The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

by Ramsey Campbell

'Look, you want to see the undistorted thing,' Gillson said, 'and so do I. Don't try and put me against it now, for God's sake, just when you've got me interested. You called that Daoloth — what's it mean?'

  'Well, I'll have to go off at what may seem a tangent,' apologised Fisher. 'You've been looking at that yellow egg-shaped thing there, off and on, ever since you came in — you've read of them in the Necronomicon. Remember those references to the crystallisers of Dream? That's one of them — the device that projects you when asleep into other dimensions. It takes a bit of getting used to, but for some years I've been able to enter nearly every dimension as high as the twenty-fifth. If only I could convey to you the sensations of that last plane, where it is the space which exists and matter can have no existence! Don't ask me where I got the crystalliser, by the way — until I can be sure its guardian will not follow, I must never speak of it. But never mind that.

  'After I read in the Revelations of Glaaki about the way to prove this idea of mine, I determined to see for myself what I would be invoking. It was mostly trial and error; but finally, one night, I found myself materialising in a place I'd never been before. There were walls and columns so high I couldn't even see where they ended, and in the middle of the floor was a great fissure running from wall to wall, jagged as if from an earthquake. As I watched, the outlines of the crack seemed to dim and blur, and something rose up out of it. I told you that image looks very different in its own dimension — well, I saw the living counterpart, and you'll understand if I don't try to describe it. It stood there swaying for a moment and then began to expand. It would have engulfed me in a few minutes, but I didn't wait for that. I ran off between the columns.

  'I didn't get far before a group of men stepped out in front of me. They were dressed in metallic robes and hoods, and carried small images of what I'd seen, so that I knew they were its priests. The foremost asked me why I had come into their world, and I explained that I hoped to call on Daoloth's aid in seeing beyond the veils. They glanced at each other, and then one of them passed me the image he was carrying. "You'll need this," he told me. "It serves as a link, and you won't come across any on your world." Then the whole scene vanished, and I found myself lying in bed — but I was holding that image you see there.'

  'But you haven't really told me—' began Gillson.

  'I'm coming to that now. You know now where I got that image. However, you're wondering what it has to do with tonight's experiment, and what Daoloth is anyway?

  'Daoloth is a god — an alien god. He was worshipped in Atlantis, where he was the god of the astrologers. I presume it was there that his mode of worship on Earth was set up: he must never be seen, for the eye tries to follow the convolutions of his shape, and that causes insanity. That's why there must be no light when he is invoked — when we call on him later tonight, we'll have to switch out all the lights. Even that there is a deliberately inaccurate replica of him; it has to be.

  'As for why we're invoking Daoloth, on Yuggoth and Tond he's known as the Render of the Veils, and that title has a lot of meaning. There his priests cannot only see the past and future — they can see how objects extend into the last dimension. That's why if we invoke him and hold him by the Pentacle of Planes, we can get his aid in cutting out the distortion. And that's about all the explanation I can give you now. It's almost 2:30 already and we must be ready by 2:45; that's when the openings will align… Of course, if you don't feel like going ahead, please tell me now. But I don't want to get everything into place for nothing.'

  'I'll stay,' Gillson told him, but he glanced at the image of Daoloth a little uneasily.

  'All right. Give me a hand here, will you?'

  Fisher opened a cupboard door next to the bookcase. Gillson saw several large crates, set in neat order and marked with painted symbols. He held one up as Fisher slid another from beneath it. As he closed the door, Gillson heard the other lifting the lid; and when he turned, Fisher was already laying the contents out on the floor. An assortment of plastic surfaces came to light, which were assembled into a distorted semi-solid pentagram; and it was followed by two black candles formed into vaguely obscene shapes, a metal rod carrying an icon, and a skull. That skull disturbed Gillson; holes had been bored in its cranium to hold the candles, but even so he could tell from its shape and lack of mouth that it had not been human.

  Fisher now began to arrange the objects. First he pushed chairs and tables against the walls, then shoved the pentagram into the centre of the floor. As he placed the skull, now carrying the candles, inside the pentagram, and lit the candles, Gillson asked behind him:

  'I thought you said we mustn't have any light — what about those, then?'

  'Don't worry — they won't illuminate anything,' Fisher explained. 'When Daoloth comes, he'll draw the light from them — it makes the alignment of the openings easier.'

  As he turned to switch the lights out, he remarked over his shoulder: 'He'll appear in the pentacle, and his solid three-dimensional materialization will remain in there all the time. However, he'll put forth two-dimensional extensions into the room, and you may feel these — so don't be afraid. You see, he'll take a little blood from both of us.' His hand moved closer to the switch.

  'What? You never said anything—'

  'It's all right,' Fisher assured him. 'He takes blood from any that call him; it seems to be his way of testing their intentions. But it won't be much. He'll take more from me, because I'm the priest — you're only here so I can draw on your vitality to open the path through for him. Certainly it won't hurt.' And without waiting for further protests, he switched off the lights.

  There was a little light from the neon sign of the garage outside the window, but hardly any filtered through the curtains. The black candles were very dim, too, and Gillson could make out nothing beyond the pentagram, from his position by the bookcase. He was startled when his host slammed the icon-bearing rod on the floor and began to shout hysterically. 'Uthgos plam'f Daoloth asgu'i — come, o Thou who sweepest the veils of sight aside, and showest the realities beyond.' There was much more, but Gillson did not notice it specially. He was watching the luminous mist which appeared to arch from both him and Fisher, and enter the misshapen cranium of the skull in the pentacle. By the end of the incantation there was a definite aura around the two men and the skull. He watched it in fascination; and then Fisher ceased speaking.

  For a minute nothing happened. Then the arcs of mist vanished, and there was only the light of the candles; but they glowed brighter now, and a misty aura surrounded them. As Gillson looked at them, the twin flames began to dim, and suddenly winked out. For a moment a black flame seemed to replace each — a sort of negative fire — and as quickly it was gone. At the same moment Gillson knew that he and Fisher were not alone in the room.

  He heard a dry rustling from the pentacle, and sensed a shape moving there. At once he was surrounded. Dry, impossibly light things touched his face, and something slid between his lips. No spot on his body was touched for long enough for him to snatch at what felt at him; so quickly did they pass that he remembered rather than sensed the touching feelers. But when the rustling returned to the centre of the room, there was a salt taste in his mouth — and he knew that the feeler entering his mouth had tapped his blood.

  Above the rustling, Fisher called: 'Now Thou hast tasted of our blood, Thou knowest our intentions. The Pentagram of Planes shall hold Thee until Thou shalt do what we desire — to rend the veil of belief and show us the realities of unveiled existence. Wilt Thou show it, and thus release Thyself?'

  The rustling increased. Gillson wished the ritual would end; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the glow from the garage sign, and even now he could almost see a faint writhing in the darkness within the figure.

  Suddenly there was a violent outburst of discordant metal scraping, and the entire building shook. The sound whirred into silence, and Gillson knew that the pentacle's tenant had gone. The room was still dark; the candlelight had not ret
urned, and his sight could not yet penetrate the blackness.

  Fisher said from his position by the door: 'Well, he's gone — and that figure is constructed so he couldn't go back without doing what I asked. So when I turn on the light you'll see everything as it really is. Now if you feel your way, you'll find a pair of eyepatches on top of the bookcase. Put them on and you won't be able to see anything — that's if you don't want to go through with it. Then I can turn the light on and see all I want to see, and then use the icon to nullify the effect. Would you rather do it that way?'

  'I've come all this way with you,' Gillson reminded him, 'and it wasn't to get scared at the last moment.'

  'Do you want to see now? You know once you've seen, the tactile delusions won't ever operate again — are you sure you can live with it?'

  'For God's sake, yes!' Gillson's answer was barely audible.

  'All right. I'm turning on the lights—now!'

  When the police arrived at the flats on Tudor Street, where they had been summoned by a hysterical tenant, they found a scene which horrified the least squeamish among them. The tenant, returning from a late party, had only seen Kevin Gillson's corpse lying on the carpet, stabbed to death. The police were not sickened by this, however, but by what they found on the lawn under the broken front window; for Henry Fisher had died there, with his throat torn out by glass slivers from the pane.

  It all seemed very extraordinary, and the tape-recorder did not help. All that it definitely told them was that some kind of black magic ritual had been practised that night, and they guessed that Gillson had been killed with the pointed end of the icon rod. The rest of the tape was full of esoteric references, and towards the end it becomes totally incoherent. The section after the click of the light-switch on the recording is what puzzles listeners most; as yet nobody has found any sane reason for Fisher's murder of his guest.

  When curious detectives play the tape, Fisher's voice always comes: 'There — hell, I can't see after all that darkness. Now, what…

  'My God, where am I? And where are you? Gillson, where are you — where are you? No, keep away — Gillson, for Christ's sake move your arm. I can see something moving in all this — but God, that mustn't be you… Why can't I hear you — but this is enough to strike anyone dumb… Now come towards me — my God, that thing is you — expanding — contracting — the primal jelly, forming and changing — and the colour… Get away! Don't come any closer — are you mad? If you dare to touch me, I'll let you have the point of this icon — it may feel wet and spongy and look — horrible — but it'll do for you! No, don't touch me — I can't bear to feel that—'

  Then comes a scream and a thud. An outburst of insane screaming is cut short by the smashing glass, and a terrible choking sound soon fades to nothing.

  It is amazing that two men should have seemingly deluded themselves into thinking they had changed physically; but such is the case, for the two corpses were quite unchanged except for their mutilations. Nothing in the case cannot be explained by the insanity of the two men. At least, there is one anomaly; but the chief of the Camside police is certain that it is only a fault in the tape which causes the recorder to emit, at certain points, a loud dry rustling sound.

  The Inhabitant of the Lake

  After my friend Thomas Cartwright had moved into the Severn valley for suitable surroundings in which to work on his macabre artwork, our only communication was through correspondence. He usually wrote only to inform me of the trivial happenings which occur in a part of the countryside ten miles from the nearest inhabited dwelling, or to tell me how his latest painting was progressing. It was, then, somewhat of a departure from the habitual when he wrote to tell me of certain events — seemingly trivial but admittedly puzzling — which culminated in a series of unexpected revelations.

  Cartwright had been interested in the lore of the terrible ever since his youth, and when he began to study art his work immediately exhibited an extremely startling morbid technique. Before long, specimens were shown to dealers, who commended his paintings highly, but doubted that they would appeal to the normal collector, because of their great morbidity. However, Cartwright's work has since been recognised, and many aficionados now seek originals of his powerful studies of the alien, which depict distorted colossi striding across mist-enshrouded jungles or peering round the dripping stones of some druidic circle. When he did begin to achieve recognition, Cartwright decided to settle somewhere which would have a more fitting atmosphere than the clanging London streets, and accordingly set out on a search through the Severn area for likely sites. When I could, I accompanied him; and it was on one of the journeys when we were together that an estate agent at Brichester told him of a lonely row of six houses near a lake some miles to the north of the town, which he might be interested in, since it was supposed to be haunted.

  We found the lake easily enough from his directions, and for some minutes we stood gazing at the scene. The ebon depths of the stagnant water were surrounded by forest, which marched down a number of surrounding hills and stood like an army of prehistoric survivals at the edge. On the south side of the lake was a row of black-walled houses, each three storeys high. They stood on a grey cobbled street which began and ended at the extremities of the row, the other edge disappearing into the pitchy depths. A road of sorts circled the lake, branching from that patch of street and joining the road to Brichester at the other side of the lake. Large ferns protruded from the water, while grass grew luxuriantly among the trees and at the edge of the lake. Although it was midday, little light reached the surface of the water or touched the house-fronts, and the whole place brooded in a twilight more depressing because of the recollection of sunlight beyond.

  'Looks like the place was stricken with a plague,' Cartwright observed as we set out across the beaded stones of the segment of road. This comparison had occurred to me also, and I wondered if my companion's morbid trait might be affecting me. Certainly the desertion of this forest-guarded hollow did not evoke peaceful images, and I could almost visualise the nearby woods as a primeval jungle where vast horrors stalked and killed. But while I was sympathetic with Cartwright's feelings, I did not feel pleasure at the thought of working there — as he probably did — rather dreading the idea of living in such an uninhabited region, though I could not have said why I found those blank house-fronts so disquieting.

  'Might as well start at this end of the row,' I suggested, pointing to the left. 'Makes no difference as far as I can see, anyway — how are you going to decide which one to take? Lucky numbers or what? If you take any, of course.'

  We had reached the first building on the left, and as we stood at the window I could only stare and repeat 'If any.' There were gaping holes in the bare floorboards in that room, and the stone fireplace was cracked and cobwebbed. Only the opposite wall seemed to be papered, and the yellowed paper had peeled off in great strips. The two wooden steps which led up to the front door with its askew knocker shifted alarmingly as I put my foot on the lower, and I stepped back in disgust.

  Cartwright had been trying to clear some of the dust from the window-pane, but now he left the window and approached me, grimacing. 'I told him I was an artist,' he said, 'but that estate agent must think that means I live in the woods or something! My God, how long is it since anyone lived in one of these?'

  'Perhaps the others may be better?' I guessed hopefully.

  'Look, you can see from here they're all as bad,' complained Cartwright.

  His complaint was quite true. The houses were very similar, surprisingly because they seemed to have been added to at various periods, as if they were always treated alike; all had unsightly stone roofs, there were signs that they might once have been half-timbered, they had a kind of bay window facing on to the street, and to the door of each led the creaking wooden steps. Although, now I came to stand back, and look up the row, the third from the left did not look as uninviting as the others. The wooden steps had been replaced by three concrete stairs, and
I thought I saw a doorbell in place of the tarnished knocker. The windows were not so grimy, either, even though the walls were still grey and moist. From where I stood the lake's dim reflection prevented me from seeing into the house.

  I pointed it out to Cartwright. 'That one doesn't look so bad.'

  'I don't see much difference,' he grumbled, but moved boredly towards it.

  'Well, the estate agent gave you one key to what he said was the only locked house — that must be the one.'

  The house was indeed locked, and the key fitted — opening the door easily, which surprised us because of the rustiness of the other locks. On the other hand, the door did not look unpainted or dirty close up; it was merely the artificial twilight which made everything grey. Still, we were not expecting the clean wallpaper in the hallway, and still less the lampshades and stair carpet. The light went on as Cartwright touched the switch inside the door, destroying the dimness, and as I looked up the stairs I thought something peculiar was visible through the open bedroom door at the top.

  'Look at this lot!' he was saying from where he peered into the first room off the hall. 'Carpet, table, chairs — what the hell's happened? What could have made anyone leave all this here — or is it included in the price or what?'

  'It did say "furnished" in the estate agent's window,' I told him.

  'Even so—' We were in the kitchen now, where a stove stood next to a kitchen cabinet. From there we went upstairs and found, as I had thought, a bed still standing, though bare of blankets, in the bedroom and the landing. The whole house, notwithstanding the outside, was almost as one would expect a Brichester house to be if the occupants had just gone out.

  'Of course I'll take it,' Cartwright said as we descended. "The interior's very nice, and the surroundings are exactly what I need for inspiration. But I do intend to get to the bottom of why all this furniture's included first.'

  Cartwright had not risked skidding into the lake by driving over the slippery cobbles; the car was parked at the end of the Brichester road where it reached the lakeside street. He turned it and we drove leisurely back to town. Although usually I like to be in the country away from civilization, I was rather glad when we reached the area of telegraph-poles and left behind those roads between sheer rock surfaces or above forested hillsides. Somehow all this had an aura of desolation which was not relieved until we began to descend the hill above Brichester, and I welcomed the sight of red-brick houses and steeples which surround the central white University building.