The Legacy of Erich Zann and Other Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos

by Brian Stableford

  I screamed for help, although I should have been able to deduce that the sergent de ville outside was no longer in a position to help me. Unlike the candlestick with which the monstrous child had slain Clamart, however, the vase with which he had hit me had shattered into smithereens, and he had not had time to pick up a substitute. He had no means of silencing me himself. It was the English actor’s long arm that snaked around my neck and caught me in a choke-hold, strangling the appeal. The grip continued to tighten, seemingly intent on rendering me unconscious.

  Hood was right; I was a hapless victim of the disease of curiosity. The only conscious effort I made, as I struggled reflexively against the murderous grip, was an attempt to formulate questions: “Who are you? Why are you doing this?”

  I was unable to get the words out, but the lovely boy seemed to understand me nevertheless. As he watched me wriggling, helplessly, in his counterpart’s grip, with his beautiful blue eyes gleaming in the candlelight, he said: “I’m Erich Zann. I have a voice now, and everything else I need, for Earthly bliss.”

  10.

  When I eventually recovered consciousness I was lying on a bare wooden floor, still wearing my overcoat. My head was pounding, and the only ambition I could entertain, at first, was that of remaining perfectly still. I did that while I slowly collected myself, assuming control of all my faculties, and cranking up my self-alertness to the maximum.

  I caressed the dust beneath my fingers, savoring its silkiness, deducing from its texture where I must be. I activated my other senses before even trying to open my eyes, but there was nothing to be heard and the only perceptive odors, from where I lay, were those of ancient dust, replete with rotten cobwebs, and coffee. I could feel the sun’s weak and wintry rays on my skin, however, so I knew that it was daylight.

  I was not at all surprised, when I did contrive to open my eyes, to find that my deduction was correct. I was on the top floor of the house in the Rue d’Auseuil: the one in which Erich Zann had lived and died, in his former incarnation. Not that I believed, at that moment, in any literal reincarnation. I did not even think that the boy was mad; I simply thought that he had been toying with me, as children are wont to do.

  The boy was standing by the window-sill, staring out through the closed casement, obliquely lit by the sun’s pale rays. It must have been early afternoon, to judge by the sun’s direction, but its zenith was low by virtue of the season, and it seemed to be in a hurry to descend and set.

  When I sat up, the boy turned to face me. The English actor was sitting in the armchair, as contentedly passive as he had been when I first saw him in my own armchair, some hours before dawn. His plucked eyebrows seemed even more absurd now.

  “Give him a drink of water, Mr. Hood,” the boy said, speaking French. To me, he said: “You’ll have to sit at the writing-desk, I fear. Mr. Hood won’t give up his armchair. He’s annoyed with you, for giving us so much trouble.”

  “Well,” I said, palpating my scalp gently, through hair that was stiffened by clotted blood, “at least he didn’t get angry and beat me to death. He’s probably not as prone to tantrums as you are.”

  “Your mental faculties are unimpaired, I see,” the youthful actor said, now seeming not to be a child at all—or, at least, to be a much older child in thought, manner and experience than his mere appearance suggested. He was certainly no angel, in my estimation—but he certainly was possessed of la beauté du Diable.

  My head was aching furiously, but my mental faculties were, indeed, unimpaired. I was very grateful for the glass of water that Hood handed to me, and I sipped it in a measured fashion while I stretched my limbs in turn, attempting to recover full control of my organism. Eventually, I felt able to stand, and then to walk to the writing-desk, where I sat down.

  There was a sheet of blank paper laid on the desk, with a freshly-filled inkwell and a sheaf of goose-quills. There was a plate beside it, bearing a single croissant and numerous crumbs, and a tray containing a coffee-pot and four small cups, two of which had been used.

  “Help yourself to breakfast,” the boy said. “Hurry, though—we need you to write a letter to your friend.”

  “A ransom note?” I asked, hoarsely.

  “Of a sort. We already have the Stradivarius, of course—but we still need the music.”

  “And what if Dupin really has burned it?” I asked, before taking a bite of the croissant and pouring a cup of coffee with a reasonably steady hand.

  “That won’t matter,” the boy said. “At first, I thought that the manuscript was all-important—but I thought at first that Palaiseau was all-important, too. It is difficult to avoid thinking with childish simplicity, when one is trapped in the body and mind of a child. Now, though, I realize that my initial mistake extended further than the division of the legacy.”

  “How old are you, really?” I asked.

  “Almost fifteen,” he said, injecting a mocking irony into his tone as he added: “How old did you think I was? Isn’t my age recorded in the program notes that you have in the inside pocket of your coat?”

  “I thought you were older, in spite of appearances,” I told him. “If you really are Erich Zann, you must be much older.”

  “By that reckoning, I suppose I am older,” the boy admitted, “but I’m possessed of the bloom of youth, in all its vigor, and feel that I’ve made a fresh start, with a clean slate. I haven’t learned to play the violin, but I have learned the art of Mesmerism. Little children have a flair for that, you know: a natural ability to charm and generate affection in others. Some retain it well into adolescence, or even adulthood. I really can convince people that I’m angelic, with absurd ease.”

  “Until you lose your temper,” I observed. “Little children have a flair for that, too, which some retain into adolescence and adulthood. Don’t you think that committing three murders has blotted your clean slate somewhat?”

  “Three?” he queried.

  “He thinks you killed Palaiseau’s concierge too,” Hood supplied. He too spoke French, although he had an atrocious accent—far worse than my own.

  “Oh,” the soprano said. “Well. I suppose I did, in a way. I helped her to get to sleep—but it wasn’t really my intention that she wouldn’t wake up again. I suppose she needed sleep more than either of us realized. I don’t count that as murder. I’m usually very good with concierges—although Clamart’s turned out to be a little vague, and remembered a little more than she was supposed to. If you’d taken the trouble to hire a concierge yourself, you might have saved that poor sergent de ville from a disciplinary charge. The Prefect will be extremely annoyed with him when he finds out that you’ve disappeared while his sentry was sleeping on the job. That was one complication I could have done without. Who could have imagined that Clamart’s young friend would end up as the Prefect of Police? I wish I’d never given in to Clamart’s recommendation that I appoint a second executor, in case anything should happen to him. Notaries can be too scrupulous for their own good. Have you finished?”

  That last question referred to the croissant and the coffee. The coffee, alas, had been lukewarm before I poured it, and it had gone cold very quickly in spite of the fact that a fire was flickering in the grate.

  “What do you want me to write?” I asked.

  “We’ll keep it simple, shall we? Monsieur Dupin, as you will know by now, I have been captured, and am in mortal danger. If you place any value on my life, come alone to the house in the Rue d’Auseuil after dark. Do not inform the Prefect, and make certain that you are not followed. Bring the manuscript, if you still have it, but come in either case. Then sign it. He will recognize your handwriting, I presume?”

  “Of course,” I said. I sharpened one of the quills and began to write. When I had finished, the boy picked it up and read it through. Then he folded it twice. He did not bother with an envelope or sealing-wax. He went back to the window-sill, picked up a small hand-bell that was resting there, and rang it.

  After a few momen
ts, a young woman appeared at the door. I recognized her as Mademoiselle Deurne, who acted the part of the violinist’s inamorata in the play.

  The boy handed her the note. “Get it to Dupin, with the utmost discretion,” he said. “Don’t come back here—the Prefect probably has the place surrounded. He’ll have you followed, but that doesn’t matter. Go to the Délassements, and keep your ear to the ground. If there’s anything I need to know, send Roch—but only in case of dire need.” Roch was the name of the actor who played the Faustian violinist.

  When the young woman had closed the door behind her and the sound of her footsteps began to dwindle away as she descended the staircase, I said: “Do you have the entire cast at your beck and call?”

  “Of course,” he replied. “There’s a particular bond that forms between actors in a successful play. They all adore me. They’d do anything for me.”

  “Bazailles and Soulié too?”

  “Perhaps—but I’d be reluctant to put my trust in a composer or a writer, beyond the exercise of their particular arts. They did a remarkable job with the play, and are utterly convinced that it was all their own work.”

  “Whereas, in fact, it was the Devil’s,” I said.

  The boy smiled. For a moment, he seemed angelic again, but the diabolism of the smile was lurking at the corners of his mouth. “And you have your sense of humor too,” he observed. “Very good. We are only playing the Devil—just as the Devil himself is only a player. If reliable pacts are to be made, they need to be made with entities of a different kind.”

  “Nyarlathotep?” I suggested.

  The soprano’s blue eyes widened slightly. “You’ve read the Harmonies?” he queried—but he was quick to correct his brief misconception. “No, of course not—if you had, you’d know that one cannot make pacts with the Crawling Chaos, even though it sometimes consents to become incarnate. Dupin consented to tell you that much, I suppose—but not the whole of it, I’ll wager. The dream-dimensions are exceedingly populous, and there are many among their population—even including Old Ones and Elder Things—which are not entirely scornful of dealings with human beings. Some, in fact, seem to take a delight in meddling. I can understand that, I think. Did Dupin tell you about the bridge that I opened...and what my unfortunate friend was able to glimpse on its other side?”

  “A little,” I said, warily, not wanting to spoil my chances of learning more.

  “Has he ever contrived to find a copy of the other book?”

  “Which one?” I parried.

  “Von Junzt’s Unaussprechenlichen Kulten—the one that set me on the road, and attracted the attention of the vehmgerichte. I could not bring it to Paris with me, alas—but I had educated the violin by then.” He gestured negligently as he concluded the latter sentence, and I saw a cloth on the side-table, which must have been carefully draped over the Stradivarius and its bow.

  “Educated?” I queried.

  “What term would you prefer? Bewitched? Accursed? Ensouled? It was a wretched instrument, you know, when Tartini had it. One of Stradivarius’ rare errors of judgment. In Tartini’s hands, it was simply flawed—in passing it on to me, he was being negligent at best, insulting at worst—but in my hands, thanks to what I learned from von Junzt, it became more than perfect. It became attuned to the dream-dimensions. It wasn’t easy to open the bridge, mind; that took a lifetime’s work—and you have no idea what an ordeal a human lifetime might be, for a man who cannot speak.”

  “But you have the voice of an angel now,” I said, “and a body to match. When you’re fully grown....”

  His face twisted then, into a demonic mask of rage. “Fully-grown!” he spat. “You think I am not fully-grown? You have no idea how impatient I’ve been, how desperate...do you imagine that I could bide my time a moment longer than absolutely necessary?” The storm passed as quickly as it had blown up, though. “You have no idea,” he repeated, in a far softer tone. “You have no idea what hunger is, what thirst is, what yearning is. You have no idea how agonizingly slow the process of human growth can seem, when one is eager to attain...well, not one’s majority, that’s for sure.”

  “Bliss?” I suggested. “The sublime? The ultimate ecstasy of which mind is capable, with all its innate horror and terror?”

  “Dupin must have grown weary of his loneliness, to have confided as much as that,” the boy observed. “That’s a good sign. It would have been far better, of course, had he yielded to his true nature sooner and more completely, but at least he has weakened in his austerity to that extent. He is ready. He always was, no matter how fervently he attempted to deny it, but I think that he might accept it now, without a fight. The moment is ripe.”

  I had a sudden flash of inspiration. “You expect Dupin to play the violin!” I exclaimed. “That’s why you felt free to kill Palaiseau. But he hasn’t touched such an instrument in twenty years—he told me so.”

  “Don’t be silly,” the boy replied. “I expect the violin to play him. He’s a better instrument by far, if I’m not mistaken, than Palaiseau could ever have been. He has the mind, the discipline, the knowledge, the soul. He might have convinced himself, for a while, that he might go into retreat from his own wholesome nature and purify his consciousness, but he is too honest a man to maintain that conviction in the face of brute reality. He knows what human souls are really made of, and what their capabilities are, if taken to the extreme. Yes—he was always the one, although I never quite realized it myself, poor dumb thing that I was before my rebirth. He was always the one. When I played and he listened, we were merely preparing the ground for the exchange of roles. Palaiseau was as much a distraction as my fellow-lodger. Weak reeds, both of them—but not Dupin. Dupin is strong. Dupin is an instrument worthy of the violin, worthy of me.”

  By this time, of course, I had revised my earlier opinion. I now believed that the boy really was the reincarnation of Erich Zann—and that he really was utterly and completely mad. I looked at Mr. Hood, slumped in his armchair. He seemed quite relaxed and comfortable, but very much alive. There was no suggestion of a marionette waiting inertly for his strings to be twitched. He was there voluntarily. He wanted to be there. He was so thoroughly Mesmerized that he would have done anything for the master he adored.

  The boy followed the direction of my gaze with his own eyes. “Do you think, even if he were dead and you still had your silly swordstick,” he said, “that you could possibly stop me? Do you think that there is anything you can any longer do, without my permission?”

  I realized then why he had bothered to spend so much time talking to me, wooing me and teasing me with tidbits of information to feed my insatiable, pathological curiosity.

  “No,” I said, incapable even of surprise at my self-treason. “I don’t think I could stop you. I don’t think I can do anything, now, without your permission.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “And not because you’re under any tyrannical constraint or compulsion. You’re not an automaton, or a puppet. You want me to succeed, in everything I’m ambitious to do.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “I do. I want you to succeed, in everything you’re ambitious to do.” I did not have to say, though, that I adored him. I had his tacit permission not to do that.

  “Very well,” he said, as he turned away to throw more wood on the fire. “There’s no reason at all why we shouldn’t spend a pleasant afternoon, chatting like good friends, while we wait for nightfall, and Monsieur Dupin’s arrival.”

  “No,” I agreed—but I felt free to add: “You didn’t have to kill anyone at all. You had Clamart and Palaiseau securely in your grip, ready to do your bidding. They couldn’t stop you, any more than I can. You didn’t have to kill anyone.”

  “Yes I did,” he said, his voice becoming a trifle plaintive, finally sounding like that of the twelve-year-old child he appeared to be. “You don’t understand. No one does. You have no idea.”

  It was the literal truth, I realized. I had no idea. This was somethin
g not only outside the range of my experience, but beyond the reach of the concepts that I had accumulated in the process. Such minuscule access as I had been granted to the dream-dimensions, in sleep or philosophy or listening to music, had not served to give me any mental equipment for dealing with the reincarnate Erich Zann.

  I realized, too, that if Auguste Dupin really did surrender himself, as my note demanded, in order to be played by the un-lost Stradivarius and to assist in breaching the barrier that Zann had breached before—in another life, when he was not morally ready or physically equipped to face the horrors that lie beyond—then I too would be part of the audience, unable to escape until the final curtain fell...and perhaps not even then.

  11.

  I had abundant opportunity, before Dupin arrived, to wash the blood out of my hair and clean myself up more generally. Once the boy was sure of my co-operation, he allowed Hood to leave the room occasionally, either to prepare food in the kitchen on the ground floor or to ferry firewood and kettles of hot water upstairs; the water was used to make coffee as well as to facilitate ablutions. The fire kept the room reasonably warm, and I was able to dispense with my dirty overcoat, so that I could put on a decent appearance in my jacket and black trousers. I even contrived to polish my shoes. When I went to the privy myself, however, Hood mounted guard; evidently, the reincarnate Zann did not have complete faith in his Mesmeric powers—not, at least, at a distance, on such a recent recruit to his bizarre cause.

  Dupin kept him waiting.

  Twilight arrived early, in accordance with the season, and sullen darkness fell thereafter. The sky was cloudy and the night profound.

  We could hear no less than five clocks chiming the hours from both sides of the river, not quite in chorus and certainly not in harmony, but with sufficiently close timing to appear to be working in collaboration. Seven o’clock sounded, then eight, and then nine.

  I grew impatient along with my captors, but each of us made every effort, in his own fashion, to control himself. I had less reason than the others to doubt the inevitability of his arrival, not only because I was confident that he would not abandon me, but because I knew that his own hypersensitive curiosity would drag him with irresistible force, but I could not help being anxious anyway. The one thing of which I could not be entirely certain was that he would really come alone. The Prefect, after all, had hundreds of agents at his beck and call—enough to surround not merely the house but the entire butte. If the Prefect grew overly impatient, he might order his men to storm the building, armed with pistols or even rifles. He was, as Hood and the soprano had both observed, an inconvenient complication. I knew, though, that he trusted Dupin implicitly. If Dupin commanded him to wait, he would wait.