gods (water elementals?) Trunk-proboscis (ref. Old Ones). Kukulkan (Cthulhu?)” —Such was their general tenor. Nevertheless, I persisted, and presently a hideously suggestive pattern became evident.

  It began to appear that Young had been attempting to unify and correlate various cycles of legend with one central cycle, which was, if recurrent references were to be believed, far older than the human race. Whence Young’s information had been gathered if not from the antique volumes set around the walls of the room, I did not venture to guess. I pored for hours over Young’s synopsis of the monstrous and alien myth-cycle—the legends of how Cthulhu came from an indescribable milieu beyond the furthest bounds of this universe—of the polar civilizations and abominably unhuman races from black Yuggoth on the rim— of hideous Leng and its monastery-prisoned high priest who had to cover what should be its face—and of a multitude of blasphemies only rumored to exist, save in certain forgotten places of the world. I read what Azathoth had resembledbefore that monstrous nuclear chaos had been bereft of mind and will—of many-featured Nyarlathotep—of shapes which the crawling chaos could assume, shapes which men have never before dared to relate—of how one might glimpse a dhole, and what one would see.

  I was shocked to think that such hideous beliefs could be thought true in any corner of a sane world. Yet Young’s treatment of his material hinted that he, too, was not entirely skeptical concerning them. I pushed aside a bulky stack of papers. In so doing, I dislodged the desk blotter, revealing a thin sheaf of notes headedOn the legend of the High Street Church. Recalling Clothier’s warning, I drew it forth.

  Two photographs were stapled to the first page. One was captionedSection of tesselated Roman pavement, Goatswood, the other Reproduction engraving p. 594 “Necronomicon” The former represented a group of what seemed to be acolytes or hooded priests depositing a body before a squatting monster; the latter a representation of that creature in somewhat greater detail. The being itself was so hysterically alien as to be indescribable; it was a glistening, pallid oval, with no facial features whatsoever, except for a vertical, slitlike mouth, surrounded by a horny ridge. There were no visible members, but there was that which suggested that the creature could shape any organ at will. The creature was certainly only a product of some morbid artist’s diseased mind—but the pictures were nevertheless oddly disturbing.

  The second page set forth in Young’s all too familiar script a local legend to the effect that Romans who had laid the Goatswood pavement had, in fact, practiced decadent worship of some kind, and hinting that certain rites lingered in the customs of the more primitive present-day inhabitants of the area. There followed a paragraph translated from theNecronomicon.“The tomb-herd confer no benefits upon their worshipers. Their powers are few, for they can but disarrange space in small regions and make tangible that which cometh forth from the dead in other dimensions. They have power wherever the chants of Yog-Sothoth have been cried out at their seasons, and can draw to them those who will open their gates in the charnel-houses. They have no substance in this dimension, but enter earthly tenants to feed through them while they await the time when the stars become fixed and the gate of infinite sides opens to free That Which Claws at the Barrier.” To this Young had appended some cryptic notes of his own— “Cf. legends in Hungary, among aborigines Australia. —Clothier on High Church, Dec. 17,” which impelled me to turn to Young’s diary, pushed aside in my eagerness to examine Young’s papers.

  I turned the pages, glancing at entries which seemed to be unrelated to the subject I sought, until I came to the entry for December 17. “More about the High Street Church legend from Clothier. He spoke of past days when it was a meeting-place for worshipers of morbid, alien gods. Subterranean tunnels supposedly burrowed down to onyx temples, etc. Rumors that all who crawled down those tunnels to worship were not human. References to passages to other spheres.” So much, no more. This was scarcely illuminating. I pressed on through the diary.

  Under date of December 23,1 found a further reference: “Christmas brought more legends to Clothier’s memory today. He said something about a curious Yule rite practiced in the High Street Church—something to do with evoked beings in the buried necropolis beneath the church. Said it still happened on the eve of Christmas, but he had never actually seen it.”

  Next evening, according to Young’s account, he had gone to the church. “A crowd had gathered on the steps leading off the street. They carried no light, but the scene was illuminated by floating globular objects which gave off a phosphorescence and floated away at my approach. I could not identify them. The crowd presently, realizing I had not come to join them, threatened me and came for me. I fled. I was followed, but I could not be surewhat followed me.”

  There was not another pertinent entry for several days. Then, under date of January 13, Young wrote: “Clothier has finally confessed that he has been drawn into certain Temphill rites. He warned me to leave Temphill, said I must not visit the church in High Street after dark or I might awakenthem, after which I might be visited—and not by people! His mind appears to be in the balance.”

  For nine months thereafter, no pertinent entry had been made. Then, on September 30, Young had written of his intention to visit the church in High Street that night, following which, on October 1, certain jottings, evidently written in great haste. “What abnormalities—what cosmic perversions! Almost too monstrous for sanity! I cannot yet believe what I saw when I went down those onyx steps to the vaults— that herd of horrors!… I tried to leave Temphill, but all streets turn back
to the church. Is my mind, too, going?” Then, the following day, a desperate scrawl— “I cannot seem to leave Temphill. All roads return to No. 11 today—the power of those fromoutside. Perhaps Dodd can help.” And then, finally, the frantic beginnings of a telegram set down under my name and address and evidently intended to be sent. Come Temphill immediately. Need your help… There the writing ended in a line of ink running to the edge of the page, as if the writer had allowed his pen to be dragged off the paper.

  Thereafter nothing more. Nothing save that Young was gone, vanished, and the only suggestion in his notes seemed to point to the church in High Street. Could he have gone there, found some concealed room, been trapped in it? I might yet then be the instrument of freeing him. Impulsively, I left the room and the house, went out to my car, and started away.

  Turning right, I drove up South Street toward Wool Place. There were no other cars on the roads, and I did not notice the usual pavement loafers; curiously, too, the houses I passed were unlit, and the overgrown patch in the center, guarded by its flaking railing and blanched in the light of the moon over the white gables, seemed desolate and disquieting. The decaying quarter of Cloth Street was even less inviting. Once or twice I seemed to see forms starting out of doorways I passed, but they were unclear, like the figments of a distorted imagination. Over all, the feeling of desolation was morbidly strong, particularly in the region of those dark alleys undulating between unlit, boarded houses. In High Street at last, the moon hung over the steeple of the hill-set church like some lunar diadem, and as I moved the car into a depression at the bottom of the steps the orb sank behind the black spire as if the church were dragging the satellite out - of the sky.

  As I climbed the steps, I saw that the walls around me had iron rails set into them and were made of rough stone, so pitted that beaded spiders’ webs glistened in the fissures, while the steps were covered with a slimy green moss which made climbing unpleasant. Denuded trees overhung the passage. The church itself was lit by the gibbous moon which swung high in the gulfs of space, and the tottering gravestones, overgrown with repulsively decaying vegetation, cast curious shadows over the fungus-strewn grass. Strangely, though the church was so manifestly unused, an air of habitation clung to it, and I entered it almost with the expectation of finding someone—caretaker or worshiper—beyond the door.