Conjure House

by Gary Fry

  The speaker lingered in shadows, but Anthony found it difficult to examine these properly. His attention had been drawn elsewhere.

  Carl was being shoved towards him, but this clearly wasn’t horrifying enough to satisfy whoever had abducted him…because now there was something worse to come to terms with.

  The person doing the shoving was the same height as Anthony’s son, the same build, and—most disturbingly—the same age.

  It was Simon, Anthony’s long-dead younger brother.

  And he was smiling his no longer innocent smile.

  THIRTY-TWO

  By the time Melanie reached the end of the grove and turned into the village centre, her mind had cleared enough to think with useful purpose.

  What was her husband up to? Their son was involved, for Christ’s sake! How dare he include his childhood friends without her?

  The more she considered the issue, however, the less she trusted her conclusion. Anthony surely wouldn’t gamble on the safety of Carl. He’d once lost another boy he’d loved, and was unlikely to be negligent again with family.

  These thoughts made Melanie question her motivations for walking into Deepvale. If the key events were taking place inside that house she’d just passed, why was she moving farther away? But to accept all her nebulous suspicions since arriving in the village, she’d need to admit that the world wasn’t rational, that there were things beyond the ken of human comprehension. And even though her academic discipline—literature—showed how mysterious experience could be, she knew that losing grip on reality was dangerous, and wasn’t prepared to go there.

  Although her mind rioted with suppressed imagery (some of which she’d dreamed about recently), her body possessed its own agenda. She kept on walking and soon entered the high street in which shops and housing stood silent. It was four o’clock, the sky faded to the shade of a bruise. The streetlamps had been triggered, casting a weak glow around her vicinity, which was disconcerting because it was unoccupied. Where were all Deepvale’s residents?

  Surely at this time, stores should be open and people milling about…But there was nobody here at all. She glanced left and right, and then up ahead and behind her. The area was deserted. Perhaps most of the villagers had joined the hunt for her boy, and if that were true, she felt grateful. She might be willing to move here, after all, especially if it proved to be an altruistic community uncorrupted by modernity, by the jaded city-dwellers’ mindset she found dispiriting in Leeds.

  At that moment, she heard movement from the opposite pavement. This appeared to be coming from inside a small bus shelter, which, unlike many back home, hadn’t been vandalised. Could any of the thugs she’d spotted that morning be loitering inside, ready to pounce upon a vulnerable woman alone? But this wasn’t important; she now had more crucial matters to consider. She crossed the lane to ask the unseen denizens whether they’d seen Carl, a little boy surely even hooligans wouldn’t hurt.

  A gust of wind swept her faster towards her target. When she reached its single window, she threw out her hands to prevent herself from being hurt. But she mustn’t worry about herself. Her son might be in danger.

  “Hello?” she said, perceiving only sluggish motion through the milky perspex pane. Ineffectual light from the stars and the moon crammed the shelter with dark shadow, to such a degree the occupants appeared to writhe. Maybe this was a young couple kissing on the only seat inside. Now Melanie had adjusted her posture, the man-made light nearby assisted her vision. Then she realised that there were indeed two figures in there. Their bodies seemed indivisible, however, and the clothes they wore looked bizarre. Was this some new fashion? That could true, but the garments she observed on the duo looked dated and formal, like…well, like the outfits seen in pictures from previous centuries, but precisely which Melanie was unable to say.

  Then the two figures again shifted.

  Melanie gasped and immediately hurried away. No, she hadn’t seen that. It was too senseless to contemplate. She must remain reasonable, using logic to reach a sensible conclusion. That was what she’d often told Anthony, wasn’t it? That everything had a rational explanation.

  While fleeing, however, she found it difficult to rob her mind of the way the couple in the shelter had been merged at their skulls. The flesh of one had joined with that of the other, and then the two faces glaring up had looked neither old nor young, but an impossible composite of all ages: no hair, wrinkleless, innocent in gaze and yet heavy with jowl.

  They’d been like babies trying to be old people.

  “Ridiculous.”

  Speaking the word aloud, Melanie hurried for the rest of Deepvale. By now, the hills around the village stirred with activity. Surely only inclement weather was getting the better of all the natural features out there: the standing stones, innumerable clusters of trees, and the untenanted lake beside that old house…Again she wondered what her husband learned and had yet to tell her. She knew his informant had been a local historian, but was uncertain which of the many properties in the village was his.

  At that moment, these thoughts were driven out of her head. She’d drawn abreast of the toy shop she and her family had visited earlier. The door had just been barged open from inside to allow several figures to exit. Melanie initially experienced relief; after all, here were all three generations of the males associated with this business. The youngest was uppermost—the boy her husband had talked to—and directly behind was the lad’s father, the store’s owner. But she was sure she’d heard that the older man—the one who’d run the place when Anthony had been a child—was dead.

  He couldn’t be, however: he now brought up the rear of this familial queue.

  This wasn’t the only frightening aspect of them. Maybe due to a freak accident, the threesome had become strangely conjoined, like Siamese triplets or…the gingerbread men she’d cooked last night, which had bleared together in the hot oven. It was as if each generation was seeking to unite, several temporal perspectives forged together into a single psyche, their memories meshing to reach a collective truth.

  Melanie didn’t know where she derived these notions—perhaps from conversations she and her husband had often enjoyed, about life, the universe and whatever else captured their interest. But then she screamed and stumbled backwards, seeking to flee. Before long, however, cold illumination from the heavens, eclipsing that of ineffectual streetlamps, drew her attention to more people, each staggering out of their homes and bearing similar travesties of combined flesh.

  She must be hallucinating, all her nightmares since arriving here supplanting her grip on reality. All these groups looked as if they were about to fuse, maybe because the properties from which they’d emerged were now too full to house so many residents.

  They came together like puppets, visibly bound together by torsos and countless appendages. It was as if every generation was trying to occupy the same spatial territory. Melanie, in crippling fright, believed her view was supported when she observed the outfits they wore. Her PhD proposal had hinted at this interpretation. Here were people in plain rags from the Middle Ages, others in elaborate costumes from the Elizabethan period, more in the austere garments of the nineteenth century, and finally people just like Melanie, dressed in relatively contemporary gear.

  He’s seeking to collapse time. She’d recently heard this phrase, maybe from her husband, and many others like it. He’s seeking the God’s-eye view…

  If this was true, who was he? Had Anthony referred to Peter Suman?

  Yes, this was the man he’d discussed after consultation with—oh, what was his name?—with Larry Cole.

  What insanity had now beset Deepvale?

  Despite all these enquiries, Melanie was unable to shift her attention from the figures shambling in the high street.

  There were far too many of them. The owners of each property stumbled out to join others retreating from neighbouring buildings. Melanie gazed at these homes, disturbed to realise that their roofs shimmered in th
e light from the heavens, first looking thatched, then thick tiled, and finally sporting modern asphalt. The windows also switched between twentieth-century uPVC and older lead-hatched glass; some even developed wooden shutters redolent of a more bygone age.

  Then she returned her attention to the vast body of flesh forming in front of her.

  Decrepit gaits coexisted with infantlike visages. Some people yet to be sucked into this ensemble were bald, but it was impossible to decide whether this arose from youth or seniority. Melanie recalled standing last night in her late in-laws’ lounge and trying to imagine what Anthony’s friends—Paul, Lisa and Andy—had looked like as youngsters. She speculated in a similar way now, but this time nature provided assistance. Of the folk coalescing into one sentient bulk, only one thing was true: they were simultaneously all ages at once.

  Time held no sway here.

  Transfixion giving way to terror, Melanie turned to depart…or rather she would have done if an identical crowd whose members appeared to be melting into each other hadn’t appeared from beyond the roundabout with that mysterious stone at its heart.

  How large was the village’s population—about two thousand? If so, what she now witnessed was impossible. There might be double that number, perhaps treble; and this figure only accounted for those presently visible. In the residential parts of Deepvale, many people had already filled the streets, their entwined frames rippling like a mass of water. Observing those nearby, Melanie realised that different members wore historically specific items of clothing, and that in the fading light, each bore a posture that belied her attempts to age them.

  Old…young…old…young…

  The housing and shops also flickered between past and present…past and present…

  It was enough to drive any onlooker mad.

  The wind became ambitious, howling in Melanie’s ears. Then the region grew darker and curiously silent.

  Something rumbled overhead.

  Was a storm approaching? But she wouldn’t wait to discover. She rushed away, towards a path running alongside the supermarket, which had now lost its modern décor and become a picture-postcard stable with many horses braying inside.

  Thoughts about animals only heightened Melanie’s panic. Racing along the path, she glanced up at the moors. There was little illumination there, perhaps because the nearby streetlamps were unable to reach that far…or was it rather that a vast presence now filled the sky?

  She looked upwards. Nothing was visible except scraps of cloud or at least shapes resembling this. The heavens were pricked by stars, and a full moon sat pale and bloated, like a pallid face.

  That was when the ground started shaking.

  Melanie halted, looking forwards. She struggled to suppress an impression that all the bodies she’d fled gave chase in terrible unison, a ubiquitous, Godlike creature made out of previously separate people and boasting innumerable points of view.

  Then these reflections were curtailed by the sight of many black shapes dropping onto the Yorkshire Dales. Melanie saw them thrust downwards, little more than featureless silhouettes against a faded background. She was put in mind of the spiders she’d shaken from her son’s hair near The Conjurer’s House. There were similarly lots of them, and after hitting the ground, they scuttled thunderously around, barging aside objects that cracked like toys underfoot. These were trees, Melanie realised; or dry-stone walls; or anything else that got in the way of such indifferent entities.

  The search party, she thought, but this was all her startled mind seemed capable of.

  Nevertheless, she continued racing along the path she’d located, praying her husband knew what he was doing.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “S-Simon!” said Anthony, his voice full of tears. Then an equally pressing concern made him yell, “Carl.”

  “Daddy!” his son replied, also crying and looking as horrified as his father must appear.

  Anthony was bewildered. Too much improbable information had now invaded his cluttered mind. All he could do was stand and stare, his body shaking with knowledge his psyche didn’t wish to process.

  His little brother—alive. His little brother looking no older than he was when he’d vanished fifteen years ago. His little brother clutching Anthony’s son in a far-from-friendly way…

  All Anthony could do was pace back, hoping his childhood friends—who’d also known Simon, before becoming adults without, as evidenced by their work, losing any youthful wonder—would come to his assistance, because he didn’t know how to respond alone.

  “Hello, Ant,” said the boy holding Carl, grinning so widely the black mole on his upper lip squirmed. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Not in the grand scheme of things,” came the voice of an unseen person, hiding behind the only wall up here, the one demarcating the stairwell.

  Other figures now advanced up the steps, their soft tread shuffling against cold stone and putting Anthony in mind of the footprints he’d seen in the cellar.

  The newcomers couldn’t be Paul, Lisa or Andy, because they’d already entered the uppermost room of The Conjurer’s House. Anthony turned to confront his friends, to ask why they’d failed to offer help when he needed it most. They’d surely reacted as fearfully to the reappearance of their former friend—of dead Simon Mallinson. Didn’t they compose, write and paint such material?

  Anthony felt angry, perplexity pitching him into frantic words.

  “Guys! Look!”

  But the three of them seemed more intrigued by the instruments of their arts, which had now been delivered to this building…and by what, Anthony could only imagine.

  Possibly by the dark figures presently filing into the room? They were squat, smothered in hair, and dripped dirty water Anthony knew at once was residue from the lake. Had they used the tunnel he’d discovered that afternoon to bring the laptop, the canvas and the guitar from his friends’ parents’ homes? These damp, hirsute entities seemed pleased with such efforts, their furry hands rising—each predictably lacking a thumb—as they formed another false wall around the rooms perimeter. There were about twenty of them, and all stank like rotten meat. Anthony could only conclude that they sought to pen their quarry here.

  He twisted back to face the two boys standing several yards from him. His three friends, hypnotised by what they’d found, were picking up the tools of their crafts. Anthony heard a hard drive whir, paintbrushes clacking together, and then a strummed chord. Were the artists motivated by a power gained from the creatures lining this chamber? Or maybe from merciless forces at work beyond the property’s boundaries? Or perhaps from the undisclosed person crouching in shadows beyond his brother and son? Perhaps any of these had violated Paul’s, Lisa’s and Andy’s minds; in any other circumstances, they surely wouldn’t ignore Anthony’s request…would they?

  But the truth was that they had. And Anthony realised he was alone with this horrifying problem.

  He gazed at his son…and then at Simon.

  This didn’t make sense—it couldn’t. But somehow it must.

  So what to do? What to say?

  But the necessity of speaking was removed when his younger brother—he was surely dead—resumed his commentary.

  “It’s good to see you all here at last. Such a shame it couldn’t have been when I first came inside, but some things are worth waiting for, aren’t they, Ant? I think once upon a time you might have told me that, along with lots of other shit. But Dad was never much use, and you had to do his job for me, didn’t you? But no longer, I’m delighted to say. Now I have a real father.”

  Again that gloomy figure in the corner shifted. It looked like a pile of sticks over which someone had thrown an elaborate cloth covered in fabric stars and planets. Anthony was put in mind of the globe behind him, of the clay-built entities on the shelves, and of when he’d held the model Carl had delivered over that tiny depiction of the United Kingdom.

  He shuddered, and that was when something else did, high on the moors o
utside. The noise had resembled a small earthquake or rather a torrential rainfall, its drops much larger than they should be in a natural world.

  Anthony understood that these observations were serving as displacement activity. He should respond to the person who’d addressed him, however crazy this situation had grown.

  “Simon?” he asked, as plastic computer keys rattled, stiff bristles produced the sound of paint applied to a canvas, and chords were grouped together…Christ, were his friends working? That was almost as crazy as what Anthony had to say next, but he did so anyway. “You…can’t be alive. You simply can’t be. And even if you were, you wouldn’t be…be…”

  “Be what, dear brother?”

  “Don’t listen to him, Daddy! He’s mean! He’s…evil.”

  “Silence!”

  The voice from the dim corner returned; it possessed an old man’s tone, differing only in volume as Simon went on in a hoarse whisper.

  “We have much to catch up on, dear brother. We must talk later…always assuming there is a later.” He chuckled, revealing teeth the colour of gravestones eroded over eons. A few pale flies buzzed around his lips. “But right now, I’m afraid my father wishes for the experiment to proceed. He’s been waiting such a long time. Patience is a virtue, but I fear he has few of those, and so you must excuse his resolution…and what he proposes to do next.”

  The children—even though his reason protested, Anthony knew the twenty figures around him were those who’d gone missing in Deepvale a hundred years ago—chorused their approval with a swish of heavy hair. Despite the brutality with which Peter Suman had once treated them, they were complicit in his goals.

  Peter Suman…Was it really him behind Carl and Anthony’s little brother? He looked little more than a shell; a consciousness ensnared in a withering frame; a desperate, corpselike entity eager to struggle against the laws of the universe. People died; it was one of the few things anybody could be certain about.