Conjure House

by Gary Fry

  But was there evidence here to prove otherwise?

  Anthony considered the God’s-eye view. Peter Suman wanted to transcend time, but his first attempt had failed. Death had since intervened, but he’d apparently conquered even that. And what had he planned on this occasion? Had he spent the last century gaining strength to make another attempt at bringing back the planet’s ancient past?

  That certainly seemed true, even though Anthony’s mind flinched from the dreadful fact.

  Something enormous clattered against the property. Not even the wildest wind could have such an impact, neither a typhoon nor a hurricane. But then the attack faltered…only to be followed, moments later, by another mighty assault.

  Was something out on the hills, charging repeatedly for the property…or maybe more than one thing? A few clay models tumbled off their shelf, shattering on the floor and scattering pieces hither and thither.

  This activity was accompanied by another laugh from Simon.

  “We don’t need facsimiles now,” he said, his vocabulary as advanced as it had grown prior to his disappearance, so long ago. But his gravelly voice belied his youthful appearance, and then, still holding Anthony’s son tightly, he stepped forwards, giving room to the man about to emerge from behind him. “Not now we’re about to see the things themselves.”

  Another thump unsettled the house; more grotesque sculptures dropped and smashed. And why weren’t Anthony’s friends reacting to these activities? He turned round, glancing beyond the telescope at where Paul, Lisa and Andy had begun toiling at their respective crafts. They were clearly locked in what Melanie had sometimes called “the zone,” a state of mind in which artists were oblivious to events around them, as if these didn’t matter when compared to realities they strove to elucidate in their work.

  But this mattered, Anthony thought, the notion offering him hope. How could knowledge be acquired without reference to the world it sought to elucidate? The answer was of course that it couldn’t. Science was crucial. Art could only achieve so much.

  But did Peter Suman understand that?

  Anthony turned back, determined to pursue the issue, but then hesitated…for a specific reason.

  The scientist-turned-horrific-artist had begun taking his place before his masterpiece: destruction of the Earth; summoning its darkest history; obliterating a humanity he’d loathed.

  Looking that way, Anthony observed only tenebrous limbs shaking themselves alert, but then the man assumed a height that dwarfed the two boys ahead of him. He edged sluggishly into view, his features animated by pale light from the window above.

  He was hideous.

  Anthony had only a moment to be concerned about the people who’d gone searching for Carl, including his wife, when his indefatigable adversary raised his rickety skull, the neck swaying to reveal his scarred face. Then he smiled crookedly, a disturbing version of his surrogate child’s expression.

  Tossing aside the science kit Anthony had bought his son that morning—the box burst and splayed pieces all over the floor—Peter Suman announced his awful intentions.

  “Yes, we’ll turn our backs on science and use art to bring Them onto our loathsome planet.”

  As another outrageous attack beset the building—on this occasion, clearly more than one adversary—Anthony knew he was caught up in something terrifying. He’d already heard the madman’s comment during his previous visit to The Conjurer’s House, but despite suspecting he’d realised something Peter Suman hadn’t, that was as far back as memory allowed him to travel…

  Glancing at his son and the travesty that simply couldn’t be his brother, Anthony wondered whether this episode would put an end to the species he’d spent his time on this planet studying…or whether he could do something to save it, after all.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Mrs. Jenkins remembered the first time the Mallinson family had suffered a missing child, but she didn’t feel comfortable with the thought of history repeating itself right now.

  Maybe this feeling had been prompted by the moors laid in front of her like a vast field of memories. She’d grown up in Deepvale, explored these ancient hills, and delighted in some of the stories circulating in the village: tales of monsters, strange creatures and other absurd things. Her son composed music about such stuff, and she sometimes wondered whether there was something in the water here.

  Mrs. Jenkins chuckled, glancing nervously across at the lake beside that terrible house into which Paul had ventured with poor Anthony. To lose a brother at an early age was bad enough, but the prospect of a son going the same way hardly bore thinking about.

  Mrs. Jenkins wondered why the old gang—Lisa and Andy included—had entered The Conjurer’s House, especially when Mrs. Mallinson had done the sensible thing and ventured into the village to hunt for her boy. Surely searching the moors was more productive than indulging in the past the way Anthony was doing. Mrs. Jenkins understood that grief required closure, but why choose to seek this now? What about Carl—wasn’t he the most important thing in Anthony’s life?

  She knew Paul was in hers. Mrs. Jenkins looked left, at Beryl Robinson and her taciturn husband, and then at June Smith and grumbling Jack. The two couples would probably agree with her, especially as all three families had only one child. Kids were precious, just as people were generally.

  Sometimes Mrs. Jenkins lamented the way the world had grown more recently. What with wars everywhere, and a constant threat of violence even in private neighbourhoods, the new generation had known nothing other than duress. No wonder some turned to the darker side of creation…

  But she must focus on the task at hand. Lots of people living in the grove, as well as many from elsewhere in Deepvale, had turned up to help with the search. This allowed Mrs. Jenkins to hope community wasn’t dead, even though big cities and the folk who lived there seemed to have forgotten what that was.

  Trudging towards a cluster of trees, Mrs. Jenkins reached for her husband’s arm to steady herself. Family, love and support—those were the qualities that ought to be preserved. Farther up the slope of land, she saw Mr. Robinson assisting his own wife, while Jack Smith struck on ahead, leaving downtrodden June a distance behind. This was hardly surprising; some people were simply rotten, though Mrs. Jenkins supposed the Mallinsons ought to be grateful that Andy’s father had agreed to help at all.

  Getting back her breath on a crest of the uneven territory, her attention was claimed by the stars and a full moon peeking between ragged clouds. It was a cold evening, no time for a youngster to be outside.

  She called, “Carl? Carl Mallinson?”

  No reply.

  “Carl, your mummy and daddy are worried about you. It’s time you were home. You’re not in trouble. They just…love you. Oh, won’t you say where you are?”

  Then something did respond…and it was certainly no boy.

  Some of the other searchers had heard the noise, too, but Mrs. Jenkins didn’t need to look to confirm this. She rationalised her certainty by telling herself that no one could ignore such a tortured cry. It had been extremely loud, as if the sky had been torn open and something had slipped through the gap.

  That was a foolish notion, of course…but then she did look up.

  And gasped.

  Either clouds had swiftly parted or her vision had dimmed in one spot. But after blinking to clear her sight, she realised that the large blot of nothingness she’d spotted—a shadow, a darkness, an absence—was growing steadily bigger. It appeared to be hurtling downwards and getting huge.

  At least thirty people were in her vicinity. Everyone had been searching the moors for the missing child, but was now—and again, Mrs. Jenkins understood this without direct evidence—gazing at the sky with their mouths agape. The silence on the ground was palpable, a powerful contrast to the awful roar accompanying the thing falling from heaven.

  Or from hell.

  Mrs. Jenkins was far from religious, but now she offered supplication to whatever God could
create such a presence to take it back at once. It was too vast, too awful and too frightening to command more than a moment’s attention. She quickly looked away from this approaching horror.

  At that moment, however, it hit the earth with a tremendous, ear-rending thump, which caused the ground to shake and all the people on it to tremble in the wake of such a physical buffeting.

  But worse followed: Mrs. Jenkins was unable to remove her gaze from what had fallen nearby. Even after squeezing shut her eyes, she still saw the thing, but in no way she’d experienced in the past. It was as if she was now looking through many eyes and processing complex perceptual information in her mind. It was like intuition, or maybe what telepathy must feel like… These were the only ways her desperate brain could make sense of what she endured. Then consciousness was ruled out altogether as another of those mighty thuds rumbled the world again.

  Now she found herself staring at a tall, bloated, furious figure, the like of which she’d never witnessed in her life. She’d visited zoos and watched TV documentaries about nature, but nothing had prepared her for the sheer size, bulk and ugliness of this fearsome intruder. She struggled to keep her eyelids closed, but was unable to stop seeing. She imagined her consciousness escaping her head and falling into the skull of the person alongside her—her husband, perhaps—before skipping to another’s equally startled mind. And on each occasion, she developed a greater appreciation of the monstrosity that had come to tear their lives asunder.

  Or rather, the monstrosities.

  Indeed, there was more than one…two…three or four…Then others were tumbling by the second…the minute…the…

  But time was of no consequence now.

  The creatures set the starry sky awash with dark shapes, each of which, upon descent, crushed intervening woodland flat in an audible orgy of terror. Every one resembled an elephant, but far from convincingly. Their enormous heads were trunkless, their ears nonexistent. Carved slits of eyes hung down like sagging wounds, and…this was all Mrs. Jenkins could perceive from one angle.

  Then her visual apparatus, inorganic though it had become, flipped to an alternative viewpoint and began accruing more information about the human race’s new adversaries.

  Sides as broad as houses, as big as the building behind them, beside the lake. Flesh rippling with thick sinew and muscle, to such a degree it was impossible to believe these beasts would ever die—they were so heavily insulated. Fat limbs pumped, thicker than the tree stumps they shattered underfoot while heading for the standing stones and making easy work of them, too.

  They were awesome, outrageous, staggering.

  And then Mrs. Jenkins’s psyche performed another of those improbable mental leaps.

  From the rear, the things were all blunderbuss and power. Heavy feet, as wide as small cars, kicked back dirt and wedges of turf. If the creatures possessed tails, these were lost amid their manic activity, their frightening force, their thunderous movement…Then, almost in unison, each reared up on its hind legs, waggling the front pair so powerfully that the strength of the wind stepped up at once.

  In an undisciplined herd, they started charging for The Conjurer’s House.

  That was the last that Mrs. Jenkins could perceive with any accuracy; her mind had passed full circle around all other searchers this evening. The thing she’d observed might have blown the mind of a single onlooker, but between them they’d survived.

  But for how much longer?

  At last she opened her eyes and saw a plaintive figure racing along a crooked path from the village centre, crying out.

  “Melanie!” Mrs. Jenkins yelled with an ineffectual croak. And as more cosmic crashes struck the area, many people around her also turned the woman’s way, visibly bewildered.

  Beyond the rapidly approaching Mrs. Mallinson, another group was on the march, but this one appeared less divided than the folk in the hills. But it considerably outnumbered them, consisting of—or so it seemed—several thousand closely aligned people, each struggling to wrestle free from peers, limbs a-tangle, heads pressed together, and skin tearing as the gruesome entity stretched and contorted.

  It’s the end of life as we know it, thought Mrs. Jenkins after perceiving this hideous spectacle, which looked as if the village’s population had multiplied and was melting together like cremated plastic dolls.

  And in the scary silence that followed, none of the minds she’d violated dared challenge her.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Paul was in the zone. This was the only way he could describe what it felt like when his Muse visited. He’d sensed inspiration as soon as he’d entered the upper room of The Conjurer’s House, and after seeing his guitar rested beside a laptop and painting equipment, he’d been drawn there at once.

  Now the rest of the world had vanished. Not literally, of course…but to him, while indulging in art, it might as well not exist. He possessed many wonderful ideas for his unfinished composition. It was as if a force worked through him—raw talent maybe, or perhaps a race memory, or some ineffable aspect of his present experience. Whatever the truth was, the moment he struck a chord, a complex sequence of ingenious musical notions resounded deep in his mind.

  Yes, here was the heart of his second movement, and he understood at once how the scherzo would precede the finale. Everything fell into place in one mind-rupturing moment, and he felt impelled to externalise it, strumming the piece’s building blocks before it flitted away into a mental void.

  Then he found himself imagining a gargantuan creature, a behemoth, a monster…Call it what he would, nothing came close. He was unable to picture this entity, mainly because it appeared so immense to his consciousness. He wondered whether Lisa and Paul beside him were having any more luck: both seemed preoccupied with elucidating their own artistic visions, both literary and visual.

  All Paul could see was sprawling moors ahead, a vision that should be impossible, because a wall stood between him and this vast panoramic view. Nevertheless, he definitely registered countless broad, squat, unruly beasts hurtling around the hills like desperate children seeking a home. Some charged his way, only to collide with a transparent substance only yards in front of him. There were tens of them, perhaps even twenties, and more falling from a sky the sheer colour of terror.

  Ah, now this was closer to what he’d always sought to capture in sound. Even though he had his eyes shut, he continued to stare at a heaven torn apart by so many tumbling horrors. But lurking somewhere beyond these, blotting out feebly shining stars and a moon that now seemed innocuous despite its traditional powers, was…was…

  His train of thought was interrupted as someone whispered close beside him.

  “Music,” the fractured voice had said, and Paul had never before received a clearer instruction. He obeyed it immediately.

  And soon, very soon, his composition began to conjure up…

  * * *

  …Lisa didn’t question the source of her new insights, because she felt as if it didn’t matter. All she knew was that words were tearing across her laptop’s screen and that each contributed to the delineation of a mammoth calamity for Earth.

  Whether this information was conveyed by genes or experience was less important than putting in place appropriate language to describe what she could only sense. The truth would surely become tangible if she could turn it into words.

  She continued trying, her fingers tapping at the keyboard of the machine she’d automatically booted up earlier. Her computer had been the first thing she’d noticed after arriving upstairs, and a bolt of inspiration had promptly subsumed her. At such moments, she had to work. Nobody understood that—not her parents, not Ben, not even her educated friend Anthony.

  But none of this mattered either, and when a small, ruined voice spoke at her side, she continued typing quicker.

  “Write,” it had said, and then she did.

  Oh, she did.

  “Taller than anyone can imagine, taller than the redwood trees one sees on
TV, much taller, a thousand times taller; face like a composite of a python’s and a pig’s, legs that straddle nations, arms dangling like the pendulums of God’s clocks; intentions even a psychopath wouldn’t entertain, and yet worse, much worse than that, because this thing doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all, doesn’t even acknowledge those it might care about, doesn’t know what care is, probably doesn’t understand anything other than killing for fickle diversion…”

  Lisa was no longer staring at text tearing across her screen. She’d tilted back her head to gaze at the heavens and its presently unseen denizen. To delineate the hideous being that existed at the core of her like some pernicious intruder, she sensed herself breaking language, going beyond words, destroying grammar and punctuation. She was, after all, seeking to elucidate something inhuman, something indescribable, something that could perhaps be visualised only by…by…

  * * *

  …Andy surely projected onto reality an idiosyncratic vision of what he perceived in his mind’s eye. He was gazing at an imaginary sky—he had to be; he’d previously been inside a room, hadn’t he? But if that was true, how to account for the image that struck him now? Had it arisen from madness? He thought of his dad and his two sons. Was this kind of inspiration passed on through genes, like a family curse? But none of that mattered now. All he knew was that he must work.

  When a person hissed at his side with a distorted voice, it confirmed the feeling of power mounting in Andy’s comparatively delicate frame.

  “Paint,” the newcomer had said, and Andy wouldn’t argue, not at all—such moments of divine influence were always few and far between.

  The landscape he’d already established as a background was too puny to function as such. He dipped his brush in black and scribbled out the green rolling hills, leaving only a downturned curve at the base of the page, which suggested a resigned grimace: the vulnerable, insignificant globe.