Conjure House

by Gary Fry

  Had Anthony even told Larry that he was married, that he had a child? His mind was too entangled to decide with certainty. But then he rose and shook the hand the historian offered, trying to remove his attention from the man’s thumb protruding vulnerably from their tight clasp.

  “Thanks for all this. It’s appreciated,” Anthony said as he headed for the exit. His impression that Larry was able to read his mind only increased when the homeowner manoeuvred him intuitively along the hallway.

  “No problem,” the man replied, but as he let his visitor out, all Anthony could think was: Oh yes there are—lots of them.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Daddy was a scientist and Carl wanted to be just like him. But when Carl was grown up and had a wife and a child, he’d try not to be as odd as Daddy could sometimes be.

  Carl was kneeling against his bed, the science kit spread out on the duvet. It had innumerable tiny chemical tubes, a microscope he’d built from several plastic pieces, and an instruction manual to teach him how to do experiments.

  Experiments.

  He heard the ghastly old man’s voice from his dream so loudly it appeared to have been spoken nearby, but in a muffled form, as if coming from inside something.

  Like the wardrobe.

  Carl halted these thoughts and continued fiddling with the equipment. After deliberately putting his back to it earlier, he wouldn’t even look at the bulky piece of furniture, proving he wasn’t frightened.

  And what else could he prove? Daddy always said nothing was true until scientists had said it was, and so what might Carl discover today? He removed a slide from the box and placed it under the microscope’s lens. Then he put one eye over the viewfinder, pretending the sound of slithering he’d just heard was only the thin piece of glass—which had an insect flattened on top—being moved into position. If something had emerged from the wardrobe, it would have opened one of the doors, wouldn’t it? Everything had a body, and nothing was so thin it could slip through the tiny gap at the front…

  He refocused through the eyepiece. The insect on the slide was a fly, the instruction book had explained. Carl pushed aside a memory of the insects he’d seen charging towards his friend Suman’s face the other day, and examined the fly’s features up close.

  It was amazing. He could see every part in intricate detail. The insect had several legs and a segmented torso; its head was as big as the rest of it, and horrid feelers reached out from its bulbous face.

  Carl pulled away, suppressing a feeling that something was creeping across the floor behind him, its feet or whatever it used to move hissing on the carpet…But he knew this was just the cringing sensation he always suffered when looking at spiders and similar creatures. He sat back and stared at the wall, whose shadows were from bushes in the garden beyond the window, cast by hazy sunshine.

  If an insect this small could be seen so clearly using technology, were there things in the world too large to observe with the naked eye? Carl had visited seaports with his parents and gasped at ships so huge it was difficult to take them in at a glance. He’d also stood in front of city cathedrals, marvelling at their size. But both were man-made, and what he reflected on now were animals so immense their hideous complexities couldn’t be taken in without asking other people what they saw from other locations, or maybe even walking around to observe such beasts from many angles…

  Carl was being silly, however. He’d studied the animal kingdom at school and knew the biggest living creature in the world was the blue whale. As this had been proved by scientists, he didn’t know where his ridiculous new ideas had come from. Maybe they’d originated in all the books he’d read lately.

  He gazed at the copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on the bedside table, but again this put him in mind of the large item of furniture behind him. He hadn’t detected a creak of its hinges: that was just his imagination, as was the chilly sensation near his neck. He glanced again at the wall ahead. Those fuzzy shadows had gone and been replaced by a sharper figure, this one as tall as a man, but horribly shredded, as if the person casting it wasn’t complete…

  Carl had no time to panic. Hands were on his shoulders immediately—at any rate, these resembled hands in his peripheral gaze. As they snatched him to his feet and covered his mouth to prevent him screaming for help, Carl continued to think this was a person. But the fingers clutching his face were fragmenting, like bees clustered at a honeycomb, each one of the swarm yet doing its own thing.

  How had the intruder got inside the room? Carl saw the door leading to the hallway shut tight. Whoever this was grabbed the science kit, and with a jerky movement issued a laugh Carl knew his daddy might describe as “ironic.”

  The person’s arm was a blaze of activity, burning or simply struggling to remain solid. Wrapped in a grubby garment, the skin on the arm writhed as if flaking off, the way Carl had seen sunburned flesh crumble from his own limbs in summer. It was horrible. Nevertheless, not a piece dropped to the ground. As the figure guided Carl towards the wardrobe and the door creaked open to reveal the boy he’d met this week—Suman smiled broadly, his eyes frighteningly wide—Carl’s churning captor left nothing behind of his rotting body.

  It was a man, or very nearly one, because he rattled all the stuff in the box and then spoke in a dreadful voice.

  “Just the thing. We’ll have some fun now. Science be-damned! I seek a more sophisticated methodology.”

  The boy in the wardrobe nodded, as if obediently agreeing with Carl’s abductor. Behind Suman a number of hairy figures the same childlike height heralded their master’s entry with a flurry of thumb-less hands.

  Then Carl was shoved inside the wardrobe, whose rear panel had again disappeared, and the day went out as if a nighttime as final as death had fallen on the planet forever.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  His knowledge was drawing together. Despite the strangeness of everything he’d learned lately, Anthony must consider it with scientific rigour. That was his occupation, after all.

  He reached one of four roads near the village roundabout and grew frustrated as a car approached, preventing him from crossing. Nevertheless, the delay offered him an opportunity to examine the block of stone he recalled from childhood. It was set on grass at the heart of the roundabout, and after peeing in diminishing light, he was able to examine, for a first time with adult eyes, the curious shape carved into its face.

  Standing beside the stone, Anthony fingered the weird arrangement of lines and curves. Was this an ancient symbol intended to ward off evil? Perhaps former residents of Deepvale had been superstitious, and now he knew they’d had good reason.

  He snapped up his gaze, telling himself that a figure he’d just spotted in his peripheral vision had been Derek Gardiner wearing his sombre uniform. Anyone other than a local official would have been too formally dressed in this age. But the person had now vanished around a bend in the road and Anthony was unable to conform his impression.

  He continued moving, headed back towards his late parents’ street. Another person with a similarly anachronistic appearance moved to his left, but it was only the vicar standing in his church doorway. As soon as Anthony glanced that way, the man stepped back into the building, as if afraid of him. But Anthony couldn’t worry about this now. Up ahead, a cloud of flies emerged from a bush in a garden on the corner of the grove. He wafted them away, trying to focus his thoughts. The faint laughter he detected was surely just a storm brewing in a sky rife with purplish clouds.

  The village had a sinister past, much of it involving Peter Suman and his occupancy of The Conjurer’s House over a hundred years ago. But that was no reason not to reenter this property…was it?

  Nevertheless, as he slowed outside its grounds, Anthony’s heart rate started racing. He advanced up the path, beyond a garden whose weeds had surely been crushed by the pernicious boy Carl had befriended, a child so misbehaved he probably attended a special school outside Deepvale. This sensibly explained why Suman wasn’
t known at the local comprehensive. Any other material about missing thumbs, vanishing kids, the God’s-eye view—all were only rumours distorted across centuries. Simon had gone missing, simple as that. Bad people were always around, like the thugs who’d murdered Anthony’s mum and dad. It was foolish to invent monsters; such creatures belonged only in fanciful art, in the material his friends composed, wrote and painted…

  Despite his logical reasoning, Anthony realised he was steeling himself to go down into the house’s cellar.

  Standing in the lobby, he heard none of the strange music he’d detected on his last visit, nor any more voices in his head. He was alone here.

  “So what are you waiting for?” he asked in a forceful whisper, and only echoes replied, racing up the stairwell and along the upper hallway, as if the building was full of people.

  He crossed for the door under the stairs, which came open with a firm hand around its greasy handle; the frame released it with a sound like a wet kiss. It hadn’t been locked…and that was a good sign, wasn’t it? He gave himself no opportunity for delay, pacing down the row of stone steps. The farther he moved, the darker the space ahead grew. He removed his cigarette lighter, and with a flick of his thumb summoned a flame.

  Thumb…summon…

  But he refused to allow such foolish notions to occupy his mind, especially any derived from the disturbing dreams he’d suffered since arriving in the village. All had been apocalyptical, involving the Earth besieged by something unspeakably huge, which engulfed the planet in fire and mayhem…

  Stupid. Stupid.

  He had to get on.

  Anthony reached the foot of the flight in less than a minute. He detected a dank smell whose source was indeterminable, because the circle of light thrown by his wavering flame was little more than an arm’s length. He turned, and the illumination spread like a contagious disease, setting more of the long room alive with ambient flickers and retreating shadow.

  It was mostly empty, he noticed, but this failed to reassure him. The stone floor was littered with debris, and while edging forwards, he thought he perceived small footprints in this gunk, as if someone—or considerably more than one person—had recently ventured here. This must be just kids in the area, Anthony decided, understanding all too well what children got up to without their parents’ knowledge. He himself had been no different as a youngster, along with Paul, Lisa, Andy and—

  He stopped that thought, because an unbidden question had just occurred to him: If children have been here, why had the door frame stuck with undisturbed grease?

  Anthony was reluctant to pursue this enquiry, but then realised he had no choice. Such mental activity was a habit, an irrepressible aspect of his discipline. And soon he had an answer to his private question.

  There must be another route into the cellar.

  But how was this possible? He raked the flame around, seeing only plain brick-built walls in each direction. Nevertheless, he thought he could hear water running faintly nearby. He looked again at the footprints and noticed that the detritus around them seemed blurred, as if these impressions hadn’t been made by shoes at all.

  The children, they sang the world…

  “No,” Anthony hissed, suppressing the recollection of either a voice he’d detected during his first visit here or something the historian had told him later. Everything grew confused, elements of his subconscious invading consciousness.

  That’s where you are now, Ant: in the building’s darker recesses, like the mind’s depths, the place where race memories stir…and soon not only there…

  “No, no, no.”

  His latest mental comment hadn’t been communicated in the past; he was certain of that. And the worst thing was that the voice had possessed neither the tone of the one he’d heard upstairs nor that of Larry Cole.

  It had been a child speaking.

  Anthony stood deathly still, thinking hard.

  Carl? he wondered. But no, he was safe at home with his mother.

  Then…Simon?

  Whatever the truth proved to be, Anthony had to work fast, if only to quell these savage misgivings. A second path into the cellar…could that be true? But the walls around him were complete.

  Another worrying thought occurred to him. This room would be as wide as the house, wouldn’t it? Yes, of course it would. And so why did he feel so cramped here? The sensation was more than the mild claustrophobia he’d suffered since stepping down; the cellar looked smaller than it ought to be.

  What if one or all of the walls were false? What if there was a cavity behind each? And what if this contained—

  Preventing too much information from hindering him, Anthony paced forwards in the gloom and touched the wall farthest from the staircase. This gave on to the side of the property occupied by the lake. Now this was decided, he believed he heard that muted gurgle of water more loudly.

  But there was no break in the wall’s brick facade.

  He shuffled along its coarse expanse, using the lighter to guide him. In the far corner, where a fall of debris was stacked on the ground, he spotted a shadow in the brick deeper than it should be. Was this a gap? He moved closer, even though his pulse drummed in his ears and his hands had started shaking inexorably. Then he looked again.

  A narrow opening was situated where the two walls met. It looked as if the parting had occurred naturally, where the stone had eroded.

  Or had the loose material on the floor been pushed out from the other side?

  With his free hand, Anthony began pulling away bricks whose cement crumbled like dead flesh from dry bones. He’d soon forged a large hole, broad enough for an adult to squeeze through. It was just as he’d suspected, then: children had crawled down a tunnel from the moors and entered the building this way…But that didn’t explain why the false wall had been erected in the first place, did it?

  His mind alive with threat, Anthony pushed the lighter into the opening he’d fashioned and gazed inside.

  A second wall, this one clearly older and much filthier, stood a yard behind the first.

  There must be a channel between the two. Anthony knew at once this would extend all the way around the room, because it stretched behind the two false walls at this junction. That was why the cellar seemed too small. Someone had constructed an inner barrier in the cellar…but why?

  Anthony knew there was only one way to discover.

  He’d have to go inside.

  A putrid stench, surely from the lake, grew stronger now he’d made this decision. He lifted one leg over the crown of the half-demolished wall and used his shifting weight to pitch his body forwards. His flame guttered but remained alive—surely not something that could be said about the contents of the passageway. He’d yet to chance upon anything horrible, but now knew there’d be something bad here. It somehow felt inevitable.

  Panic forced him to press his back against the most recent addition to the property. The newer wall began tottering and then groaned in such a way that, for one awful second, Anthony imagined a cruel old man shambling down the stairs on the other side, seeking to entomb him…But when the brick barrier succumbed to a firm shoulder, a din struck up as it leant inwards and fell with an immense thud.

  Moments later, once dust had bloomed and settled, Anthony saw the first of the chairs.

  Until now, his lighter had proved insufficient to illuminate the house’s secret lair. But with more space for the flame to perform, sparks and glints scuttled along the rigid framework of this dreadful device.

  It was a seat like no other. Residue of rope was entwined around each arm and leg, but this looked harmless compared to the blades hanging loose on each side. These had undoubtedly been designed to remove any occupant’s thumbs. Anthony simply knew that was true. He needn’t reflect again on Larry Cole’s grisly story.

  He felt sick, a shudder rattling up his spine.

  But now he had more to do. Shuffling with repulsion through the gap in front of the torture device, he assaulted
more of the wall, which relented at once, as if someone was standing beyond it and pulling…

  God, he wished Melanie was here, or any of his friends, or rather all four together, along with his son. But none of them was, and it was good that this was the case. It was he who’d suffered the brunt of this tragedy, and who must also seek the terrible truth.

  After another quarter of an hour, during which Anthony heard wind thumping against the building above like a wild animals charging down from the hills, he’d knocked over most of the false wall…and was free to observe his discovery in all its ghastly detail.

  Even though his lighter, consuming fuel by the second, swayed and flickered, he counted twenty of the devices, each positioned equidistantly around the broader room. All bore fragments of tether on their arms, as well as two thick steel blades attached by bolts to their rotting wood.

  The cellar was little more than a torture chamber.

  Anthony was deeply disturbed by his findings, and felt like weeping. But then he resisted an attack of nausea and started moving again, hoping his motion would prompt useful thought.

  What he’d discovered was bad enough—in advance of fleeing the village, the madman must have walled up evidence of his dreadful act—but there remained an unanswered question. Anthony glanced again at those footprints on the floor, each damp and fuzzy in appearance. Then he asked himself again: how had intruders got inside the building?

  Sidestepping quickly, he cast his failing flame between each ghastly seat. He fancied he heard a chorus of children singing, but decided this was just his impish subconscious at work. And indeed, wasn’t that the point? The lunatic Anthony refused to name had used kids to generate a primal shriek, an insane attempt to summon entities from beyond the stars.