All this time, he had avoided looking at the east end, intending to keep till last his viewing of what was always the glory of the Sicilian churches; the great figure of Christ in the apse above the altar. Now he could keep from it no longer, and turned his gaze in that direction.
It was indeed a masterpiece, in spite of the dirt and the cobwebs that encrusted it. As usual, Christ’s head and shoulders were portrayed, robed in red and blue, the right arm extended in blessing, the left holding an open book lettered in Greek. The treatment of the material by the unknown artist was marvelous, but the expression on Christ’s face was uniquely horrible; a malignant sneer of contempt. The eyes were very piercing. Mr. Pearsall could not read Greek, but he suspected that the words written on the open page of the book were hardly a normal scriptural text. And the right hand—was that the usual gesture of blessing? Or was it the first and last fingers held up—the gesture known as the devil’s horns?
“This is a blasphemous church,” said Mr. Pearsall to himself. “The mosaics may be very fine, but they are also very horrible. Some bishop, perhaps even the Pope, condemned them and had the church closed down. Even the townspeople don’t like to talk about them, because they are still a very religious people, and they don’t let tourists in. Just as well, these pictures are enough to give anyone nightmares! Well; I’m glad I’ve seen them, but it’s not a pleasant place to visit on your own, and I can’t say I’ll be sorry to leave.” He glanced at his watch, and was almost relieved to find that his hour had practically expired; it gave him an excuse to leave without exploring the rest of the church. With a brisk walk that an unsympathetic observer might have thought perilously close to a panic-stricken run, he turned away toward the south door by which he had entered. But now it was locked.
For some time Mr. Pearsall struggled in a quiet futile fashion, shaking the door, twisting the iron ring this way and that, searching for a catch, but he was entirely unable to shift it. He thumped the door with the palm of his hand and kicked it, and a great ringing boom echoed round the church like a salvo of cannonfire, and to this day he swears that from somewhere there came a kind of sinister chuckle in answer.
With a considerable effort, he pulled himself together. “This is stupid,” he told himself. “There is probably some custodian who forgot to lock the church up before his siesta, and only realized his mistake when he woke up. But he must be a very careless or stupid man, or he would have checked to see if anyone had gone inside.” All the same, he did not want to knock again and risk that dreadful echo, so he decided to search for another door that might be open. Logic suggested there should be one on the north side, perhaps opening to a cloister or something similar. Crossing the nave with a certain trepidation (and carefully avoiding a glance at the blasphemous figure of Christ, though he imagined he could sense the cruel eyes bearing on him with an almost tangible force), he went in search.
Sure enough, there was a door in the corner of the north aisle, and it was not locked, though it seemed a long time since it had been opened. A strong thrust was needed to shift it, and it groaned horribly as it swung inward, dislodging a shower of dirt. A peculiar musty smell seeped into the air. Mr. Pearsall found himself peering at a flight of worn stone steps running downward into the darkness.
Now this did not look like the way out at all; indeed, the smell suggested that the lower chamber, whatever it was, was completely sealed from the outer air, and had been so for a very long time. It was a most unpromising route for one wishing to leave the building, and to this day Mr. Pearsall has never been able to give a satisfactory explanation of why he decided to descend those steps. He was already late, and after the unsettling effect of the mosaics, most of his exploratory zeal had evaporated, but nonetheless he could not resist the lure of the doorway. He wondered afterwards whether he was in full control of his movements anymore. The whole place bore a distinctly sinister air, but still he had to push the door fully open and take his first tentative steps into the darkness.
The stairs were long and curiously dank in spite of the dryness of the climate. Soon all trace of the light of the main body of the church (which had itself seemed so gloomy when he had first entered) had been lost, and he was obliged to take his cigarette lighter from his pocket and proceed by its flickering illumination. He turned a corner beneath a glowering archway of uncut stone, descended a ramp, and gasped at what he saw.
It was a catacomb. A long corridor opened before him, with side passages running from it. Perhaps the whole area beneath the nave was covered. And it was inhabited. A long double line of human forms stood along each passage. All ages and classes had their representatives here; men and women and infants, monks and warriors, learned scholars and ladies of fashion. They were dressed in clothes that must once have been their finest, furs and silks and embroidered gowns, now sadly moldering and decayed, but bearing still a glimmer of their former glories. And they had faces, for clearly much ingenuity had been expended to preserve the bodies, though with mixed degrees of success. There was a girl-child whose clothing looked at least two hundred years old, but who from her skin and hair might just have fallen asleep; but beyond her a man in priestly robes had lost his nose and his cheeks, and his eyes had decayed to blank milky globules; and further on the soldier in the chased steel breastplate, who was perhaps a mercenary from the Renaissance period, had lost his flesh entirely, and now grinned mindlessly with a naked skull.
Poor Mr. Pearsall! The effect would have been quite nasty enough under bright electric lights and surrounded by his fellow tourists; but here, on his own, locked in, and after already being alarmed and upset by those hideous mosaics, and furthermore with just a single weak flame to protect him from the darkness, the shock was overwhelming. Quite why he did not turn and bolt he has never managed to explain. He takes refuge in mysterious talk of “feeling a call” which dragged him onwards. Certainly it is irrefutable that he walked on down the passage, through the grisly ranks of the dead, horror mounting within him, but quite unable to save himself.
All the bodies had been there a very long time. Mr. Pearsall’s knowledge of the history of costume was not great, but he was fairly certain that none of the garments worn could be placed any later than the middle eighteenth century, and the majority seemed to be medieval. What was left of his rational mind told him that similar catacombs were not unknown elsewhere, but such a piece of information seemed extraordinarily useless. As he walked onward, he appeared to be moving back steadily in time toward the early middle ages. Very few of the faces had any flesh on them by this time; some were left almost naked, with their clothing in flimsy rags, and others had simply fallen and lay in heaps on the floor. But still he had to go onward until he reached the end.
He had lost all sense of direction by now, but suspected he was moving beneath the altar, beneath the Christ of the devil’s horns blessing and the malevolent glance. And here was the center of this labyrinth of death; a great throne of gilded wood, much rotted, where sat a body clad in the gorgeous robes and mitre of a bishop. This much Mr. Pearsall took in at a distance; but as he drew near, he would not look at the figure directly. He tried to force his eyes to look only at the slippers; he was sure he would lose his reason if he looked higher, but he could not fight as a force stronger than his mind raised his head gradually higher; the gold-embroidered cope, the skeletal hands with the episcopal ring loosely enclosing a bony finger, the crozier propped up in the other hand, the bones of the face bare of all flesh, the grinning yellow teeth, the eyes . . . the eyes! Not decayed at all, but alive, piercing, glaring! My God! The same eyes as Christ in the mosaic!
The lighter fell from Mr. Pearsall’s nerveless grasp and he plunged into darkness. It was a lighter of cylindrical shape, and he heard it roll tinkling away out of his reach. For a few seconds he scrabbled uselessly on the floor for it, then realized how pointless such a search was. He would have to find his way out in total darkness. How far was it? How many turns had he taken? He waved his arms in front a
nd to either side, walked a few paces, touched stone, turned, walked more until he met another obstacle, turned again . . . it was at this stage that he began to hear noises again; a horrible dry rustling, which he would have loved to think was a rat. It came from behind him. He moved quicker, and walked slap into one of the bodies. His face buried itself in the rotting fabric and he felt the lifeless arms slump across his shoulders. His nerve snapped entirely and he screamed; a muffled noise quickly extinguished. He ran at random, hit another body, and ran again, and struck again. Corpses were collapsing all around him, but still there was a rustling and a padding and a dry, gravelly cackling behind him, and it too was moving; not fast, but soon it would reach him if he could not find the stairs. He fell and cut his hands, and screamed again, but not from pain. He lost count of how many times he smashed into obstacles, until, bruised and bleeding, he could go no further, and cowered back against the stone wall. The rustling was quite close now. Light; he must have light! He had lost his cigarette lighter, he had no matches. Frantically his hands searched his pockets for a miracle. Of course! He had flash-cubes for his camera! With trembling fingers he pulled one out and fiddled for what seemed an eternity to fit it into place. He pressed the shutter-button and nothing happened. A dud! He turned it around and tried once more. Still nothing. The rustling was only inches away. Think, man, think! He had forgotten to wind on the film, so of course nothing would happen. Pull round the winding lever and try again . . . just time . . .
In the blinding instantaneous moment he saw; not more than a yard from his face; the golden robe, the mitre, the skull, and the eyes, the terrible eyes . . .
He must have fainted. When he awoke, it was bright daylight and he was lying on the back seat of the coach. Giuliano was leaning over him. The courier had been told where Mr. Pearsall had gone, and when he failed to return on time, Giuliano and Umberto had gone to the church to find him. Entering by the south door (which they emphatically denied was locked) they heard his screams from the crypt and saw the flash. They found him without much difficulty; he was within a few yards of the steps.
Giuliano was more relieved than annoyed, but he chided Mr. Pearsall for disturbing the bodies in the catacomb. Banging into them in the dark was careless and destructive, but as for deliberately dragging one body all that way from its resting place . . . and it being the body of a bishop too! . . .
Mr. Pearsall did not have the strength to argue.
BLACK MAN WITH A HORN by T. E. D. Klein
“Black Man With a Horn” marks a return to The Year’s Best Horror Stories by T. E. D. Klein, who had earlier appeared in DAW’s Series II and Series III. His few appearances here are certainly not a reflection on the quality of his writing: rather, Klein is an author who prefers to work in the novelette-novella length, meticulously creating his stories at the rate of about one every other year or three. This past year saw a positive outpouring of his work, with the publication of this novelette and a novella, “Children of the Kingdom,” in Kirby McCauley’s Dark Forces.
Klein is a native New Yorker, born there in 1947 and now living in Manhattan. Previously he taught high school in Maine, worked in Paramount Pictures’ story department, and he is currently editor of the new Twilight Zone Magazine. In addition to his fiction, Klein has written articles for the New York Times, as well as the story notes for Kirby McCauley’s horror anthology, Beyond Midnight. He holds degrees from Brown and Columbia, but it was during the four years he lived in Providence while attending the former university that Klein became interested in the writing of H. P. Lovecraft. Much as M. R. James influenced subsequent writers of supernatural fiction in Britain, Lovecraft inspired successive generations of writers to continue his “Cthulhu Mythos.” As a rule such continuations or pastiches have been awful beyond belief. “Black Man With a Horn” offers both proof that this need not be the case, as well as a bitter comment upon fandom’s obsessive dead-hero worship.
The Black [words obscured by postmark] was fascinating—I must get a snap shot of him.
—H. P. Lovecraft, postcard to E. Hoffmann Price, 7/23/1934
There is something inherently comforting about the first-person past tense. It conjures up visions of some deskbound narrator puffing contemplatively upon a pipe amid the safety of his study, lost in tranquil recollection, seasoned but essentially unscathed by whatever experience he’s about to relate. It’s a tense that says, “I am here to tell the tale. I lived through it.”
The description, in my own case, is perfectly accurate—as far as it goes. I am indeed seated in a kind of study: a small den, actually, but lined with bookshelves on one side, below a view of Manhattan painted many years ago, from memory, by my sister. My desk is a folding bridge table that once belonged to her. Before me the electric typewriter, though somewhat precariously supported, hums soothingly, and from the window behind me comes the familiar drone of the old air conditioner, waging its lonely battle against the tropic night. Beyond it, in the darkness outside, the small night-noises are doubtless just as reassuring: wind in the palm trees, the mindless chant of crickets, the muffled chatter of a neighbor’s TV, an occasional car bound for the highway, shifting gears as it speeds past the house . . .
House, in truth, may be too grand a word: the place is a green stucco bungalow just a single story tall, third in a row of nine set several hundred yards from the highway. Its only distinguishing features are the sundial in the front yard, brought here from my sister’s former home, and the jagged little picket fence, now rather overgrown with weeds, which she had erected despite the protests of neighbors.
It’s hardly the most romantic of settings, but under normal circumstances it might make an adequate background for meditations in the past tense. “I’m still here,” the writer says, adjusting to the tone. (I’ve even stuck the requisite pipe in mouth, stuffed with a plug of latakia.) “It’s over now,” he says. “I lived through it.”
A comforting premise, perhaps. Only, in this case, it doesn’t happen to be true. Whether the experience is really “over now” no one can say; and if, as I suspect, the final chapter has yet to be enacted, then the notion of my “living through it” will seem a pathetic conceit.
Yet I can’t say I find the thought of my own death particularly disturbing. I get so tired, sometimes, of this little room, with its cheap wicker furniture, the dull outdated books, the night pressing in from outside . . . And of that sundial out there in the yard, with its idiotic message. “Grow old along with me . . .”
I have done so, and my life seems hardly to have mattered in the scheme of things. Surely its end cannot matter much either.
Ah, Howard, you would have understood.
That, boy, was what I call a travel-experience!
—Lovecraft, 3/12/1930
If, while I set it down, this tale acquires an ending, it promises to be an unhappy one. But the beginning is nothing of the kind; you may find it rather humorous, in fact—full of comic pratfalls, wet trouser cuffs, and a dropped vomit-bag.
“I steeled myself to endure it,” the old lady to my right was saying. “I don’t mind telling you I was exceedingly frightened. I held on to the arms of the seat and just gritted my teeth. And then, you know, right after the captain warned us about that turbulence, when the tail lifted and fell, flip-flop, flip-flop, well—” she flashed her dentures at me and patted my wrist, “—I don’t mind telling you, there was simply nothing for it but to heave.”
Where had the old girl picked up such expressions? And was she trying to pick me up as well? Her hand clamped wetly round my wrist. “I do hope you’ll let me pay for the dry cleaning.”
“Madam,” I said, “think nothing of it. The suit was already stained.”
“Such a nice man!” She cocked her head coyly at me, still gripping my wrist. Though their whites had long since turned the color of old piano keys, her eyes were not unattractive. But her breath repelled me. Slipping my paperback into a pocket, I rang for the stewardess.
The earlier
mishap had occurred several hours before. In clambering aboard the plane at Heathrow, surrounded by what appeared to be an aboriginal rugby club (all dressed alike, navy blazers with bone buttons), I’d been shoved from behind and had stumbled against a black cardboard hatbox in which some Chinaman was storing his dinner; it was jutting into the aisle near the first-class seats. Something inside sloshed over my ankles—duck sauce, soup perhaps—and left a sticky yellow puddle on the floor. I turned in time to see a tall, beefy Caucasian with an Air Malay bag and a beard so thick and black he looked like some heavy from the silent era. His manner was equally suited to the role, for after shouldering me aside (with shoulders broad as my valises), he pushed his way down the crowded passage, head bobbing near the ceiling like a gas balloon, and suddenly disappeared from sight at the rear of the plane. In his wake I caught the smell of treacle, and was instantly reminded of my childhood: birthday hats, Callard and Bowser gift packs, and after-dinner bellyaches.
“So very sorry.” A bloated little Charlie Chan looked fearfully at this departing apparition, then doubled over to scoop his dinner beneath the seat, fiddling with the ribbon.
“Think nothing of it,” I said.
I was feeling kindly toward everyone that day. Flying was still a novelty. My friend Howard, of course (as I’d reminded audiences earlier in the week), used to say he’d “hate to see aeroplanes come into common commercial use, since they merely add to the goddam useless speeding up of an already overspeeded life.” He had dismissed them as “devices for the amusement of a gentleman”—but then, he’d only been up once, in the twenties, and for only as long as $3.50 would bring. What could he have known of whistling engines, the wicked joys of dining at thirty thousand feet, the chance to look out a window and find that the earth is, after all, quite round? All this he had missed; he was dead and therefore to be pitied.
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