“So I excused myself then. But she seemed upset. She kept running her hand through her hair. Pulling it down, those strips, what do women call them, bangs, over her forehead. I told her I had to get to work on the next ish of my mag, you know, and she’d have to excuse me but the last ish had been late and I was trying to get the mag back on schedule. But I told her, if she wanted a lift over to Passumpsic again, I’d be glad to give her a ride over there any time, and I’d like to meet her great-grandfather if he was living in that old shack. Then she said he wasn’t exactly living in the shack, but he sort of was, sort of was there and sort of was living there. It didn’t make any sense to me. So I went and started laying out the next issue of the Intelligencer ’cause I wanted to get it out on time for once, and show those guys that I can get a mag out on time when I get a chance.
"Anyway, Miss Akeley said her great-grandfather’s girlfriend was named something like Sheera from Aldebaran. I told her that sounded like something out of a bad '50s sci-fi flick on the TV. There’s a great channel in Montreal, we get it on the cable, they show sci-fi flicks every week. And that sure sounded like a sci-fi flick to me.
“Sheera from Aldebaran! Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha!"
***
Marc Feinman wheeled his Ferrari up to the Noyes home. His sporty driving-cap was cocked over one ear. Suede jacket, silk shirt, gucci jeans and frye boots completed his outfit.
The front door swung in as Feinman’s boot struck the bottom wooden step. Elizabeth Akeley was across the whitewashed porch and into Feinman’s arms before he reached the top of the flight. Without releasing his embrace of Akeley, Feinman extended one hand to grasp that of Vernon Whiteside.
They entered the house. Ezra Noyes greeted them in the front parlor. Elizabeth and Vernon briefed Marc on the events since their arrival in Vermont. When the narrative was brought up to date, Feinman asked simply, “What do you want to do?”
Ezra started to blurt out an ambitious plan for gaining the confidence of the aliens and arranging a ride in their saucer, but Whiteside, still mainlining the role of sexton of the Spiritual Light Church, cut him off. “We will do whatever the Radiant Mother asks us to do.”
All eyes turned to Akeley.
After an uncomfortable interval she said, "I was—hoping that Marc could help. It’s so strange, Marc. I know that I'm the one who always believed in—in the spirit world. The beyond. What you always call the supernormal.”
Feinman nodded.
“But somehow," Elizabeth went on, “this seems more like your ideas than mine. It’s so—I mean, this is the kind of thing that I’ve always looked for, believed in. And you haven’t. And now that it’s true, it doesn’t seem to have any spiritual meaning. It’s just—something that you could explain with your logic and your computers.”
Feinman rubbed his slightly blue chin with his free hand. "This great-grandpa of yours, this Henry Akeley He looked into her eyes.
“You say, he was talking about some kind of mating ritual?”
Liz nodded.
Feinman said, “What did he look like? Did you ever see your great-grandfather before? Even a picture? Maybe one that your grandfather had in San Diego?”
She shook her head. “No. At least, I don’t remember ever seeing a photo at home. There might have been one. But I hardly saw anything in the shack, Marc.”
Ezra Noyes was jumping up and down in his chair. “Yes, you never told us, Lizzy—Miss Akeley. What did you see? What did he look like?"
“I hardly saw anything!" Liz covered her face with her hands, dropped one to her lap, tugged nervously at her bangs with the other. “It was pitch-dark in there. Just a little faint light seeping between the cracks in the walls, through those broken windows. Those that weren’t broken were so filthy, they wouldn’t let light in."
“So you couldn’t tell if it was really Henry Akeley.”
“It was the same voice,” Vernon Whiteside volunteered. “We, ah, we bugged the meeting, Mr. Feinman. The voice was the same as the one on the trance tapes from the church.”
Feinman’s eyes widened. “The same? But the trance tapes are in Lizzy’s voice!”
Whiteside backpedaled. “No, you’re right. I don’t suppose they were the same vocal chords. But the timbre. And the enunciation. Everything. Same person speaking. I’d stake my reputation on it!” Feinman stroked his chin again. “All right. Here’s what I’d like to do. Lizzy, Henry Akeley said he’d see you again, right? Okay, let’s surprise him a little. Suppose Whiteside and I head out there. Can you find the shack again, Vernon? Good! Okay, we'll take the Ferrari out there."
“But it’s nearly dark out.”
“No difference if it’s so damned dark inside the shack! I’ve got a good five-cell torch in the emergency kit in the Ferrari.”
“I ought to come along," Ezra Noyes put in. “I do represent the Vermont UFO Intelligence Bureau, you know!”
“Right,” Feinman nodded. “And we’ll need your help later. No, we’ll need you, Ezra, but not right now. Whiteside and I will visit Henry Akeley—or whoever or whatever is out there claiming to be Henry Akeley. Give us a couple of hours’ head start. And then, you come ahead. Lizzy, you and Ezra here.”
“Can I get into the shack this time?” Ezra jumped up and paced nervously, almost danced, back and forth. “The other time, I had to wait at the car. If I can get into the shack, I can get some photos. I’ll rig up a flash on my Instamatic. I want to get some shots of the inside of that cabin for the Intelligencer.”
“Yes, sure.” Feinman turned from Ezra Noyes and took Elizabeth Akeley’s hand. “You don’t mind, do you, Lizzy? I’m worried that your ancestor there—or whoever it is—has some kind of control over you. Those trances—what if he puts you under some kind of hypnotic influence while we’re all out there together?”
“How do you know he’s evil? You seem to—just assume that Henry Akeley wants to harm me.”
“I don’t know that at all,” Feinman frowned. “I just have a nasty feeling about it. I want to get there first. I think Whiteside and I can handle things, and then you can arrive in a while. Please, Lizzy. You did call me to help. You didn’t have to, you could have just gone back and never said anything to me until it was over.”
Elizabeth looked very worried. "Maybe I should have.”
"Well, but you didn’t. Now, can we do it this way? Please?”
"All right, Marc.”
Feinman turned to Vernon Whiteside. “Let’s go. How long a ride is it out there?”
Whiteside paused for a moment. “Little less than an hour.” Feinman grunted. "Okay. Vernon and I will start now. We’ll need about an hour, I suppose—call it two to be on the safe side. Lizzy and Ezra, if you’ll follow us out to the shack in two hours, just come ahead in, we’ll be there.”
Ezra departed to check his camera. Vernon accompanied Marc. Shortly the Ferrari Boxer disappeared in a cloud of yellow Vermont dust, headed for Passumpsic.
As soon as they had pulled out of sight of the house, Vernon spoke. “Mr. Feinman, I’ve been helping Radiant Mother on this trip.”
"I know that, Vernon. Lizzy mentioned it several times. I really appreciate it.”
“Mr. Feinman, you know how concerned Radiant Mother is about Church archives. The way she records her sermons and the message services. Well, she was worried about her meeting with old Mr. Akeley. So I helped her to rig a wireless mike on her jacket. So we got a microcassette of the meeting.”
Feinman said he knew that.
“Well, if you don’t mind, I’d like to do the same again.” Whiteside held the tiny microcassette recorder for Feinman to see. The Ferrari’s V-12 purred throatily, loafing along the Passumpsic road in third gear.
"Sure. That’s a good idea. But you needn’t rig me up. I want you along. You can just mike yourself.”
Vernon Whiteside considered. “Tell you what....” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of enamel ladybugs. “I’ll mike us both. If we happen to pick up the same s
ounds, there’ll be no harm. In fact, it’ll give us a redundancy check. If we get separated—”
"I don’t see why we should.”
“Just in case.” He pinned a ladybug to Feinman’s suede jacket, attached the second bug to his own. He made a minor adjustment on the recorder.
"There.” He slipped the recorder back into his pocket. “I separated the two input circuits. Now we’ll record on two channels. We can mix the sound if we record the same events or keep it separate if we pick up different events. In fact, just to be on the safe side, suppose I leave the recorder here in the car when you and I go to the shack.”
Feinman assented, and Whiteside peeled the sealers from a dimesized disk of double-adhesive foam. He stuck it to the recorder and stuck the recorder to the bottom of the Ferrari’s dashboard.
"You’re the sexton of the Spiritual Light Church," Feinman said.
‘‘Yes, sir.”
“You know a hell of a lot about electronics.”
“My sister’s boy, Mr. Feinman. Bright youngster. It’s his hobby.”
Feinman tooled the Ferrari around the dome-topped hill and pulled to a halt where the Noyes station wagon had parked on the earlier visit. The sun was setting and the somehow too-lush glade was filled with murk.
Vernon Whiteside reached under the dashboard and flicked the microcassette recorder to automatic mode. He climbed Irom the car.
Feinman went to the rear of the Ferrari and extracted a long-handled electric torch. He pulled his sports cap down over his eyes and touched Whiteside’s elbow. The men advanced.
The events that transpired following this entrance to the sycamore copse were captured on the microcassette recorder, and a transcript of these sounds appears later in the report.
In the meanwhile, Elizabeth Akeley and Ezra Noyes waited at the Noyes home in Dark Mountain.
Two hours to the minute, after the departure of Marc Feinman and Vernon Whiteside in Feinman’s Ferrari Boxer, the Noyes station wagon, its aged suspension creaking, pulled out of the driveway.
Ezra pushed the Nash to the limit of its tired ability, chattering the while to Elizabeth. Preoccupied, she responded with low monosyllables. At the turning-point from the Passumpsic-Ludlow road onto the old farm track, she waited in the station wagon while Ezra climbed down and opened the fence gate.
The Nash’s headlights picked a narrow path for the car, circling the dome-topped hill that blocked the copse of lush vegetation from sight of passers-by. The Ferrari Boxer stood silently at the edge of the copse.
Ezra lifted his camera-bag from the floor and slung it over his shoulder. Elizabeth waited in the car until Ezra walked to her side, opened the door and offered his hand.
They started through the copse. Noyes testified later that this was his first experience with the unusual growth of vegetation. He claimed that, even as he set foot beneath the overhanging branches of the first sycamore, a strange sensation passed through him. The day had been hot, and even in the hours of darkness the temperature did not drop drastically. Even so, with his entry into the copse Noyes felt an unnatural and debilitating beat, as if the trees were fitted to a different climate than that of northern Vermont and actually were emitting heat of their own.
He began to perspire and wiped his forehead with his hand.
Elizabeth Akeley led the way through the wooded area, retracing the steps of her previous visit to the wooden shack.
Noyes found it more and more difficult to continue. With each pace he felt drained of energy and will. Once he halted and was about to sit down for a rest, but Akeley grasped his hand and pulled him with her.
When they emerged from the copse, the dome-topped hill stood directly behind them, the run-down shack directly ahead.
Ezra and Elizabeth crossed the narrow grassy patch between the sycamore copse and the ramshackle cabin. Ezra found a space where the glass had fallen away and there was a small opening in the omnipresent cobwebs. He peered in, then lifted his camera and poked its lens through the opening. He shot a picture.
“Don’t know what I got, but maybe I got something,” he said.
Elizabeth Akeley pulled the door open. She stepped inside the cabin, closely followed by young Noyes.
The room, Ezra could see, was far larger than he’d estimated from the outside. Although the shack contained but a single room, that room was astonishingly deep. Its far corners were utterly lost in shadow. Nearer to him were a rocking chair, a battered over-stuffed couch and a dust-laden wooden table of the type often found in old New England homes.
Ezra later reported hearing odd sounds during those minutes. There was a strange buzzing sound. He couldn’t tell whether it was organic— a sound such as a flight of hornets might have made, or such as might have been made by a single insect magnified to a shocking gigantism—or whether the sound was artificial, as if an electrical generator were running slightly out of adjustment.
The modulation of the sound was its oddest characteristic. Not only did the volume rise and fall, but the pitch, and in some odd way, the very tonal quality of the buzzing, kept changing. “It was as if something was trying to talk to me. To us. To Miss Akeley and me. I thought I could almost understand it, but not quite.”
Noyes stood, all but paralyzed, until he heard Elizabeth Akeley scream. Ezra whirled from the table, whence had emanated the buzzing sounds. He saw Elizabeth standing before the rocking chair, her hands to her face, screaming.
The chair was rocking back and forth, slowly, gently. The cabin was almost pitch-black, its only illumination coming from an array of unfamiliar machinery set up on the long wooden table. Ezra could see now that a figure was seated, apparently unmoving, in the rocker. From it a voice was coming.
“Elizabeth, my darling, you have come,” the voice said. “Now we shall be together. We shall know the love of the body as we have known the love of the mind and of the soul.”
Strangely, Noyes later stated, although the voice in which the figure spoke was that of Marc Feinman, the accent and intonation were those of New England old-timers. Noyes testified also that his powers of observation played a strange trick on him at this moment. Although the man sitting in the chair was undoubtedly Marc Feinman—the clothing he wore, even to the sporting cap pulled low over his eyes, as if he were driving his Ferrari in a bright sun—what Ezra noticed most particularly was a tiny red-and-black smudge on Feinman's jacket. “It looked like a squashed ladybug,” the youth stated later.
From somewhere in the darker corners of the cabin there came a strange rustling sound, like that of great leathery wings opening and folding again.
Noyes shot a quick series of pictures, one of the figure in the rocking chair, one of the table with the unusual mechanical equipment on it, and one of the darker corners of the cabin, hoping vaguely that he would get some results. The man in the rocking chair tilted slowly backward, slowly forward, finally saying to Ezra, “You’ll never get anything from there. You’d better get over to the other end of the shack and make your pictures.”
As if hypnotized, Noyes walked toward the rear of the cabin. He stated later that as he passed a certain point, it was as if he had penetrated a curtain of total darkness. He was unable to see even a little as he had previously. He tried to turn and look back at the others, but could not move. He tried to call out but could not speak. He was completely conscious but seemed to have been plunged into a state of total paralysis (except, of course, for the autonomic functions that preserve the life of the body) and of sensory deprivation.
What transpired behind him, in the front end of the cabin, he could not tell. When he recovered from his paralysis and loss of sensory inputs, it was to find himself alone at the rear of the shack. It was daylight outside and sunshine was pushing through the grimy windows and open door of the shanty. He turned around and found himself facing two figures. A third was at his side.
“Ezra!” the third figure said.
“Mr. Whiteside!” Noyes responded.
“Well,
I’m glad to see that you two are all right,” a voice came to them from the other end of the cabin. It was the old New England twang that Ezra had heard from the man in the rocking chair, and the speaker was, indeed, Marc Feinman. He stood, wooden-faced, his back to the doorway. Elizabeth Akeley, her features similarly expressionless, stood at his side. Feinman’s sporting cap was pulled down almost to the line of his eyebrows. Akeley’s bangs dangled over her forehead.
Noyes claimed later that he thought he could see signs of a fresh red scar running across Akeley’s forehead beneath the bangs. He claimed also that a corner of red was visible at the edge of the visor of Feinman’s cap. But of course this is unverified.
“We’re going now,” Feinman said in his strange New England twang. “We’ll take my car. You two go home in the other.”
“But—but, Radiant Mother,” Whiteside began.
"Elizabeth is very tired,” Feinman said nasally. "You’ll have to excuse her. I’m taking her away for a while.”
He started out the door, guiding Elizabeth by the elbow. She walked strangely, not so much as if she were tired, ill, or even injured. Somehow, she had the tentative, uncertain movements that are associated with an amputee first learning to maneuver prosthetic devices.
They left the cabin, walked to the Ferrari. Feinman opened the door on the passenger side and guided Akeley into the car. Then he circled the vehicle, climbed in and seated himself at the wheel. Strangely, he sat for a long time staring at the controls of the sports car, almost as if he were unfamiliar with its type.
Vernon Whiteside and Ezra Noyes followed the others from the cabin. Both were still confused from their strange experience of paralysis and sensory deprivation; both stated later that they felt only half-awake, half-hypnotized. “Else,” agent Whiteside later deposed, “I’d have stopped them for sure. Warrant or no warrant, I had probable cause that something fishy was going on, and I’d’ve grabbed the keys out of that Ferrari, done anything it took to keep those two there. But I could hardly move, I could hardly even think.
Pyrate Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Volume 1 (4.0) Page 14
