Occult Detective

by Emby Press

  “Proceed?” Allan’s eyes gleamed with barely contained hysteria, his lips pulled back in a sickly grin. “I want to draw this thing out of hiding, and rid the house of it forever.”

  This was the reply I’d feared. “That could prove to be a grave mistake.”

  “How so?”

  “At this time the being lies in some sort of suspended dream-state, drifting in the inchoate space between worlds, neither dead nor alive. Yet this is no blind force of nature; it is an alien intelligence, vast and infinitely superior to ours, waiting, plotting. It can afford to be patient: the passage of centuries is to it no more than the blink of an eye. The more we learn about it, the more it learns about us—the more corporeal it becomes in our sphere of existence. To know the nature of this evil is to open the door further, inviting it in.”

  “What am I to do, then?”

  “Leave this house,” I said, weighing my words. “Leave it and never come back.”

  The flash of fury on his face took me aback: there was a mad light in his eyes that spoke of murder. This gave way to a mask of unnatural calm, the change so sudden that I almost doubted the evidence of my senses. When he spoke, his voice was even and controlled.

  “I understand your reservations, Alastair, and I realize what I’m asking of you. But if we leave now, it will all have been in vain.” I assumed he was talking about Atworth’s death; it was not until much later that I came to suspect the true meaning of his words. “What if by doing nothing we unleash this horror upon the world? Perhaps there is a way to complete the ritual and banish it back to the hell it crawled out of. You said you’d see me through this, and I need your help.”

  To this I had no response, for the fears he had voiced were also my own. Yet although I tried to convince myself that I was doing this for Allan’s sake, the worm of curiosity gnawed at me: I had glanced into the abyss and needed to know what lay in the black depths, even if the knowledge came at the price of my sanity.

  “There is something we can try,” I said at last. “Help me with the big trunk in the back of your car. Let us see if we can’t conduct an experiment of our own.”

  *

  It was near midnight by the time we had assembled the device. A jumble of brass capacitors, magnetic rods and coiled copper wires with a set of glass triodes protruding from its top, it resembled an electromagnet—which in part it was. I placed the construction in the middle of a conjurer’s circle and turned on the battery: slowly the rods began to turn and the filaments in the glass vacuum tubes assumed a low reddish glow. A faint electrical crackle indicated that current was flowing through the wires.

  Allan watched in puzzlement as I chalked a second circle around his feet and scrawled the warding symbols at the five conduit-points; whether they would work or not remained to be seen. The formulations in old Atworth’s manuscripts were cryptic and arcane, written in an obscure dialect of Latin. I found some solace in the thought that our attempt to contact the presence in the house could be terminated at any time: all it would take was a flick of a switch.

  “What is this thing?” asked Allan.

  “Our sacrificial offering.” He gazed at me blankly. “In centuries long past, conjuring rituals were thought to require a living sacrifice—an animal, or even a human being. It was thought that the blood appeased the inscrutable gods, or demons. Today we know that the death itself is of no consequence. Rather, it is the disturbance in the unseen fields around us—electric, magnetic and others not yet fully understood—that, combined with the right invocation, precipitates a rift in reality through which we can glimpse the other side. This machine emulates the field shift caused by the death of a living being: the vacuum tubes act as amplifiers, increasing the output of the coils by a factor of several hundred. Instead of slaughtering animals at an altar, all we need to do is push a lever.”

  I did so as I spoke and the air filled with a low thrum, like the distant droning of a great beehive. The glass tubes burned brighter and a dry smell of burned dust permeated the room. I felt the hairs at the back of my neck and hands rise; there was a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach of the perspective shifting, the outlines of the room growing vague. A rasping sound came from the walls, from the ceiling, beneath the old floorboards. The great beams in the hallway creaked. Allan cast an uneasy glance at the humming machine, but said nothing. I made the invoking sign and uttered the first incantation.

  The lights in the library dimmed as unctuous black matter, neither gas nor liquid, swirled out of the walls, coiling across the floor and surrounding the lamps in greasy halos. It touched the edges of the two warding circles and retreated, causing the symbols to flare faintly. The house shook and groaned: cracks raced up the rotted walls and ceiling, dislodging a fine shower of dust.

  “Stay in the circle,” I said to Allan, trying to keep my voice above the rising cacophony. The wall that stood between the library and the kitchen was gone; in its place yawned a blackness fringed with pale green mist. Something moved within, a shadow against a background of shadows. Whatever it was, it resented our intrusion: a heavy oak bookcase flew from the wall, missing me by no more than a foot, and crashed through a tall library window. The thrumming noise increased in pitch: there was a dull crack as one of the glass tubes exploded. As I completed the last of the conjuring incantations, a blast of cold wind swept from the misted void, scattering the ancient pages of Atworth’s tomes and snuffing out the lights.

  The room was plunged into near-total darkness, interrupted only by the glow of the filament-tubes and occasional flashes of light in the mist. I felt a presence in my head, thousands of fingers exploring the secret spaces behind my eyes, searching for a way in. Across a great distance I could hear Allan screaming and gibbering, pleading with the thing in the dark. Drops pattered on my hands and neck. I lifted my eyes upward just as a burst of radiance from the abyss turned the night into day.

  The stain on the ceiling had come alive. A wet black mass hung from above me, changing shape and trailing ropes of slime. Darkness swallowed it in an instant: I caught a glimpse of hundreds of tumorous growths, of maws filled with hooked, razor-like teeth, of the human features that formed and reformed in the waves of rubbery flesh, set in expressions of agony, or ecstasy, or both.

  For a moment I knew true madness: I tittered and pranced and opened my arms to embrace the dripping horror. My mind had fled the confines of my skull and the green mists of the void called out to me, filling my soul with painful yearning for the oblivion they promised.

  Then my senses returned to me; with trembling hands I reached for the apparatus and threw the lever that controlled the flow of current.

  A tremor raced through the walls and the windows shattered as if from a tremendous gale. Splinters and fragments of glass cut my exposed hands and face. I took a step back, tripped and struck my head on something hard and sharp-edged: the coffee table. I groped in the darkness for the electric torch. From the far wall came an oily, slithering sound and the crash of overturned furniture. My fingers found the cylindrical shape of the torch, and its weak beam revealed the doorway. I did not dare look behind me to see what was happening to Allan, but fled blindly through the passage, through the entryway and into the night. Half-insane I raced into the woods, branches and brambles tearing at my clothes, shrieking and laughing under the pale, swollen moon.

  *

  The sky was lightening in the east when I found myself on the outskirts of a nearby town. How I had gotten there and what I had seen on my wanderings in the night—all this was mercifully blank. The sight of the woods behind me filled me with indescribable horror and I could think of nothing save the most hurried flight. A kindly old farmer gave me a ride to Hartford and nodded as I told him a story of getting lost in the woods, but every now and then his crinkled eyes strayed to the dark line of trees and his leathery face grew pale.

  From Hartford I took the noon train to Boston, drawing many a curious stare on account of my disheveled appearance. Once safely ins
ide my apartment, having locked and bolted the door and shuttered the windows, I telephoned Providence. The Tremaine housekeeper, indignant at being roused at so ungodly an hour, told me her master had left the day before with another gentleman and given no indication when he would return.

  I spent the next few days in a blur of panic, torn between guilt at the abandonment of my friend and fear at being somehow brought into connection with his disappearance. At times I drifted into restless sleep in which I was assailed by nightmares of creaking floors and strange angles, of immense shapes streaming across the frozen chasms between stars. I would start awake at the slightest of sounds, imagining policemen at my door, or my ceiling taken over by a seeping black stain.

  Yet nothing happened. The vanishing of Allan Tremaine was briefly mentioned in the society columns of local papers, where it was hinted that he had fled to Europe to avoid bankruptcy and disgrace: the libertine heir had not only squandered the family fortune on debauchery and gambling, but had become involved in speculations which went awry, bringing financial ruin to dozens of investors.

  Now I saw why Allan had been so eager to sell Atworth Manor, and began to doubt his story of the break-in. No thief from any of the surrounding towns, no matter how desperate or depraved, would have set foot in the old, crumbling house. Could it be that Allan had suspected there were treasures hidden in the house, and hired professional burglars to rob old Atworth? Could it be that the thieves never left, that the monstrous inhabitant of the manor had got to them first? How much had my friend known or suspected—had the thing in the house driven him mad, whispering and beckoning, drawing him closer? The image of that decaying, cursed dwelling came to my mind unbidden, and I knew what had to be done.

  On a late morning in November, I once again stood in the derelict courtyard. No one had ventured near the house since I’d been here last: Allan’s vehicle was parked in the corner, a splintered bookcase lay under a broken ground window and the huge entrance door was slightly ajar. I opened the first large can of coal oil and splashed it around the car’s interior. Then I stepped inside, half expecting to see Allan standing in the shadows, dead black eyes vast in the whiteness of his face. But there was nothing – only the great gloomy entryway shrouded in cobwebs and dust.

  For an hour or so I went about my business, pouring the oil on anything that would burn, opening all the gas valves I could find. I used two cans on the things in Atworth’s cellar, fighting the waves of nausea and revulsion that threatened to overcome me. The library I left for last: the room was a shambles of scattered pages and broken furniture. At first glance, it appeared that Allan’s body had vanished without a trace. The field emulator was destroyed in the mayhem: I was picking through the smashed capacitors and torn wiring when a curious object hanging from the wall between the library and the kitchen caught my attention.

  It was a human hand, and it wore Allan’s ring on its finger. What had happened with the rest of the body I knew not, nor did I want to know. I backed away from the grisly trophy on the wall and completed my unpleasant task, then doused the heavy drapes and walls of the passage that led to the entryway. The sharp smell of coal oil mixed with the aroma of the hissing gas and the carrion stench of the cellar, and I longed to be out in the open air, as far from Atworth Manor as I could get.

  As I was preparing to leave, a familiar stirring, rasping sound came from overhead and something landed in the cold cinders of the fireplace with a soft thud. I picked it up and examined it, gazing with mounting horror into the darkness of the flue. The shadowy hallway spun around me; I lurched through the door and fell to my knees in the gravel of the courtyard. It all happened swiftly after that: I struck the match and watched the tongue of flame lick into the dark interior, the blaze and explosion that followed, the black smoke of conflagration rising into the sky behind me as I drove away. Atworth Manor burned to the ground, and whatever was wedged in the chimney above the hearth burned with it.

  But the memory of what I saw in the ashes will haunt me until the day I die. It was a shoe—a man’s shoe, a perfect match for the muddy footprints one of the burglars had left by the back door.

  THE HOUSE IN ANGELL STREET

  Rory O’Brien

  The op tried to sleep most of the way from New York to Providence, stretching his lanky frame across a couple of seats on the train and pulling his fedora down over his face. The train-trip from San Francisco had been exhausting, and at least this leg of the journey would be measured in hours, not days. The op coughed quietly in his sleep and was troubled by strange dreams of Cyclopean cities and bizarre non-Euclidian architecture, until the locomotive ground to a halt at the station, jolting him awake.

  A streetcar carried him up the hill; brick sidewalks and Georgian doors rolled lazily by. Providence, with its hills and its streetcars and the mist coming in off the water, reminded him vaguely of San Francisco. He checked the address again and stepped off the trolley and a moment later stood on the creaking front porch of a two-family house on Angell Street. He straightened his tie and paused to hack into the bushes before ringing the bell.

  The man who answered was tall and thin, as tall as the op himself, and about the same age. The man’s quiet wool suit was well-worn, probably second-hand, a stark contrast to the op’s own sharp double-breasted one. He had the long face of an old Yankee WASP, with a lantern jaw and a squint.

  “Yes?” he asked in a clipped voice.

  “Mr. Lovecraft?” the op asked. “My name’s Hammett. I’m an operative with the Pinkerton Detective Agency out of San Francisco. I have a few questions for you; do you mind if I come in?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “Do you mind if I come in, Mr. Lovecraft?” Hammett repeated.

  *

  He loathed interruptions to his routine. He was in the middle of making coffee and writing a long letter to Two Gun Bob in Texas when the doorbell rang. He’d have to get back to his epistolary debate with Bob on the merits of civilization over barbarism as soon as he was rid of this intruder.

  Hammett looked around the little shabby-genteel parlor with a noticeable skepticism, taking in the stacks of books and papers and the clunky Victorian furniture scattered around the room. A flintlock hung over the mantel, between stern sepia portraits, and vases and Greek and Roman busts gathered dust in the far corners. Everything here seemed as second-hand as the man’s suit. The air was stale, as though the windows had never once been opened.

  “You live here by yourself, Mr. Lovecraft?” He couldn’t imagine it being otherwise.

  “Yes,” Lovecraft replied slowly. “Since my mother’s death some time ago.”

  “Sorry for you loss.”

  “It was an extreme nervous shock, but – well, why don’t you explain the purpose of your very unexpected call – Mr. Hammett, was it?”

  “My employer has received information that a package is going to be delivered here tonight.”

  “Impossible. I am expecting no package. The only caller I am receiving this evening is one of my clients.”

  “Clients?”

  “I am an author,” Lovecraft declared, straightening up as he said it. Hammett thought he was actually trying to square his shoulders and throw out his chest. It didn’t work. “I am retained by other authors to review, assess, and critique their works. I also, upon request, completely revise and I dare say improve upon their work, and help them toward publication.”

  “You’re a ghostwriter,” Hammett smiled.

  “In addition to creating my own original tales,” Lovecraft said defensively. “I am not unknown to devotees of uncanny and supernatural horror literature. My work has appeared in Weird Tales and elsewhere.”

  “I’ve had a couple of stories in Black Mask, myself.”

  “My congratulations, Mr. Hammett,” Lovecraft was genuinely impressed. “It is always a distinct pleasure to make the acquaintance of a fellow author.”

  “So, you’re not expecting a package, only one of your ghostwriting client
s?”

  “Precisely,” Lovecraft nodded curtly. “I expect her in another hour, coming by to collect a manuscript I had revised for her.” He indicated a neat typescript on one corner of his desk. “Miss Amelia K. Gilman. She is not without talent. Her latest, The Shadow of the Abyss, was a strong effort, but I dare say I was able to judiciously amplify the overall effect of shuddersome horror for which she strove so mightily. She lacks a certain subtlety, which is vital –”

  “And she’s just a client?” Hammett asked.

  “I beg your pardon, sir. I am a gentleman. Our relationship is wholly professional.”

  “Do you mind if I wait for a little while, to see if this package shows up? For all we know, she could be bringing it herself.”

  “Nonsense,” Lovecraft replied. “And may I ask what is your interest in this supposed delivery?”

  “My boss sent me out here to take it away from you and bring it back to San Francisco with me. The old man didn’t tell me what it is, but he said you’ll be glad to get rid of it once it arrives.”

  “And how does he know this?”

  Hammett shrugged.

  “How does anyone know anything?”

  *

  Hammett was chagrined that Lovecraft didn’t have anything stronger than coffee in the house. He coughed politely and accepted a glass of milk as he sank into a worn armchair near the unlit fireplace; it was the only place to sit in the cluttered room. Lovecraft cleared a space for himself and took a seat opposite and regarded his guest with a certain caution.

  “I have always been fascinated by detectives,” he began slowly. “I was, from the earliest, an avid reader of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes adventures.”

  “That’s about as far away from real detective work as you can get,” Hammett remarked.

  “But still, your work must be very interesting.”

  “I once met a woman who did not say that. That was 1917.”