The Dark Boatman

by John Glasby

  “I ain’t said nothin’ for a very long time now. Too many of those who tried to find out went the way of Sloane and the others, up to that damned place.” He leaned forward for a second, hissed through stained and broken teeth: “You know where real horror is? You know what’ll happen if I want to show you that book? It ain’t so much what’s up there on High Tor now. But if you wants to know what happened to Philip Meredith—you say he was your brother—then I reckon you’ll have to meet the Keeper of Dark Point. Ain’t no other way I can see, even though you’ll probably go the same way as the rest.”

  He led the way into the cottage, and almost before I could collect my scattered wits had rummaged through a pile of dusty books in one corner of the room, bringing one of them back to me and placing it, almost reverently, into my hands. It was plainly of great age, the mildewed leather cover stained in places as if by salt water, testifying to its authenticity. For a moment I could scarcely dare to open it. When I did so, I found that the pages were covered with the faded writing about which I had heard so much. The symbols and diagrams were sufficient to evoke a shuddering revulsion; a clutching, pervasive fear in me that was terribly difficult to overcome.

  In answer to my insistent requests to be allowed to keep the book for a few days in order that I might attempt to decipher the weird ideographs, some of which bore a frightening resemblance to certain letters and phrases I had seen before in writing that is kept under lock and key at the British Museum, especially one or two paragraphs in the infamous Necronomicon, Trevelyan grudgingly agreed, although it was clear from the expression on his face that he considered me both impetuous and foolish in the extreme to dabble in these hidden mysteries.

  It still being only ten-thirty, I decided to climb the narrow, winding path that led up the side of High Tor in order that I might examine that rough circle of stone pillars by daylight. As I climbed, I discovered traces of an old road, mostly obliterated among huge tangled growths and abnormally stunted trees, but showing here and there as a greyish scar in the undergrowth. Here was all of the primal mystery of Earth’s beginnings, and I knew, by some strange instinct, that this place was unutterably vile and evil. Too many deep shadows were there for my liking, and there was not one solitary rustle of a creature in that matted undergrowth, not a single bird singing on the branches of any of the trees.

  I came upon the crude circle of stones on the brow of the hill where the ground was level, and even the corrupt growth seemed to shun this place, for here was merely an open stretch of flat grey rock, totally devoid of any vegetation, with those tall pillars set around a wide, flat stone in the very centre of the circle. I went closer, scarcely able to repress a shudder of nauseous revulsion, a sense of alarm at the knowledge that this was not the Roman site as I had first thought, nor a Celtic temple. This was something far older and far more terrifying in its implications than anything I could have imagined, for the carvings on the weathered stone were similar in outline to those on Easter Island, but more awful—and there was something curious about the weathering of the storm, as if these pillars had, at some time in their past incredible history, been under the sea. I found myself shuddering at what this so clearly implied, and at the terrible portentousness of those hideous carvings, many of which were like symbols in the book, which had been lent to me by the half-crazed Ben Trevelyan.

  But the greatest horror was that flat stone slab of smooth, carved rock in the centre of the ring. There did seem to be some time-effaced marks around the base of it; but on the top, the unmistakable discolouration where the blood of God alone knew how many hapless victims had soaked into the stone. I could no longer doubt the veracity of some of Trevelyan’s odd tale, and even though my mind rejected the idea that these things can still be happening in this day and age, I could not prevent myself from glancing nervously over my shoulder every few moments. If only there had been some sound up there on that hilltop, some birdsong, the rustle of some tiny creature among those grossly abnormal growths. The stillness ate at my nerves like acid. Every sense screamed at me to get away from that unhallowed spot. An acute terror rose into my mind now, and clutching the leather-bound volume I turned and fled down the hillside, oblivious to the thorns which scratched my flesh and strove to impede my progress.

  That afternoon, I made my first attempt to decipher the cryptic writing in the ancient volume. I hardly need say that I struggled ineffectually for several hours, making use of such books as Lindennan possessed—for it turned out that he, too, like my brother, had long been interested in these matters, had once seen the book I now had, and tried to read it himself, but without any success. The more deeply, I delved into it, the more certain I became that without the aid of the Necronomicon, it would be utterly impossible to make any sense at all of the cryptic writing. There were, it is true, certain irregularities about the symbols which suggested a highly developed form of language, but it was clearly one that predated even the ancient Sumerian, which I knew quite well. I made exhaustive attempts to determine the form of the language, trying several of the old scripts, including the ancient hieroglyphics of Egypt and the Aztec symbolism, but to no avail.

  For the next two days, Lindennan and I discussed the matter, pouring over the tattered pages of the volume until well into the night. What outlandish hand had written the original material I could only guess at. Certainly it did not seem to have belonged to Earth, of that I felt sure. Of course, it might all have been one gigantic fraud, and if I had been handed the volume anywhere else and under any other circumstances, I would have been more ready to believe such information. But too many things had happened at Tor Mount for me to even consider such an idea.

  It was not until late on the third evening of my stay there that we obtained our first clue, one that enabled me to translate much of what was written there. The hieroglyphics were in the dark and dreaded Aklo language used by the ancient and evil cults at the beginning of man’s sojourn on this planet, lost for centuries following the decline and fall of Lemuria. While my host slept that night, I sat in my room, painstakingly going through the strange volume, finding myself faced with names I had heard at times from my brother, associated with the most hideous connections, and whose significance was to become so terrifying for me; for as dawn was greying the heavens over the ghostly finger of Dark Point, I knew the dark and dreadful secret which lay at the back of the myths and legends of terror-haunted Tor Mount, knew the meaning of those black stones on High Tor and what Trevelyan, in his demented ravings had meant by the Keeper of Dark Point!

  * * * *

  Shortly before ten the next evening, despite Lindennan’s warning and earnest entreaties, I left the isolated cottage and made my way along the sands towards Dark Point. For what I had succeeded in reading in that awful tome made it imperative I should go there, made it impossible for me to do anything else but meet the dreaded Keeper of Dark Point face-to-face.

  It was dark by the time I had crossed the stretch of sandy beach and stood at the base of the promontory on which the lighthouse stood, rearing its decaying column of stone towards the evil stars; and the moon was just rising from the horizon out to sea, throwing a pale, ghostly luminescence across the silently heaving water. There was no doubting that the stone walls of the tower were in a state of great decrepitude, and many of the blocks of masonry of which it had been constructed had fallen and lay around it in great, shadow-strewn heaps. The main doorway was closed with strips of stone, wood nailed across it, refusing the entry, and adding to the sense of sinister malevolence that hung like an invisible shroud over the place.

  I knew—or at least I thought I knew—what I would find in this evil structure, yet the tremendously terrible lure held me fast, forcing my dragging feet forward, around the massive base until I came upon the shattered opening to the rear by which the party of men from Tor Mount had gained entrance when they had come looking for my brother. God! If only they had known what I knew then! If only they knew how fiendishly close they had been to su
ch nightmare terror as the mind of man could scarcely comprehend.

  Moving almost without conscious volition, I crept inside, shuffling over the dust-covered floor. There was one dark corner in which I made out the shape of the stone stairs that wound around the inside of the tower, leading up to the very top where the light had once been. Keeping my feelings in check with the greatest difficulty, I climbed the stairs to the next floor, stood in the dimness, bracing myself, before switching on my electric torch and playing the beam around the room. There was an oppressive, stifling atmosphere there, which caught up my throat and froze the breath in my lungs.

  In that eldritch place, I saw those nightmare things exactly as Lindennan had described to me; the irregularly-shaped stone plinth the centre of the room and behind those warped and twisted bones, yellowing with age and curiously shaped. The mere sight of some of them twisted the muscles of my stomach into a hard, jangled knot.

  I spent little time there but continued up those winding stairs. In places the stone blocks had fallen, leaving wide gaps across which I was forced to jump. At length, I reached the top of the stairs. Above me, set high in the ceiling, with a short flight of steps leading up to it, this time from the centre of the chamber, was set the trapdoor that Lindennan had mentioned. But unlike those men who had preceded me, I had one piece of dread knowledge which they had not possessed; one which, if they had known, would have sent them screaming from that place of terror and ancient, eldritch things.

  Stillness pressed down on me from all sides, yet I was acutely conscious of something close by, formless perhaps, but eyeing me with a horrible intensity. For a fleeting moment, I wondered what had happened to those men—and those other alien creatures—whose bodies lay on that dusty floor beneath me. Then, all thought of that fled my mind. The silence was broken by a sound that came from directly above me, from just beyond that closed trapdoor.

  The hideous shuffling and inhuman slopping almost made me faint on the spot. It seemed, in my state of overwrought fear and imagination, that the boards of the ceiling over my head bent and swayed as though a monstrous weight was heaving itself in the direction of the trapdoor. After a moment, there came a further sound, the rattling of an iron bolt that held the door in place. The muffled creaking of the floor continued. And then there came the greatest of terrors. It would be almost impossible to describe the noises that issued from that dreadful room above me. A frightful baying and roaring, which began softly and rose swiftly in volume until the sound shrieked in my ears. It was the same sound that had woken me on my first night in the cottage half a mile or so away, but now there was that voice in it, the horse barking and hesitantly-syllabled croaking which resembled speech, as though an animal were trying to imitate a human voice; yet it was no human throat that was making those roaring, sibilant utterings.

  Would to God that I had turned and fled precipitously at the first intimation of danger. The sounds were nothing more nor less than an awful echo of those malignant, accursed mumblings of elder evil that have sounded down unimaginable ages and across terrible abysses of outer hells from the beginning of time. Eternities seemed to elapse as I stood fixed to the spot, unable to move my limbs. Then, slowly, the trapdoor began to lift. A tiny rim of utter blackness showed, widening with every succeeding sound. A wave of sheer terror swept over me. A nauseous fishy odour seeped down from that midnight-black opening and engulfed me, and as I watched, the beam from my torch, playing over the aperture—my throat choked by that clammy stench of rottenness and decay—I found myself face-to-face with that dreadful Keeper of Dark Point.

  From what black abyss of hellish fear, from what terrible gulf of cosmic and grotesque horror that thing had been drawn, I could not even begin to guess. Monstrous in outline, it remained poised in that dark opening, muttering that weird whistling roar which froze the blood in my veins and forced my brain to the edge of screaming madness. It seemed partly human with the head of a man, wide eyes staring down unblinkingly at the light from the torch, but there all resemblance ended. I caught a fragmentary glimpse of waving tentacles or feelers, blood-red suckers at the ends, which reached down from the opening towards me. The mere sight of the thing crowded out all other thoughts from my mind. I must have lost consciousness for a second. The next thing I remember stumbling down the twisting stairs, falling and picking myself up as I got to the bottom, pursued by that dreadful whistling, by that fearful blast of sound that echoed and re-echoed throughout the crumbling tower. There was a nightmare flight across the sand with the sea booming against the rocks and the evil, pallid moonlight, throwing grotesque shadows over everything.

  As I ran, I thought of all I had succeeded in reading in the strange book, all of the dread secrets I had, in my ignorance, unlocked. I knew now the meaning behind those terrible and puzzling prints that had been found in the sand that day after my brother had vanished from Dark Point lighthouse, and I could guess at the horror that those simple folk had dredged up from the vast deeps by their chants and sacrifices on the top of High Tor. Had they but known what sort of horror they were unleashing, they might have thought twice about what they were doing, might have left things as they were. God alone knows how many poor devils were lured into that blasphemous place, and once there, fell under the irresistible spell of the Keeper. For a single blinding flash of clarity—or perhaps, although all reason was virtually gone before the sight of that hideous creature—I saw everything as it must really have been. The terrible, outwordly transformations which must have taken place in that room at the top of the tower, the black thing of the elder voids which could not return to the Deep unless it could develop and transform in some ghastly transmigration of identity with a human sufficiently foolish as to wander into that place and come face-to-face with it.

  Before that night, I would never have been able to accept an explanation such as this. Now, after what I had seen, I know there are unguessed and untold horrors which exist just beyond the edge of reason and life, lurking on the very rim of things until man’s prying brings them forth to slaver and destroy.

  That thing which had gone back into the sea with my brother; that hideous entity which had made those shocking prints in the sand beside his—it had become fully changed, making its way back to the sea, back to the abysmal depths which lay out beyond the reefs offshore. What those men had overlooked when they had searched the area the next morning was that there were also prints leading up out of the sea, going back into Dark Point lighthouse—the prints of the thing which my brother had become—half-changed; forced to wait until someone, more curious than the rest, went there alone and waited for that trapdoor to open, waited petrified for sight of that half-creature of the Deeps.

  I could have told the police what I saw, but they would not have believed. Ben Trevelyan knows, but his wild, demented ravings are, of course, ignored; and as for Lindennan, although he half-believes, he is content to leave these black nameless things alone. What he will do, very soon, when I go back to Dark Point lighthouse for the last time, I do not know. Perhaps then, he will tell them all he knows and try to make them believe, force them to take dynamite and destroy that accursed place once and for all.

  For I shall go back; I must go back. There is now no way by which I can prevent myself. I am writing this in the hope that someone may read and believe all that has happened. Even though that last, final horror may have turned my brain so that I can no longer really say that what happened is the truth and not a nightmare; for crazed though I undoubtedly was—the face of that black horror which looked down at me from that open trapdoor was that of Philip Meredith—my brother!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author’s Estate and his agent, Cosmos Literary Agency:

  “The Dark Boatman” was first published in Spectral Tales No. 2. Copyright © 1989 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby.

  “Aunt Amelia” was first published in Fant
asy Adventures No. 13. Copyright © 2008 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby.

  “That Deep Black Yonder” was first published in Supernatural Stories No. 107. Copyright © 1967 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby.

  “Dust” was first published in Supernatural Stories No. 107. Copyright © 1967 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby.

  “The Keeper of Dark Point” was first published in Supernatural Stories No. 107. Copyright © 1967 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby.