Could it be...? The Many-Sided Ones! I had on my travels heard numerous rumours concerning these ancient gods who were old when Atlantis sank beneath the waves. Beings of awesome power, I had learned that they had many sides.
I fear these old gods were manifesting themselves in the kitchen in the superficially innocuous form of mice, the book acting as the portal that granted them access from their nameless native dimension to this earthly plane. Their goal was nothing less than the conquest and submission of all men. I vowed, however, that they would gain no foothold in our world, and with the utmost force of will slammed the book shut, simultaneously extinguishing the candle and depriving the Many-Sided Ones of light. For, as the great Chinese philosopher Mou Shu says, "Where no light is cast, no shadows may form." I stumbled madly up to the bedchamber. It seemed the very Manor itself resented me for having come so dangerously close to unleashing such absolute evil in my impetuous lust for knowledge, for the stairs tripped me again and again, causing me often to bark my shins, and the walls flung themselves violently at my forehead. Bruised and shaken, I slipped beneath the bedcovers and cowered against the vast form of the loyal Mrs Slugworthy, who awoke and
Here, again, the text is indecipherable. One is to assume that Mrs Slugworthy successfully comforted my great-grandfather in his extremity, for he shortly thereafter fell asleep.
I dreamed the rest of that night of chanting - monotonous, rhythmic, sibilant murmurings whose source seemed to be catacombs deep in the earth beneath the Manor. I heard what sounded like a thousand voices joining in unholy unison to proclaim the very words I had read in the Encyclopaedia Culinaria, sending their hideous paean echoing down to the Stygian mists where demons and the nether-gods dwell. I awoke at daybreak, the dream reverberating in my brain. I had no doubt that the vision I had had in my sleep was a prophetic one, and immediately roused Mrs Slugworthy to enquire feverishly what lay beneath the foundations of Peculiar Manor. Her enigmatic reply disturbed me.
"Soil, I should suppose. Soil and rock. Why do you ask, my poppet?" "There is nothing else? Nothing such as a dungeon, perhaps?" "Well, not as such. There is a cellar."
"A cellar!" I cried.
"Of course. Where else do you think I keep the food and wine? I don't know what the matter is with you, Master Mortimer, but if you are to lay your head just here, I shall do my best to soothe your troubled brow."
I had no desire to inflict my apprehensions upon the dear lady any further, so I excused my interest on the grounds of geological curiosity and we turned our attention to an altogether different mode of intercourse.
I have omitted an exchange of no possible interest to the reader. The sun rose bright and warm that morning, almost evaporating my gloomy spirits and my memory of the terrors of the night before - almost, but not quite, for a lingering sense of foreboding remained - and in my somewhat more wholesome frame of mind I elected, contrary to Mrs Slugworthy's recommendations, to pay a visit on the good townsfolk of Surgeon Mills, so that they might have the opportunity to view for themselves the new owner of Peculiar Manor.
Strolling along Main Street, I received several looks askance, and many of the townsfolk turned to one another and whispered behind their hands as I passed. No doubt my uncanny resemblance to my third cousin once removed gave rise to their intrigue, or perhaps it was my spanking-new pair of stout walking shoes, but I had the suspicion that the knowledge of arcane secrets I had attained at the Manor was what these superstitious men and women sensed most strongly of all. This is the only reason I can account for the manner in which several of them spat at my feet, unless, of course, it was my spanking-new pair of stout walking shoes.
I entered a grocer's store, which was run by a plump, balding fellow and his similarly endowed wife. I greeted them civilly. "Good morning, poor but honest people. I am the new owner of Peculiar Manor."
"We know who you are," growled the man, whose name was Rudderbilge.
"Then all is well." I handed him a list of the provisions I required and allowed him and his wife to fill my basket, which they did in silence. They included an abnormal quantity of cabbage, far more than I had requested (I had not, in fact, requested any), but I took it that this was the manner in which they were wont to welcome newcomers.
Rudderbilge returned the basket to me laden with cabbages and said, "You must be the new owner of Peculiar Manor."
"That is quite correct," I replied, not wishing to remind him that I had already drawn attention to this fact. "Ah, it's a bad place, sir. A bad, bad place." "Really? In what respect is it bad?" Mrs Rudderbilge made a curious sound like a sneeze, covered her face and turned her back to me.
"There have been wicked doings up there, sir. You don't want to be having anything to do with the Manor." His eyes transfixed me with an hypnotic intensity and I noticed that he had suddenly developed a nervous tic, for the corners of his mouth had begun to twitch.
"Has it something to do with my distant relative?" I ventured. I will not deny that my most fundamental responses had been aroused. "Aye, well, it might, and there again, it might not."
Mrs Rudderbilge's shoulders were shaking now, as though her body were racked with sobs.
"Tell me more."
"Sir, I cannot. I wouldn't wish to scare you away, so I shall keep mum. I can only warn you to remain on your guard at all times." I understood the conversation to be terminated with these words, for Rudderbilge then named a price for the purchases I had made. Tentatively I hinted that the sum was not a little excessive.
"Have you been round these parts long, sir?"
I replied in the negative, that I had not.
"Then these are the prices folk pay round here."
They say that a fool and his money are soon parted, but nevertheless I handed over the sum in full. I had hoped to establish an easy-going rapport with these characters, but that hope was not to be fulfilled in so short a space of time. A close-knit community of this ilk must take unkindly to strangers.
Perhaps the most peculiar aspect of this whole episode was my discovery, upon returning to the Manor, that my basket contained cabbages and nothing else. Mrs Slugworthy enlightened me to the fact that neither Rudderbilge nor his wife was able to read, and I laughed self-deprecatingly at my failure to anticipate such a likelihood. But this was a brief respite of happiness, and in the ensuing weeks my overriding sense of gloom did not lessen, while the conviction grew within me that I had unwittingly allowed some monstrous evil access to our material realm and that this thing, which I could only bring myself to call the Unmentionable, had taken up residence beneath the Manor and now lurked in the cellar, biding its time, awaiting the moment when it would rise forth and wreak havoc. Mrs Slugworthy did not share my belief. Her customary response whenever I voiced my thoughts on the matter was to reprimand me with a cry of "Stuff and nonsense!" followed by a mild application of corporal punishment - for which reason I would sometimes initiate just such a discussion deliberately.
On many an occasion I would pass by the cellar door and fancy I heard strange, inexplicable noises coming from within. My hand was often tempted to try the handle, but was stayed by a shapeless, numinous dread.
Finally, one evening, as a particularly vicious thunderstorm raged outside, weather in which no sane man would be mad enough to go out, I decided I could stand it no longer. I rushed indoors and demanded of Mrs Slugworthy the key to the cellar. My fears had reached such a fever pitch that only by seeking out the evil I had summoned and banishing it whence it came would those fears be quelled. I resolved to defeat the Unmentionable or die in the attempt.
"More cabbage soufflé?" she said by way of a reply. Over the growling of my belly I shrieked uncontrollably, "I must have that key, woman!" "My, we're a bit touchy tonight, aren't we, Master Mortimer? Well, I know what to do about that." She made to deliver upon my person a hefty smack, but I was too quick for her and, evading her blow, seized her by the neck, drew her eye to eye with me and hissed, "Give me the key, you idiot woman, or
I shall cleave your head in twain with this dessert knife!" I admit now that such behaviour might be seen in some quarters as unduly excessive, even unwarranted, and I can only excuse myself on the grounds that I was a man possessed, my extremity of emotion overcoming my usual manners.
"Temper, temper. Just you wait till bedtime, you little devil."
Devil! I jumped. Did she know? "The key!" I cried. "Give me the key before it's too late!" "If you must know, the cellar's never locked. Why don't you try the handle?" "What?" I gasped, astonished. "You mean that that ... thing has been free to roam all this time? Good heavens! I must hurry! I pray I am not too late. If I am, the Lord help us all." So saying, I sprinted from the kitchen, leaving Mrs Slugworthy to help herself to some cabbage sorbet. In no time at all I found myself at the door to the cellar.
I can scarce bring myself to relate the events that followed. They have taken on in my mind the air of a phantasmagorical nightmare - if, indeed, they ever happened at all and were not some figment of my tormented brain. I remember pulling the door open and stepping into the obsidian darkness beyond, but after that my only recollection is of falling and suffering an appalling battering as I fell, as though unseen malignant hands were hitting me one after another with wooden planks not unlike the steps of a staircase. When consciousness returned, I found myself lying on damp stone, my body a mass of contusions. All around me was darkness and abysmal silence, such silence as must have existed before the universe was born, a primordial absence of sound. Ah God, how great then was my terror for my immortal soul! What foul things gibbered and drooled in that loathsome, perpetual night? What tentacled, gelatinous creatures were at that very moment sucking themselves up out of bottomless pits, bent on cramming me screaming into their savage, bloody maws? What multiple-limbed, yellow-fanged, slime-scaled, stagnant, repellent monstrosities were hunched steaming in that filthy, cess-black, vile place? How my heart hammered! How my skin sweated! How my bowels quaked!
Then it was that I beheld it. Lord, blind these eyes that they might never see such a sight again. The Unmentionable itself! It floated towards me, glimmering with the pallid, sickly luminescence of a flame that burned from its very hand! I could not tear my eyes from its repugnant features. Its head - if head it was - was bloated and swollen, adorned with cankerous growths, with a single eye that glistened wetly as it searched for me. Its body was inflated to horrid proportions, misshapen and lumpen, as though fatted on human meat and gorged on human blood, and it moved with a remorseless rolling gait. But far worse than all of this was the smell of the thing, a noxious stench that had its origins in the deepest, foulest charnel-pits of Hades.
The thing's mouth formed a word. My name! It uttered my name!
Fear lent wings to my heels. I do not know how I managed to escape that walking nightmare. I have no memory of my flight from the Manor. All I know is that I made it to the town and here I am, in lodgings. The door is locked and bolted and I am scribbling these lines in the few moments left to me before time runs out. There is a frantic banging at the door and a voice much like that of Mrs Slugworthy assures me that everything is all right and that a doctor and two constables accompany her, but this is a demon trick to get me to open the door. I know my life is at an end. I pray to Him that grants mercy to all men to take pity on my folly and redeem my poor soul. Wait! What is that sound? Like wood splintering under hammer blows. They are coming. My God, they are coming for me. They are co
The text ends abruptly, tantalisingly, with this unfinished sentence, scribbled by my great-grandfather - with impressive presence of mind - even as Nemesis pounded at the door. History relates that my great-grandfather spent the remaining thirty-one years of his life in a succession of nursing homes, walking around with a pillow strapped to his head in order to protect his brain from "electrostatic etheric transmissions", and turning out a seemingly endless flow of short stories which - on account of the disturbing nature of their content and not, as many have suggested, owing to a complete lack of literary merit - no editor has yet deemed fit for publication.
Thanatophile Seeks Similar
The Dark Man of Your Dreams. Slender, morbid, pallid, prefers black clothing. Would you be willing to meet me?
There were four of them in the waiting room, three old women and Alice. All four sat apart, with at least one empty plastic chair between each of them, but the old women shared a bond that physical separation could neither disguise nor diminish. Every now and then their gazes would meet and looks of implicit understanding would pass across the room. They were in on a secret - the secret that came with false teeth and cloud-cotton hair, with joints that sang arias in the morning, with husbands buried and children mourned. All three had heard the whisper of their own mortality for longer than they could remember, so long that they had learned to ignore its hissing, wheedling voice. In twisted bodies they skipped and danced ahead of the inevitable, encroaching end, and no one could tell them they had outlived their usefulness, for while they remained alive they were reminders to all of the feebleness of death, object lessons in the capacity of the human body to survive.
And Alice? Alice, for once in her life, was not acutely conscious of being excluded from a group. Her attention was entirely focused on the newspaper in her hands, the Argus and Recorder, and on the advert in the back pages of that newspaper which had seized her attention and suddenly transformed the game of reading the Lonely Hearts columns into something much more serious.
The Dark Man of Your Dreams.
Usually Alice perused the Lonely Hearts with an idle, ironic eye, wondering why, if half the things these people said about themselves were true, they had to advertise for love at all. Love, surely, was hammering down the doors of Attractive, Outgoing Blondes and Genuine, Sincere Guys. How could anyone blessed with a Bubbly Personality and a Good Sense of Humour walk down the street without being mobbed by love?
Alice had always believed that, no matter how bad things got, she would never stoop to taking out or responding to a Lonely Hearts advert. If nothing else, she was by nature too fatalistic for that. Unless her ideal companion happened along in the natural course of events, she had resolved to be content to do without. Like all closet romantics, Alice was waiting for the thunderbolt, and until that came - if it ever came - she wouldn't accept anything less.
But sometimes lightning can strike with a sound no louder than the dry rustle of newsprint.
Slender, morbid, pallid, prefers black clothing.
What kind of man would list those characteristics as his best points? One, she thought, with few illusions about himself. One who demanded honesty from himself and from others. That was attractive. Lies had teeth, and Alice bore the psychic bitemarks of a lifetime of disappointments and deceptions and mortifications.
The three old women sat in silence, nodding to themselves and one another. Their whiskered lips were parted in pearly-grey half-smiles, and their eyes, yellowed from decades of seeing, glistered with the knowledge they had accumulated.
Would you be willing to meet me?
Willing, maybe. Curious, certainly. But was she brave enough? Did she dare? It would take every ounce of courage she had to write to him. What if he didn't reply? Worse - what if he did?
Alice shook her head at the stupidity of it all. She knew what she was really going to do. She was going to put the newspaper back on the waiting room table among the stacks of magazines and comics and forget all about the advert. It had been fun for a moment to pretend that she had been about to get a grip on her life and seize an opportunity, but that moment was over now and everything was back to normal.
But when Dr Muirhead poked her head out from her surgery and asked Alice to come in, Alice calmly folded the Argus and Recorder up as though it was her own copy and stuffed it into her shoulder-bag before standing up and going through.
And the three old women nodded along in rhythmic unison, confirming the secret they shared. It would be Alice's secret, too, in time.
"Six and a h
alf stone is not a healthy weight," Dr Muirhead had said, but Alice had heard it all before and felt that the doctor, who erred on the side of plumpness, could have no way of understanding what it was like to be stuck in a body you loathed. Dr Muirhead's sheath of subcutaneous fat, which seemed to be distributed evenly over every square inch of her, even the tips of her fingers, was a sign of contentment. Dr Muirhead was comfortable with who she was. Alice was not, and her protruding bones proved it. She was on the rack of her own ribs. Outwardly was how she felt inwardly: ungainly, unattractive, angular.
"I can't stress how important it is that you discipline yourself to a proper diet," Dr Muirhead had said, but what did she know? She probably kept éclairs in a drawer of her desk. "Otherwise, if you don't stop punishing yourself in this way, we may have to consider the possibility of having you admitted to a clinic."
Imagined Slights Page 19
