She saw the man again, dragging his stunned victim across the threadbare carpet to the fireplace, but this time she saw the details clearly. The room was different, brighter, as if the laburnum beyond the lounge window no longer obstructed the sunlight. The fireplace was unveiled now, and stood free of paint in full magnificence. Indeed, there was a fire burning fiercely in its bright copper grate. This was not her dream but a variation on it, a bizarre off-kilter version where details were subtly altered. The light source in the room was different, the victim seemed much plumper than before, the room itself more gaily decorated. What was happening here? The murderer was dressed in clothes from an earlier era. Now he stooped over the sleeping body and slipped his hands beneath her broad, bare arms. Slowly he dragged her nearer to the blazing log fire. Decorative tiles were inlaid about the hearth. A coal scuttle stood to one side, an extravagantly designed poker and brush set to the other. She could even read the lettering on the side of the scuttle: vulcain. The murderer raised his victim to a sitting position. The lace on her ample bosom rose and fell as he gently lowered her face into the searing flames …
Linnea awoke in a gasping fit, unable to catch her breath, the sheet twisted about her. Her head throbbed with the aftereffects of the wine she had consumed at dinner. She turned to wake Simon but found herself alone in the bed. From downstairs came the rhythmic sound of metal on brick. The luminous hands of the wall clock stood at 3:35. Linnea swung her legs from the mattress, untangling the sheet as she did so, and reached for her dressing gown.
The lights were on in the lounge. She came down the stairs and pushed the door open. Simon was kneeling before the fireplace, his forehead beaded with sweat. He was wearing a short-sleeved sweater over his pajamas. He lowered the hammer and chisel, and twisted around to face his wife.
“I couldn’t sleep,” he said with a shrug. “You were tossing and turning so much. Anyway, I knew I wouldn’t get any peace until I opened the damned thing up …” He turned back to the brickwork and continued striking at it with the chisel. The second brick was loose now, nearly ready to come out.
“I know about the fireplace,” she said, her mind still heavy with sleep.
“What do you mean?” He hammered at the brickwork. A shower of cement fell to the newspaper which wreathed the hearth.
“I know who built it.” She raised her hand to her head, feeling dizzy once more. Already, the nightmare was fading.
“You’ve been dreaming again. You were talking in your sleep.” He checked the cynicism in his voice. “So who built it?”
“Henri … Henri Désiré … something …” The name blurred and vanished, erased from her slumber-ridden mind. “I can’t remember any more.”
The chisel bit deep into stone and dislodged the second brick. Simon carefully removed it and began on the third. Outside, rain began to spatter the windows.
“Simon, don’t take any more out,” she cried suddenly. “I’m afraid.”
“Look at it from a logical viewpoint,” he replied, hammering rhythmically at the brickwork as he spoke. “If there was a corpse behind here, it couldn’t hurt us now. It would hardly be likely to leap out, would it?”
“There is danger here. The most terrible danger.”
She barely recognized her own voice. Behind her, the rain fell hard against the glass. She could hear it falling on the roof, drumming distantly at the top of the chimney. As she inched closer to Simon he removed the third brick and started on the fourth. The rest came away easily, and soon a pile of bricks had formed on the newspaper beside the fireplace. The black hole which gaped before them was ready for investigation.
“Pass me the flashlight.” Simon held out his hand, not once removing his eyes from the terrible dark space between the engraved pillars.
“Don’t go in there. Please, Simon, listen to me.” She stood behind him as he switched on the flashlight and shone its beam into the cavity. Linnea could not bring herself to look.
“Well, there’s your corpse all right.” He turned and gently removed her hands from her face. “Take a look.”
Slowly, Linnea raised her eyes to the spot where the flashlight shone. The cavity within the fireplace was completely empty, save for a large dead rat. The plump meatiness of the rodent’s body suggested that it had died not long before.
“It was probably what you heard scratching at the wall. It may even have been what you saw. No ghosts, no murder victims, just a poor bedraggled old rat.”
“Oh, Simon.” She felt like crying with relief—and yet the feeling of dread was still there. After a moment or two, it began to grow again, stronger and stronger.
He took her hand and brought her close to the fireplace. “Such a beautiful object.” His voice sounded far away, lost in dreams. She looked down at the carvings of the women who posed resplendent in bronze and copper raiments, at the delicately curved roses and lilies which grew in profusion about their feet, and at the small patch of pea-green paintwork still to be removed at the base of the column.
“You’ve forgotten a bit,” she heard herself saying, as if she had intoned the same remark a hundred times before. She pointed a wavering finger at the patch.
“If I’m not mistaken,” said Simon jovially, “that will provide us with the last piece of the puzzle.”
He switched off the flashlight and the soot-covered corpse of the rat jumped back into darkness. Removing a palette knife from a tin filled with methylated spirit, he wiped the blade and began to gently lift the paint away in small strips.
She leaned forward, her curiosity overcoming her fear. Inlaid letters were appearing beneath the paint. Simon picked delicately with the knife, gradually revealing an extravagantly scrolled signature. Linnea’s hand flew to her mouth as she read the name with mounting horror. The room dipped beneath her and tendrils of darkness swam across her vision, removing the scene from view and thrusting her into a void of blackest night. She fell heavily to the floor.
The dream closed in again, but this time she was a part of it, cast in the role of the murderer’s victim. She felt herself being dragged across the carpet, then pulled upright into a sitting position, in preparation for her interment within the wall. The dream grew dark as all sensation faded.
She awoke from the nightmare to find herself crouched in a tight, dark space with her hands tied painfully behind her back. It took a few moments for her to realize that she was inside the fireplace. Her worst fear realized, she tried to scream but the cotton rag tied across her mouth prevented her. She was still wearing her nightgown, which had somehow become hitched up about her thighs. At her back, the cold furry body of the rat pressed against her bare buttocks. Far above, a dim luminescence showed at the top of the soot-encrusted chimney. Droplets of rain lightly touched her face.
Before her terrified eyes, Simon was patiently cementing the bricks back into place. His face appeared sheened in sweat through the shrinking gap in the wall. Behind his spectacles, his eyes were blank and unseeing as he labored at his task, fulfilling his prophesied role. She longed to tell him of her mistake, of how she had confused past, present, and future to arrive at this inevitable conclusion.
Henri Désiré Landru, the signature had read, the signature of Bluebeard himself. The insane mass murderer had spent his childhood years at the Vulcain ironworks in Paris, where his father was a fireman. He had disposed of at least ten women in his fireplace, macerating them in flame and destroying them so thoroughly that no trace of their bodies could ever be found. Even after his capture, he had remained silent and unrepentant.
Myson had been aware of the fireplace’s influence, had grown fearful for his sanity, and although he was able to escape the house, had eventually succumbed to his terrible destiny.
As Simon eased the final brick into position and patted the surrounding mortar into a smooth finish, she knew that it was now too late for either of them to break the unending pattern.
Alone in final darkness, she provided appeasement to the stone and metal th
ing which made up her prison. The fireplace fed on her terror, just as it would eventually rob her of her life.
THESE BEASTS
TANITH LEE
from an idea by John Kaiine
Tanith Lee (1947–2015) did not learn to read—she was dyslectic—until almost age eight, and then only because her father taught her. This opened the world of books to her, and by the following year she was writing stories. She worked in various jobs, including shop assistant, waitress, librarian, and clerk, before Donald A. Wollheim’s DAW Books issued her novel The Birthgrave in 1975.
The imprint went on to publish a further twenty-six of her novels and collections. Since then, she published more than one hundred novels and collections, including Death’s Master, The Silver Metal Lover, Red as Blood, and the Arkham House volume Dreams of Dark and Light. She also scripted two episodes of the BBC series Blakes 7, and her story “Nunc Dimittis” was adapted as an episode of the TV series The Hunger.
She was a winner of the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award, and she received Life Achievement Awards from the World Horror Convention, the World Fantasy Convention, and the Horror Writers Association.
“Like a lot of my plots,” recalled the author, “this one was coined by my partner, John Kaiine, in fact many years before we met. Tomb robbers seem to fascinate us both, and his idea of the liquid map (yes, it’s John’s invention, not mine) provided a final element for this nasty, nasty tale.”
HE WAS A tomb robber.
Well, when you were dead, you were dead. All came to it. The mighty in their gold and gems, the impoverished unknown, wrapped in rags, their legs broken to fit the grave. And even he, Carem, would one day die. He did not mind if someone robbed him, after death. Welcome, my friend.
It was this life that counted.
Oh, he had been born as no one in the splendid city among the pink rocks. Noom Dargh, once the seat of kings, but no longer. He had been a whore’s son, sold at three months to be another whore. At ten, evading the man who was his owner—spuriously charming, as Carem had learned to be, they all trusted him—he made off with traders. He was quick as fire. Handsome too.
Among the traders he learned his profession.
The caravan routes went all ways. And in the yellow deserts, stood up strange bulbous stones, caught forever in mid-topple. “What is that place?” “Ah, we will show him.” It was a place of tombs.
They went by night. No moon. Things howled in the desert, but he was not afraid. No, not until they breached the stinking hotness of the rock, and the bats, which laired there, poured outward—then the man who liked Carem consoled him. “There’s nothing here to hurt you. But look—what’s that which shines?” What shone was gold, contrary to so many proverbs.
By the time he was a man, Carem had gained much knowledge, and some wealth. Let it be said, the wealth came from others and the knowledge was all to do with thievery. But Carem did not harm the living. No, he was kind to them. He gave to beggars in the street, and was generous with the girls he dighted.
By his twenty-eighth year, he had a house on the edge of Noom Dargh, a house with gardens and channels of water, a house with courtyards and dovecotes, and awnings embroidered by gold.
He had also two wives, Bisint, who was rich, and Zulmia, who was beautiful.
In the city they spoke of him with respect. No one publicly remembered anymore what he did. Indeed, he did not do it, for now other men worked on his behalf, and brought him treasures by night through a secret walk in the starry garden.
Lucky Carem. A life from death.
One sunset as, half a mile away below his mansion, the city turned blood-red and the desert scarlet, someone came seeking Carem; would speak only to him.
They met on a shady terrace and drank fig wine.
“I hurried straight to you, sir,” said the visitor, a traveler from antique lands. “You alone could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Get in, get out. It needs skill and wisdom. It needs knowledge of such things.”
“What things are they?”
The traveler smiled. “They call yours a bestial career, but I say one does what one is good at.”
“You mean my shares in merchant enterprise.”
“No. Your tomb-robbery.”
Carem said, smiling too, “Have I been insulted?”
“Not at all. You’re known as a master. And this, believe me, who would not dare it, needs a master’s touch.”
“You may explain. For purposes of amusement. If I laugh enough, you shall have gold to fill one hand, and sufficient silver to fill two.”
“Treble that. You will find you’ll laugh your head off, Lord Carem.” Then the traveler spoke of an ancient country, once astride the world, and now come down to ruination. Its great obsession, this land, had been the burial of its kings and princes—of whom there were many—in the most sumptuous and enduring manner. And, too, in deepest secret. Now and then one of these burial spots would be thought to have been discovered. Then everyone went mad. And, often as not, since they were usually also wrong, venturers came back with nothing but sore bones and empty wallets.
“This I have, however,” said the traveler, “is not only sure—and I can give you proof—it is infallible. Besides which, it is known. Spoken and dreamed of, a thing of sparkle and nightmare.”
“Is there the normal curse, then, on the tomb?” asked Carem, indolently. Had he been a fox, his ears would have stood up high enough to touch the awning overhead.
“A curse known as familiarly as the tomb. Indeed, the tomb is named for it. There in the waste beyond the pastures of the River Khenemy.”
“Oh, is it Stone-Beard’s Palace? That was pillaged three years ago. So I’ve been led to believe.”
“Not there.”
“The Garden of Arches, then? That too. And only a wisp of gold got from it.”
“Not there.”
“More wine?” inquired Carem. “A cake?”
“Yes, I will take more wine. The burial place I offer you is the Tomb of the Black Dog.”
Then Carem, despite the last trace of the sunset, paled. His eyes opened and closed, and opened. He said, “Surely that is only a story.”
“Till now. Now it can be yours.”
“And your proof?”
Then the traveler took a purse out of his clothing and out of the purse he drew a narrow gleaming snake. This he set on the terrace, where, after two or three convulsive movements, it brought up out of its jaws a small black egg.
The egg sat on the paving.
The traveler spoke a word that fell like a raw, hot drop of unseasonal rain.
The egg burst, and there lay a tiny black figure of a dog at rest, its head erect, and its throat rimmed by gold.
“A copy of the image that guards the tomb?”
“Found in the sand not twenty paces from the area.”
Muttering a protective charm, Carem picked up the figurine and held it. It was unearthly cold. He put it down. It cast no shadow, turn it as he would.
“Tell me all you know,” said Carem.
The traveler did so. Presently much gold and silver were given over in handfuls.
At midnight they parted, the traveler and Carem, and Carem went prudently to sleep with his plain wife, Bisint, for in the morning he would be going away.
The journey to Khenemy took several months, longer than was ordinarily needful, since Carem undertook the end of it in disguise, as a poor lame pilgrim, seeker of the shrines of the holy river.
Many tiresome days Carem spent, smothered by dust and ringing his irritating little pilgrim’s bell at the gates of collapsed temples, until at last, moved apparently by that mystic urge which drives prophets and seers, he wandered out into the desert waste.
The desert of Khenemy was like no other.
Where the River was, emerald pastures swelled, with cows and cameloids feeding beneath palms heavy with dates, and lime-green banana trees. Then there lay the strips of
fields, and sacred groves, and thereafter the first of the waste, brown as an egg, where, in caves, the former inhabitants of old fallen cities lived, lighting at night their fires and lamps of horn, like yellow stars felled to the land.
After this, a place opened that was like Hell.
The land was white, and blistered the soles through your boots, the sun was a ball of white matter, and the sky white, and here and there rose monuments of the race of Khenemy, which had passed away. Statue men a hundred feet tall, wielding swords of stone, towers and gateways that led nowhere, all blasted by a hot moistureless wind, the breath of something long dead.
Carem, though, had a map. Not to hand, but written accurately in his head.
So he trekked by day the burning waste, and slept by night under the suns of other indifferent worlds. And on the second evening he reached a sort of cliff. And in the eastern front of it was a mark, that looked only natural, but not to him. It was like the face of a dog.
No time like the present.
Carem went to the cliff and stared hard, and saw how the rock was.
Then he put up his agile right “lame” foot, and lifted himself. From the first step he discovered the second. They were set oddly, and were not safe. He negotiated them all, with only a little powdering of dust to show his passage.
Above, far up, the cliff was flat as a stone table.
Once there, it was possible to look for miles, and see nothing but the nighttime desert, with here and there, one of its ghastly monuments.
Instead Carem looked and saw a hag seated by a round hole in the stone.
“Stay,” said the hag. “Let me tell you what you risk.”
“Very well,” said Carem.
“Once I was very young,” said the hag.
“That might be said of all of us.”
“I traveled here,” continued the hag, humorlessly. “I sought to enter the Tomb of the Black Dog. Aieee! I did not know. I thought it the burial place of some great king, guarded by that fearsome guardian, Anubar, the Biter of Souls.”
The Mammoth Book of Nightmare Stories Page 31
