by Brian Lumley
And Matthew’s studies occupied him completely for the next few days. The hybrid weed he had found atop the knoll was all but forgotten and the possibility that more such fascinating specimens existed in that area was matterless to him. For the moment all his energies were concentrated on his as yet unidentified sample.
One afternoon three or four days after his return, I was sitting in my study checking through some notes on the ailments, real or imagined, of some of my elder patients, when Matthew burst unbidden upon me from the corridor. His eyes were quite wild and he seemed somehow to have aged years. There was a look of absolute puzzlement—or shock—on his face, and his jaw hung slack in undisguised amazement.
“Uncle,” he blurted, “perhaps you can help me. Goodness knows I need help. I just can’t understand it…or don’t want to. It’s not natural. Natural?—why, it’s impossible—and yet there it is…” He shook his head in defeat.
“Oh?” I said. “What’s impossible, Matthew?”
For a moment he was silent, then: “Why, that plant—or thing! It has no right to exist. None of them has. At first I thought I must be mistaken, but then I checked and double-checked and checked again—and I know I’m right. They just can’t do it!”
As patiently as I could, I asked: “Who, exactly, are ‘they’, and what is it that ‘they’ can’t do?”
“The plants,” he told me in an exasperated tone of voice. “They can’t reproduce! Or if they can I’ve no idea how they do it. And that’s only a part of it. In attempting to classify the things I’ve tried tricks that would get me locked up if any conventional botanist knew of them. Why!—I can’t even say for sure that they’re plants—in fact I’m almost certain that they’re not. And that leads on to something else—”
He leaned forward in his chair and stared at me. “Seeing as how I’ve decided they’re not plants, I thought perhaps they might be some obscure animal form—like those sea animals which were mistaken for plants for such a long time—I mean, anemones and the like. I’ve checked it all out, and…no such thing! I’ve got a whole library of books up there,” he indicated with a toss of his head the upstairs room, “but nothing that’s any good to me.”
“So you’re baffled,” I said. “But surely you’ve made some mistake? It’s obvious that whatever they are they must be one or the other, plants or animals. Call in a second opinion.”
“Never!— Certainly not until I’ve done a lot more work on my own,” Matthew cried. “This thing is big, fantastic. A new form of life! But you must excuse me, uncle. I have to get back to work. There’s so much I’ve got to understand…”
Suddenly he paused, seeming uneasy; his manner became somehow, well, furtive. “I’ve especially got to understand that other thing—the structure of the cells, I mean. It’s quite uncanny. How can it be explained? The cell-structure is almost—it’s almost human!” And with that he hurried out of my room.
For a moment I laughed to myself. Everything is fantastic to the young. Matthew had made a mistake, of course, for if those things were neither animals nor plants—then what in heaven’s name were they?
III
The ghastly thing started the next morning, showing first of all in small greenish patches of flaky yet slimy substance on Matthew’s arms and chest. Just a few patches at first, but they refused to submit to the application of antiseptic swabs or the recently introduced fungicidal creams, and within the course of the day a loathsome green network had spread over the boy’s entire frame so that I was forced to confine him to his bed.
I did all I could to reassure and comfort him, and later in the evening hung a notice on my waiting-room door informing my patients, mercifully few and with only trivial complaints, that due to alterations in my work schedule I was forced to holiday early and only very urgent calls would be answered. I added to this the address of a friend of mine in Hawthorpe, a consulting doctor whom I contacted with a similar story of altered work schedules and who willingly accepted my plan for any of my flock who might require medical attention.
All this done I attempted to fathom the horror that had overtaken my nephew, and in this I could only be doomed to failure through the completely alien nature of the thing. The only definite statement of fact I could make about it was that I knew certain of its symptoms: Matthew had hardly eaten at all since his adventure in the pit, neither had I seen him take any sort of drink, and yet he had shown no signs of hunger. I was not to know it but the metamorphosis taking place in his body was one which did not yet require to be fed. A new way of feeding was developing…
Dazedly, desperately attempting to understand this monstrous thing come so suddenly upon my house, I worked all through the night and into the next morning; but having done everything I could think of to check the vile acceleration of Matthew’s affliction, and failing, I suggested calling in a specialist. It was the worst thing I could have done. Matthew reacted like a wild thing, screaming that there was nothing anyone could do for him and that “knowledge of those things in the pit must spread no further!” Plainly he believed that the disease had come back with him from the pit on the moors, that he had poisoned his system by eating of those obscene plants—and in all truth I was hardly able to dispute it.
Sobbing and shrieking, swearing that he would soon cease to be a bother to me, he made me promise not to tell anyone of the horror or bring in anyone to see him. I thought I knew his meaning about ceasing to be a bother: in all my textbooks I could find nothing like my nephew’s disease; only leprosy could be said even to approximate it, and leprosy did not have its fantastic acceleration. Reluctantly I calculated that the virulence of Matthew’s disease would kill him within a fortnight, and for this reason I agreed to his every request.
• • •
The next night, out for a breath of badly needed fresh air, I managed to catch Ginger, my cat. Since first Matthew returned from his prolonged ramble Ginger had refused to enter the house, preferring to howl horribly on the step outside for hours on end. I brought him in and left him in a very agitated state downstairs with a bowl of milk. The next morning—the fourth morning, I think, of the manifestation of the horror—I found Ginger’s fearful, death-stiffened corpse on the dispensary floor. One of the room’s small windowpanes was cracked where the unfortunate and terrified animal had tried to escape. But from what? Animals can sense things too deep for the blunted human mind to grasp—and what Ginger had sensed had frightened him to death.
Other animals, too, had noticed something strange about my house, and dogs in particular would come nowhere near the place. Even my pony, tied in a warm lean-to behind the house, had danced nervously in his stall all through those long nights…
On the same morning that I found Ginger dead, when I carefully slipped back the sheets from Matthew’s sleeping form, doctor though I am and despite the fact that my experience has included every type of illness and ailment, I recoiled in terror from that which lay upon the bed. Three hours later, at about eleven in the morning, when I was satisfied that I had done everything I possibly could, I laid down my tools. I had worked with surgical swabs and scrapers, sponges and acids, and my nephew’s body beneath the dressings was not a pretty sight. But at least it was clean—for the moment.
When the anesthetic wore off and Matthew awoke, though he was obviously in great pain, he managed to tell me of the new dream which had disturbed his sleep. He had seemed to be in a misty place where there was only a voice, continually repeating a phrase in an alien tongue, which as before he had somehow been able to understand. The voice had called:
“Ye shall not associate with them. Ye shall not know them or walk among them or near them…” And Matthew had been afraid for his very soul.
• • •
That afternoon we slept. Both of us were near exhaustion and it was only later in the evening, when I was disturbed by his cries, that I awoke. He was having yet another nightmare and I listened intently by his bedside in case he said something new in connection with the h
orror. Had I roused him then I might have saved his mind, but I am glad now that I did nothing, being satisfied to sit listening while he rambled in his sleep. It seemed to me that he was better asleep; whatever dreams he experienced, they could in no way be worse than the reality.
I was deeply shocked by the poisonous odour that drifted up from his restless form, for only a few hours earlier I had cleansed him completely of every sign of the horror. I had hoped that my extreme surgical efforts might be sufficient to halt the rapid encroachment of the dread growth, but I had been grasping at straws. That smell made it all too obvious that my hopes had been in vain. Then, as I continued watching, Matthew began to writhe and gibber dementedly.
“No, no,” he gasped, “I will not stand like this, as though I were part of the place, with the muck dripping off me. I will not!” For a long moment his chest rose and fell spasmodically. Then, in a calmer voice, he continued:
“No one must learn of the pit… Sinned… Committed the ultimate abomination, and soon I must answer the call… No priests, no ceremony for me… Dead before the dinosaurs… And no one must see me… Too many inquisitive minds, curious delvers in mysteries… Spread the thing across the whole world… God knows… Tell no one… No one must know… Ultimate sin… Heaven help me!”
There was a long pause here, and in Matthew’s sleeping attitude I could suddenly detect an air of listening. Finally he began to talk again: “But these voices! Who are they? I don’t know these names. John Jamieson Hustam…Gint Rillson…Feth Bandr? And the others—what of them? Ganhfl Degrahms? Sgyss-Twell? Neblozt? Ungl? Uh’ang?”
At this point he grew even quieter. His lips drew back from his teeth and the cords of his neck stood out grotesquely. Cold sweat appeared on his brow and his low moaning became coarser, merely a cracked whisper. “That other, weak, dying voice! Who’s that? What’s that?…Whisperer—who are you? Your name sounds famil… No—no, it’s not so!” Now his voice fell so low it became a mere hiss of breath:
“You…can’t…be!”
Suddenly, with one hoarsely screamed word—or name—he sat rigidly upright, wide awake. Eyes bugging he gazed terrified, unseeing, about the room. For a moment I was at a loss to understand—but then I saw the foam gathering at the corner of his mouth and the way his eyes were beginning to roll vacantly in his poisoned, suddenly grinning face. I sat by him then, cradling him in my arms as, sobbing, he rocked back and forth, completely robbed of his sanity.
At the time I did not understand that name he screamed, but now I understand everything. Especially I know what it was that finally proved too much for my nephew’s severely overtaxed mind and body. That which he had—dreamed?
• • •
Matthew did not recover, and from that moment on I had to care for him like a newborn babe; he was incapable of even the most basic rationalization. Yet in a way I believe that this was the best thing that could have happened. There was little I could do to help him, physically or mentally, and I had completely given up my brief idea of calling in a specialist. No doctor would ever have dreamed, while the chance remained of the horror being communicable, of risking passing that loathsomeness on to another human being—which was, of course, the main reason I had stopped practicing. No, I was on my own with Matthew, and all I could do was wait and see what form the advancing terror would take.
Up to this time I myself had shown no sign of having contracted the disease, and after every session with my nephew I made sure that I bathed, cleansing myself thoroughly. True, lately I had shown a loss of appetite (but surely, in retrospect, that was only to be expected?) which at the time was an additional worry for I recognised the symptom. Still, I told myself, in all probability my fears were purely psychological.
Early the following morning, while he slept, I gave Matthew a further anaesthetic and removed his dressings. By now I was almost inured to shock and the sight of that dreadful green network growing in the wounds—in his very flesh—only verified what I had expected. The smell from the uncovered areas was terrible, and I saw that far from being beneficial my cutting and burning had probably worsened the boy’s condition. Indeed, by midday I knew that there was no hope left for him at all. His arms were webbing to his sides and his thighs already clung together; the growth was spreading so rapidly over and through him that I knew he had only a day or so left.
It is not my intention to tell the way in which the horror increased in Matthew from that time onwards. Suffice to say that I began to lace the baths I was taking with ever increasing frequency with carbolic—a little more each time—until, when I last bathed just yesterday, the percentage of acid in the water was sufficient to raise small blisters on my legs. Yet my efforts seemed worthwhile, for even after Matthew—got away—and shuffled off to the moors two days ago my body was still clean, though my appetite was nonexistent. I had hoped, indeed prayed, that this inability of mine to eat was psychological—but again all my hopes were in vain.
There, I have admitted it: yes, I too am infected! Shortly after I started to write this, yesterday evening after returning from the moors, I noticed the first discoloured, scaly spot on the back of my hand…
But in my hurry to get done with this I have jumped ahead of myself. I must go back two nights, to the evening Matthew vanished into the mist, for the worst is yet to be told.
IV
Believing that he only had a few more hours left at the most, and wanting to be near him in case he regained his sanity shortly before passing away—as has happened in less outré cases—I had been sitting by Matthew’s bed. There I had dropped off to sleep, only to be roused later by the frantic tremblings and quakings from the now totally changed creature before me. By this time my nephew’s only resemblance to anything human was his general outline. His eyes burned with a horrific intensity through the thin slits in the green mask which his face had become.
As I came fully awake I saw the…Thing—I can barely bring myself to think of it as Matthew—moving. Slowly it bent upward from the waist, trembling and straining in every part, until finally it sat upright. The awful head turned slowly in my direction, and then I heard the last words my nephew was ever to speak:
“W-water… B-bath… Get—me—to—the—b-bath…”
The thing had swung the green web which passed for the lower part of its body over the edge of the bed and somehow had managed to stand. In shuffling steps—still attired in the dressing-gown I had loaned to Matthew in compensation for quartering him in a drafty room—it made for the door. In a moment or two I recovered myself and went quickly to the aid of my…my nephew, only to discover that his mutation, whatever human attributes might have been lost, did not lack strength. Matthew’s movements were only obstructed by his covering of rapidly stiffening green growth; I had merely to steady him while he grew accustomed to this new, shuffling locomotive system. Exactly how I managed I do not recall, but eventually I got the shuffler into the bath where he sat, propped up and shuddering, until I could half-fill the tub with warm water.
It was then, after running to and fro half-a-dozen times with my huge iron kettle, that I noticed something happening in the bath—something which so terrified me that I only just managed to stagger away, out of the bathroom, before I fainted dead away on the floor…
• • •
Darkness had fallen by the time I regained consciousness. Remembering what had caused me to faint, I started violently; then, feeling the stone of the floor against my cheek, I got to my feet. When I had last seen my nephew—or rather the thing which he had become—he had been secreting greenish droplets of some unnameable ichor into the bath. But now, except for that—liquid—the bath was empty.
Galvanized into frantic haste I followed the thing’s tracks, green droplets which glistened damply on the floor, until I eventually discovered the note on my writing desk. And its message told me that the Matthew-thing was still crazed, for its contents were undeniably the ramblings of madness. Numb with shock, horror, and disbelief I deciphere
d the almost illegible writing upon a now odious sheet of damp, green-spattered notepaper, and made it out to read:
“Water not right… Hungry… Must go to pit… Pool… Don’t try to find me… I am all right… Not diseased…
‘M’”
• • •
It was after I followed those evil droplets from my desk to the back door, and found it swinging open—after I realised that the entire house could be contaminated and after I shudderingly, more closely studied the contents of the bath—that I heard the sudden scream from outside. I ran back to the door and threw it open. Staggering towards my house from the moors and moving in the direction of the village, gasping and panting, was the mist-wreathed figure of Ben Carter, the village poacher.
“Lock your doors, doctor!” he hoarsely yelled as he saw me. “There’s something horrible loose on the moors—something horrible!” Without pausing in his stumbling run he went by my gate and gradually vanished into the mist. To an extent I was relieved; he would not be reporting the nature of what he had seen to the police. Not immediately at any rate—not with that brace of fine hares swinging round his neck. I watched Ben until the mist had completely swallowed him up and then I rapidly donned a raincoat and plunged out into the darkness.
My task was hopeless. With night already settled on the moors and a thickening mist to contend with, I stood no chance of finding him. Indeed I was fortunate in the end, over an hour later, even to find the road back to Eeley. Nonetheless I knew that with the dawn I would have to go out on the moors and try again. I could not leave him out there in that state. What if someone else were to find him?
Obviously Matthew had headed for the pit—his scrawled note had made that much at least clear—but how was I ever to find that terrible place without a clue as to its whereabouts? It was then that I remembered the map upon which Matthew said he had marked his location on the knoll. The map—of course!
