The Last Revelation Of Gla'aki

by Ramsey Campbell

  He looked up just too late to interpret Lunt's vanishing expression. He would have felt presumptuous to call him Frank after so brief an acquaintance. "Thank you once again for your generous bequest," he said and stood up.

  "We've another present for you," Lunt said and handed him a slip of paper that had been lying on the desk.

  It was a ticket for the Gulshaw Players on Thursday night. "That's very kind of you, Mr Lunt," Fairman said, "but I don't imagine I'll be here by then."

  "You mustn't run away from us, Leonard. There's so much more to see."

  Fairman didn't know which peeved him more—the lurch into familiarity or the mangling of the slogan. He thanked Lunt once more as the manager held the door open for him. In the foyer the young woman did, and gave Fairman's prize a look not far short of reverential. Presumably Lunt had told his staff about the book. Outside the theatre Fairman might have fancied that everyone trudging uphill towards him was aware of it. Of course he was simply mindful of how vulnerable it was out here in the open, and he hurried to unlock the car.

  He'd brought nine stout cartons filled with excelsior. As he made space in one for the book and covered it up, quite a few passers-by stared at him. At least one man slowed down to watch, humming some old melody under his breath. Was Fairman betraying how valuable the book was? He made haste to stow the carton in the boot and lock the car before driving back to the hotel.

  Janine Berry glanced over the reception counter at the solitary item in his hands. "I hope you don't think Gulshaw's let you down, Mr Fairman."

  "Don't worry." He'd told her he was here for more than one book, of course. "I've more to look forward to before I go home," he said.

  In his room he opened the safe that was hidden in the left-hand wardrobe. While there was nowhere near enough space for nine cartons, of course he wouldn't need it; he would be driving back to Brichester as soon as he took charge of the rest of the books. He laid the carton in the safe and typed his birthday—5475—on the keypad. Once he'd made certain the safe was secure he went out for dinner.

  He didn't want much. He was eager to spend time with the book. He walked along the promenade, overtaking the occasional stroller. The sun had gone down, though he couldn't judge exactly where, given the grey haze that merged the horizon with the sea. Beyond the hotels he was met by the clamour of the amusement arcades: the electronic jingles of fruit machines, the repetitive ditties of toddlers' rides, the robot voices of video games. Between two of the arcades a giant fish stood on its tail in a pool of mossy light from the green tube in the window of Fishing For You. As Fairman let himself into the fish and chip shop the proprietor, an unexpectedly scrawny woman in a white uniform not unlike a nurse's, said "The word's out, then."

  "Sorry, I'm not with you."

  She gave that a look he could have thought was skeptical. "The word about the best fish dinners," she said. "You've come a distance."

  Presumably Fairman's accent had betrayed him again. "Everybody's favourite," she said as she perched a battered fish on top of a heap of chips on a sheet of greaseproof paper. "See if you aren't back for more."

  He didn't bother saying that he wouldn't be in Gulshaw long enough. She wrapped the package in a page of the Gulshaw Gannet and wiped her glistening hands on a towel before she gave Fairman his change. He took the hot package across the road to a bench overlooking the beach. Could people really still be swimming in the sea? He had to squint into the gathering dusk to be sure that the restless shapes were large jellyfish. As he unwrapped his dinner a wind fluttered the newspaper; in the dimness it looked as if the fish was struggling to demonstrate some kind of life. The batter was crisp, and though he might have called the fish a little rubbery, it tasted as he remembered cod tasting in his childhood. He ate most of it and nearly all the chips, and stuffed the remains into a concrete bin that appeared not to have been emptied for some time. He was turning back towards the Wyleave when an old phone began to trill.

  Although he wouldn't have been surprised to see a vintage phone box on the promenade, the sound was in his pocket. He was hoping Dr Stoddart had returned his call, but the phone display showed him Sandra's name. "Sorry," he said. "I ought to have called you by now."

  "You're there, I take it."

  He heard affection underlying that, but he didn't know if anybody else would have. "I have been for a little while," he said. "It feels longer, somehow."

  "That's a bit imprecise for you, Leonard."

  "I'm sure it's because I'm away from you." He imagined her making the face she kept for compliments—almost too deprecatory to betray appreciation—but when he heard no response he said "It reminds me of the kind of holiday I never had as a child."

  "I didn't realise you preferred that kind."

  "I don't. I'm looking forward to ours. Art galleries and churches are fine as far as I'm concerned."

  "So have you acquired your prize?"

  "I've made a start."

  "You either have it or you haven't, Leonard."

  "I thought the chap who emailed me had all nine volumes. You saw yourself what he said." When she gave him a silence to interpret, Fairman told her "It turns out he just had one."

  "So you'll be on your way after breakfast, I suppose."

  "Not quite so soon. I'm waiting to hear from the fellow who has the rest of the set."

  "Why on earth would they split it up?"

  "To tell you the truth, I didn't enquire. I don't think the chap I saw was anxious to discuss its history. We can't expect everyone to care about books as much as we do, can we? I'm just happy it still exists."

  "Don't let them take advantage of you, Leonard."

  "How is anybody going to do that? It's not as though I'm being asked for payment. We ought to appreciate how generous that is."

  "Unless they're glad to see the last of it. Perhaps the man who gave you the book didn't want too much of that kind of thing in his house, and that's why he had only one volume."

  "It wasn't in his house, it was in his office safe."

  "There you are, then."

  She could be imprecise when it suited her, Fairman thought as he retorted "It doesn't matter what he thinks of it, does it? It's our job as archivists to preserve books like those."

  "That doesn't mean we have to promote what they represent."

  "Nobody's promoting anything. I've hardly even started reading it."

  "Do you really need to, Leonard?"

  "I wouldn't be much of a librarian if I didn't know my stock."

  "In that case I'd better leave you to get on with your job."

  "I'll give you a call when I'm about to start back if you like." When she let him assume her response he said "Have a good night."

  "I expect I shall." As he began to think the call was over she said "I hope you do as well."

  He'd learned to find fondness in her voice, since she hadn't much time for nicknames or other expressions of intimacy. The conversation had brought him to the shelter opposite the Wyleave. In the open cabin four benches formed a cross. On the bench that faced the sea the names MELANIE and SETH were united by a heart so inexpertly rendered that it looked malformed. Another seat bore misshapen figures merged by the enthusiasm of the cartoonist, while the bench facing the hotel was covered with initials bunched closely enough to resemble words, especially since they could have been scrawled in a single hand. Fairman found himself attempting to pronounce the gibberish in his head, if only to prove the graffiti weren't words, as he crossed the promenade to the hotel.

  Mrs Berry was rising from behind her desk when he stepped into the lobby. He might have thought she'd been waiting up for him. His key gave a hollow rattle as she retrieved it from its pigeonhole. "Ready for bed, Mr Fairman?"

  "I've some reading to do first."

  "Of course," she said as though he'd reconfirmed her notion of the typical librarian. He was heading for the stairs when she murmured "Dream well."

  "I don't really go in for it."

  "We al
l do, Leonard." She touched her forehead, and the patch of brow as well as her fingertip grew momentarily pale. "If you don't," she said, "you'll never know what's in there."

  That was the kind of observation Sandra had least patience for, he thought as he climbed the stairs. She hadn't even let him finish telling her what he knew about Deepfall Water, although it wasn't a great deal. He'd found none of it worth mentioning in the essay that had ended up online.

  Had a cult ever really made its home beside the unfrequented lake? In the 1960s the notion had been revived after Thomas Cartwright, a minor artist specialising in fantastic and occult themes, moved into one of the lakeside houses and died as the result of some kind of attack. A police investigation had proved inconclusive, and a family who were supposed to have abandoned the house before Cartwright took it over had never been tracked down. If the houses had at some stage been served by a private graveyard, no identifiable trace was found, though some tales suggested that the stone tombs had been pulverised beyond recognition. We Pass from View, an occult book by local author Roland Franklyn, even claimed that they'd been destroyed by the police.

  Fairman had thought this unsuitable for mentioning in Book Hunter Monthly, and Sandra hadn't wanted to hear any more. She would have liked his other anecdotes even less—schoolboy stupidity, he imagined she would call them. They dated from his days at Brichester High, a quarter of a century after the Cartwright business. The lake had become a place you dared your friends to visit after dark, and he'd assumed his fellow pupils had borrowed the idea from films, though the originator of the challenge had lived on the edge of Brichester nearest the lake. Those who ventured there brought back increasingly extreme stories: the lake had begun to throb like an enormous heart, or a procession of figures as stiff as bones had been glimpsed among the trees on the far side of the water, or a globular growth on a stalk in the middle of the lake had turned so as to keep a party of teenagers in sight, and they'd realised it was an eye. How could any of this have been visible at night? At the time Fairman hadn't been surprised that the adventurers had ended up with nightmares, but once the headmaster learned of the visits to the lake he'd forbidden them. Apparently his fierceness was daunting enough, since the lake reverted to the status of a rumour. Since then, so far as Fairman knew, it had been visited mostly by the kind of people who tried to plumb the depths of Loch Ness, and they'd found just as little evidence of anything unnatural.

  He didn't think he would ever tell Sandra that he'd visited Deepfall Water. He'd hoped to bring his essay more to life, but perhaps he also meant to prove that he wasn't quite the bookish introverted fellow his schoolmates had thought him. He could see no reason to go at night, and even on a February afternoon the place had seemed unnecessarily dark, no doubt because of the trees that stooped close to the unpaved track from the main road as well as surrounding the lake. They overshadowed the row of three-storey houses that huddled alongside a cobblestone pavement at the edge of the water. All six roofs had caved in, and some of the floors were so rotten that they'd collapsed under the weight of debris. Great leaves of blackened wallpaper drooped off the walls of a house in the middle of the terrace, and Fairman had wondered if this was the one most recently occupied, nearly half a century ago. None of the windows contained even a fragment of glass, and he suspected his old schoolmates might have been at least partly responsible. The buildings seemed to gape at the expanse of water like masks lined up to demonstrate they had no identity of their own. He'd found the thought oddly disturbing as he went to the edge of the lake.

  The murky water stretched perhaps half a mile to the trees where some of his schoolfellows had claimed to see a procession that shouldn't have been walking. He doubted you could see that even with a flashlight, given how close together the trees grew. The depths of the lake were even harder to distinguish. It was fringed by large ferns, but he'd made out just a few inches of the stalks beneath the surface, which was so nearly opaque that he might have imagined the mud was being stirred up by some activity in the lake. In fact the water had been absolutely stagnant, and he'd peered harder into it as though he was compelled to find some reason to have visited Deepfall Water. He'd had the odd impression that around it all the trees were craning to imitate him, enclosing the lake with an iris of darkness that was capable of shrinking the sky overhead. That must have been an effect of his concentration, along with the idea that his scrutiny could waken some presence in the depths; in fact, a sluggish ripple had begun to spread from the middle of the lake, followed by another and another. They'd advanced so slowly that their lethargy had seemed to take hold of him; he could have fancied that the waves of his brain had been reduced to the pace of the hypnotic ripples. The thought had jerked him back to consciousness, not least of the unnaturally premature dark. As the ripples grew audible he'd turned his back and retreated to his car. He'd heard water splashing the edge of the pavement by the time he'd succeeded in starting the engine. Of course the ripples must have been caused by a wind, since all the trees around the lake had bent towards the water.

  Besides these impressions, he'd seemed to take something else home. Like Sandra, for whom it was a reason to be proud of her rationality and control, he didn't dream or at least never remembered having done so, but for some nights after visiting Deepfall Water he'd been troubled by wakeful thoughts. Whenever he drifted close to sleep he'd found himself thinking of the investigators who had tried to search the lake. The notion of sounding it had brought to mind a disconcertingly vivid image of a vast shape burrowing deeper into the bed of the lake, raising a cloud of mud so thick that it blotted out the denizen. No doubt this betrayed how preoccupied he was with the impossibly rare book, but he'd been assailed by the vision several times a night, until he'd begun almost to dread attempting to sleep. If dreaming was like that, it wasn't for him.

  By the time he'd completed his essay the vision had left him, which surely proved they were related. He didn't mention it to Sandra, and he supposed he should be grateful that they'd been living apart. Perhaps this might change soon, along with her view of his find here in Gulshaw. Surely no librarian could be unaffected by the sight of one of the rarest books in the world.

  He locked the door of his room and hurried to the safe. When he typed his birthday digits he was assailed by a panicky notion that the safe wouldn't open, as though the book might be too precious to release. But the black door edged open, and he reached into the dimness to cradle the box in his hands, laying it on the bed to lift the book out of its papery nest. The leather covers felt unexpectedly chill, as he thought a reptile's hide might feel. He sat on the solitary chair and opened the book as carefully as he might have handled an infant. "How many secrets hath the world..."

  Was he exhausted after the long drive from Brichester to the northern coastal town? Perhaps not only tiredness was affecting his concentration. Whatever the incantatory prose might be meant to achieve, he wouldn't call it lucid. To what extent had Percy Smallbeam rewritten the material? Certainly the style read like a single author's. Fairman felt as though he wasn't so much interpreting the text as waiting for it to take shape in his brain, an experience that seemed unnecessarily similar to dreaming, and he turned the stiff pages in search of some reference his mind could fasten on. What was Gla'aki meant to be, for instance? Perhaps that was made clear in an earlier volume, but around the middle of this one he found a reference to Brichester.

  The theory appeared to be that certain areas of the world were foci of alien or occult forces—the book made no distinction. Whether this was a result of magical practices performed there over many centuries, or whether the sites had initially attracted the practices, was left unclear. Massachusetts around the town of Arkham was such a place, and other American locations included the Sesqua Valley and the Castle Rock area of Maine. In Britain the Yorkshire moors near Marske were mentioned, along with Caerleon and Liverpool, where the chronic overcrowding of the slums at the time the book was published "allowed the ancient denizens to flo
urish unremarked save by those who had carnal recourse to them." As for Brichester, the book suggested that the surrounding Severn Valley area was a node of occult activity and the lair of creatures far older than humanity. Supposedly some of the latter had survived beneath the village of Clotton, a name no longer on the map, "where they ape the voice of the blind waters that pour into the abyss beneath the earth." Other legends spoke of Temphill, where an attempt to render an ancient site Christian had merely given sustenance to the forgotten things that were drawn to a subterranean vault, and Goatswood, in Roman times a place of worship of an inhuman entity the Romans called the Magna Mater. In the forest that gave Goodmanswood its name you might encounter a man composed of insects that would swarm into your brain. And here at last was a reference to Gla'aki, although spelled in Percy Smallbeam's way. "So steeped in arcane power was the valley that it acted as a beacon to which Glaaki guided His stone cocoon across the gulfs of space."

  Fairman hadn't realised that the area around his home town had given rise to so many myths. Perhaps they were simply delusions of the cult that had written the original text, or Percy Smallbeam might have elaborated on them; who was to know? Nevertheless Fairman had an odd elusive sense that he'd already been aware of some of them. It felt as he imagined trying to recall a dream would feel, and he was gazing into his own bemused eyes in the mirror when his phone rang. He might almost have been jerking awake as he saw the number was unidentified. "Hello?"

  "Leonard Fairman? I believe you want me."

  "I might if I knew who you were."

  "It's Dennis Stoddart, Leonard. You left me a message."

  "Dr Stoddart." Fairman couldn't quite bring himself to match the familiarity, and hoped this conveyed that he didn't welcome it either. "Thanks for calling back. Mr Lunt said—"