If it hadn’t been for my experience in the plane I would have thought the diary’s contents a confabulated fantasy. As it was, in the darkness, alone as I was, having just read that suggestive little tome, a dread gripped me with an overpowering sensation of menace.
I quickly tried to open the bedroom window, but it was jammed. Now trapped in that tiny bedroom, nothing helped to reassure my panic, especially when I heard the something move into the small livingroom, and then a rapid flapping sound like those of innumerable wings, and in an instant, wrong-sounding footsteps, heading through the passageway in my direction.
I moved as quickly and as I silently as I could towards the open doorway. I didn’t dare close the door since then the thing in the passageway would be made too obviously aware of my intrusion.
I waited breathlessly by the side of the doorway. I planned to bolt as soon as whatever was coming passed through it or passed the bedroom altogether.
As I looked from my corner I saw sideways from the door entrance, entering, a white malformed massy head, on a thick palpitating stalk of a neck, with what appeared like huge protruding teeth atop it and a slimy proboscis dangling down. Around the creature’s head I discerned, scattered haphazardly around it, several deep-set and disturbing eyes. I saw no more as now in complete delirium, I instantly decided to run and jump out the window.
#
The pilot said I appeared bloody, wet and banging on the outside of the plane. He hurriedly let me in. With me I carried the diary though I don’t remember having grabbed it. After this I begin again to remember things, my last memory being a sensation of falling. We were both in an awful state. The things had manifested themselves to him also. He was surprised to see me alive.
Looking out the window of the plane I saw that the cursed fog was not as thick here. I could see the weird varied shapes of the creatures outside, hundreds of them writhing blasphemously atop the foothills, circling a huge jagged rock of protruding mountain. They seemed to sing and I could hear answering echoes farther down and from above the receding mountains. The world was filled with their buzz. A terrible vision overpowered my imagination. I envisioned those inhuman buzzing sounds in the night, atop those solitary peaks, spreading like signal fires atop the mountains; first here, then into the main of the Andes Mountains, and still vastly further up into Central America, all through Mexico and into the North American Sierra Madre and Canadian Rockies, until finally those voices disappear into mist and snow in the Arctic, far on the other side of the world; all the while unheard by knowing human ears.
Long, unhallowed hours passed in that small plane, while that maddening noise continued. We saw lights moving through the mist and clouds and had wild impressions of monstrous goings-on and huge things moving just beyond and above our vision. I thought I heard the sounds of floating heavy machinery through the hard, pattering rain.
“We are being visited from another world or another dimension, my friend,” the pilot once said to me in a crazed laughing fit, “or we are visiting them. Maybe they came on a falling hollow meteor? What demonic technology they must possess! Have you noticed there are no animals here? Maybe we are being taken over.”
“Shut up!” I remember yelling more than once at him that night.
The strange buzzing noise continued (is it any wonder that even now I cannot stand the buzzing of insects or the sound of crickets on lonely dark nights outside my house) and then I heard the loud shattering of a passenger window. I could dimly see outside the broken window a grotesque equine-like quivering shape, and its malformed hand groping blindly and wildly in the plane. It moaned loudly and I felt at once a sense of revulsion and outright horror, for what else could I have expected to happen, since the many-eyed monstrosity also carried reverently a red dress, and I was convinced was the same nightmare creature I’d seen in the house and was somehow the author of the tome I’d brought, the owner of her own stolen diary; or perhaps even more grotesquely, was somehow a symbiosis of the whole family, and other wildlife beasts, mixed into one alien thing.
The creature eventually stopped and left to join the others. They buzzed all night in the mountains and paid us no heed.
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport,” I quoted more than once in that terrible ordeal, as I succumbed slowly and completely to the menace of those beings’ otherness and suggestive outside power.
#
We were found the next afternoon by a military helicopter from the Chilean city of Puerto Williams. The sun was out and in its clear glow, with the past day and nights occurrence now gone, the solitary landscape looked beautiful and peaceful –an oasis from the noise and bustle of the rest of the world.
We were at a lost to explain what had happened. A rescuer told us that a black-out had also hit that night in certain parts of southern Chile and Argentina. She also laughed when she told us that strange lights were also reported in the sky. I asked the woman circumspectly if there had ever been a small lone homestead far in the distance, by the wooded area and in the expanse of grassland (since now there was nothing I could see) and she answered, “There hasn’t been a house on that spot for years and years now.”
It would be an understatement to say I don’t have answers to all my questions and I don’t expect ever to find any. I also don’t know what the meaning of the experience was with the cryptic beings, if there is one. I have heard, though, rumors of vast underground cities built by no human hands lying deserted for eons beneath the ice shields of Antarctica and below certain mounds in Oklahoma, which might shed some light on my experience. I’ll never find out, however, since I don’t like the sight of mountains or high hills and I also don’t travel to secluded places anymore, preferring to spend my time within well-lit city limits.
Eventually our misadventure was blamed on pilot error.
-
-
Julio Toro San Martin was born in Chile and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He spends most of his days working and nights reading almost anything from history and weird/fantasy fiction to Elizabethan drama, to the latest bestselling novels. He writes because he is driven to and can’t imagine doing anything else. He has had two stories published by Innsmouth Free Press and also has a story in the Lovecraftian anthology Future Lovecraft.
Illustration by Nickolas Gucker.
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NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.
At Best an Echo
by Bradley H. Sinor
“Elena,” muttered Abraham Van Helsing as he looked down at the silver framed photograph in his hand. The flickering light from the gas flame on the wall covered the glass with a yellow glare. It wasn’t necessary to see the picture; he knew each and every inch of it.
It had been taken six months after Elena and he had been married in 1880. The two of them were stiff and unmoving, waiting as the photographer got everything ready to expose the plate. He had his hand resting on her shoulder as she perched on a small stool, a parasol across her knees. But there was a gleam in Elena’s eyes, hinting that she was a moment away from saying something either profound or amazingly funny. That was the woman he loved.
He flexed the fingers of his hands, still remembering the feel of her hand in his, and his own fingers wrapped tightly around a sharp obsidian knife. He wiped away a single tear as he stared at the picture.
“Abraham, have you gone deaf?”
Van Helsing looked up with a start. On some level he had heard his name b
eing spoken, one of any number of sounds that echoed up and down the halls of the University Of Amsterdam’s Medical School.
He blinked twice and realized that a familiar figure had invaded his office. The tall, imposing figure of Dr. Joseph Bell, a black medical bag in his hand, stood there smiling. Bell was sixty-three years old, but with the amount of energy he seemed to radiate, and in spite of the shock of white hair, the man could easily have passed for twenty years younger.
“Joseph! It’s good to see you,” Van Helsing advanced toward his friend. Bell’s grip was still strong.
The two had known each other for more than two decades, since they had investigated a matter involving a plague and an alleged curse. Bell was the first one to scoff and proclaim the supernatural events that Van Helsing had investigated to be nothing but folkloric poppycock and mummery. That had not stopped the two of them from becoming friends.
“What are you doing here at this time of the year? I believe that the semester is not yet over,” said Van Helsing, filling two glasses with sherry and passing one to his friend. “I would have expected you to be terrorizing medical students to the point that they would prefer those bleak Scottish winters to missing one of your lectures.”
“Indeed, these are the final weeks of winter term. Some of my colleagues seemed to think I have been working too hard, so I asked Arthur Doyle to fill in for awhile and decided to come here for a visit,” said Bell.
“So, Abraham, I see the food is still excellent at the Medlenbrough,” Bell continued.
“Up to your usual tricks, Joseph?” Van Helsing made no effort to conceal his actions as he glanced down at his sleeves and pants legs looking for any telltale sign that might have given Bell any clues to his eating habits.
“I would hardly call my minor observations tricks,” Bell told him. “It is just the skill of a good diagnostician, a skill that every doctor should have.”
“I know what you look for and how you are able to diagnose these things about people, but it still amazes me,” chuckled Van Helsing.
“In this case it was just two things: in the pocket of your overcoat I noticed the Daily Journal. The Medlenbrough always stocks the latest papers for its morning patrons. Since the date on the paper is today’s, and the delivery label with the name of the hotel is clearly visible, I was able to make my conclusion.”
“And the second thing?” said Van Helsing.
“Your appointment book is open on your desk. I noticed that you had written that you could be reached at the hotel between 8:00 and 10:00 this morning,” said Bell.
“As always, obvious and elementary,” Van Helsing said. He saw the wince on Bell’s face at the context of the last word. “Once again I see the reason that young Doyle modeled that detective of his on you.”
“Humph,” said Bell. “The less said about that, the better, I should think.”
Bell picked up the medical bag he had carried in and set it in front of Van Helsing. From inside it he brought out a small leather folio. “I want you to know that I have violated several British laws in obtaining this for you.”
Van Helsing picked it up and unfastened the leather ties that held it closed. Inside were a dozen parchment pages. The material felt odd, different, and not just from age. The only other time he had felt anything similar had been in one of the most guarded rooms in the British Museum. He had gone there to consult copies of the Al Azief, the so-called Necronomicon, and other volumes that it was better the British public did not know about.
“All that remains of the Kollier-Croft Codex,” he murmured.
“I thought you might recognize it; apparently a few pages were salvaged,” said Bell.
“Indeed. I’ve been trying to get a look at this for five years, since I first learned of its existence. Baron Carlson refused to even admit that he had it,” said Van Helsing.
“Oh, he had it, all right. Let us say that saving the life of the Baron’s grandson gave me a bit more leverage than you had. I made a weekend visit to his country home, and this came away with me. I just borrowed it, of course,” said Bell.
Exactly how Bell had managed that bit of prestidigitation, Van Helsing could only speculate. He had heard rumors of how well it, and the rest of the Baron’s occult library, was hidden. Yet it didn’t surprise him that his friend had been able to acquire the codex pages.
“If you were willing to take that risk, Joseph, have you come to believe that the secrets in these pages will enable me to help Elena?” said Van Helsing.
“I believe that you believe they will, old friend. If having this helps you, it was worth the risk,” said Bell. “I only wish the way out of that padded room was in them.”
Van Helsing had spread the pages out on his desk, pushing everything else off to the side. Written in Greek and Latin, the pages appeared to be part of a traveler’s
narrative, illustrated with some highly detailed renderings of animals and plants. The writing was crabbed in places, running letters together as if the writer had been rushed and uncertain if he would be able to finish.
As he read line after line, Van Helsing found himself thinking of a Latin tutor he’d had as a boy of nine. The Reverend James Murray had been convinced that his young charge would never master the tongue of Rome.
After several minutes the text began to change, letters blurring and reforming, the illustrations changing as well into things that no naturalist of any age had described. No longer was he looking at a travel narrative, but descriptions of horrific ancient ceremonies, spells that invoked powers and beings from the darkest places of the universe.
Van Helsing laid his finger a quarter of the way down one page, tracing a circular symbol. The pen work was painfully fine and detailed, leaving the impression of one drawing carefully lain on another, layer upon layer.
Looking at it, he had the feeling of standing at the bottom of a huge mural and being able to see only a tiny bit of it. The desire to see the rest, to know its secrets, was like a tidal wave rolling over him, obliterating his awareness of everything else.
“Abraham, no!” The voice was female, distant but clear and commanding.
Van Helsing jerked backwards, his vision filled with the familiar sights of his university office. He had to struggle to draw a breath, grabbing onto the edge of the desk to steady himself.
Bell sprinted across the room, grabbing his friend by the arm, as Van Helsing’s legs went out from underneath him. The Scotsman managed to guide the other man into the chair.
“Easy there, Abraham,” Bell said as he loosened Van Helsing’s tie and began to check his pulse.
“I’m all right.”
“That’s a matter of opinion,” said Bell. “You’re as pale as a ghost. Your heart is hammering like you had just run a marathon. I turn my back for only a minute, then it’s like a hurricane hit this room, everything goes flying, and you drop like a stringless marionette.”
“Did I do this?” He gestured at the scattered items on the floor.
“I’m reasonably certain that you did, since we are alone in here,” Bell said. “That is, unless you have a resident ghost.”
“That would be a simple explanation.”
“Simple explanations are sometimes the best. But let’s leave all explanations till later. Perhaps we should call a halt to this matter, at least for the moment,” suggested Bell. “I think a bite of supper might be good for you. May I suggest we adjourn to the Medlenbrough?”
“That might help,” agreed Van Helsing.
# # #
Since the weather was terrible, it had been raining for two days straight, the dining room at The Medlenbrough was nearly empty. Not that they would have been denied a choice of tables under other circumstances, but the maitre-d knew Van Helsing well, so there was little doubt that they would get a good table.
“So, you just walked off and left your students,” said Van Helsing as he bit into the last piece of his filet.
“Indeed I did. Call it their holiday from me. Si
nce everyone had been nagging at
me to take some time off, I decided to do it, just not when they thought I would. There was another matter that brought me here.” Bell produced an envelope from inside his jacket and passed it over to Van Helsing. “That young Dr. Simmons that you wrote me about seems perfectly suited to fill the position in the medical school. I thought I would bring his acceptance letter myself, but I think you should have the pleasure of actually giving it to him.”
“You have made a wise choice. Mark will be an asset to your staff, although it will be quite a transition from the University of Amsterdam to watching the misty dawns over Edinburgh Castle.”
“I should say so,” said Bell. “Just be sure you caution him to be ready for our Scottish winters. They are a bit more brisk than you have been experiencing here.”
Van Helsing inclined his head for a moment as he noticed a small man dressed in a dark, slightly rumpled, suit approaching their table.
“Good evening, Inspector,” he said.
“Good evening, Herr Professor. I am sorry to disturb your dinner. They told me at the University that you were dining here.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Inspector Hollaman. Allow me to present my friend and colleague, Dr. Joseph Bell of the University of Edinburgh. Joseph, this is James Augustus Hollaman, one of the bright lights of the Amsterdam police department.”
“A pleasure, Inspector,” said Bell.
“The pleasure is mine, Herr Doctor. I hope you will forgive the intrusion. I need to discuss a matter of great importance with Prof. Dr. Van Helsing.”
“Anything you can say to me you can say to Dr. Bell; he is utterly trustworthy,” said Van Helsing.
“Sir, you must come with me. There has been an incident at the asylum that resulted in a death,” said the policeman.
“At the asylum?” Van Helsing felt the color draining out of his face.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011 Page 46
