A sudden fear overcame me, lest I be drawn down into the gray plain and be trapped with the other souls, and I beat my ethereal wings with all my strength, struggling to rise above that horrid gray surface. For a time the struggle seemed hopeless, but I persevered to the limits of my strength and beyond, forcing myself as great athletes are said to do, to find and call upon unknown reservoirs of determination. And at last my efforts were rewarded, for I found myself rising with painful slowness above the gray plain.
In time the laboratory, if that is what it was, reappeared around me. The gray plain was reduced to a rectangular area in the great room. The shadowy figures continued to tend their titanic machines, either unknowing or uncaring of my presence.
I struggled to the window and darted back toward my cousin’s house. Despite the great distance, I could see myself — that is my body — seated before the window in my bedroom. My eyes were hooded, my chin rested on my chest as if I had fallen asleep.
The turret fell behind me. I passed over the fissure in the Severn Hills, down their lower slopes and the darkling meadows that separated them from Old Severnford. I passed over the modernistic buildings of the Klaus Fuchs Memorial Institute, flashed over the topiary garden that surrounded by cousin’s house, and entered my bedroom.
I was able to circle the room once, gazing down with a peculiar detachment at the body that had been my residence for so many years, then slipped back into it. I rose, yawned, and climbed into my bed.
In the morning I tried to discuss the matter with my cousin as we motored to the Institute, but I found myself able to speak only in vague and indefinite terms about that which had been so concrete and specific when I experienced it during the night. Once within the confines of the Institute, even more strangely, I found that my memory of the experience deserted me altogether. I knew only that I had seen and done something odd during the night. Twice I fell asleep over my work, which conduct would certainly not help the standing of Myshkin Associates with this, its most valued account.
Progress on the problems with the Zeta/Zed System were small or nil. I found myself wondering if the cause of the system’s failures were not external to the system itself. The old computer slogan, GIGO — Garbage In, Garbage Out — suggested itself to me. But one does well to tread carefully before suggesting such an explanation to the customer. It can be offensive, and can alienate an important executive even if it is true.
I spoke with Alexander Myshkin by telephone. He was disheartened by my lack of progress on the Zeta/Zed System problem, but urged me to pursue my theory of external sources for the failure of the system. “You’re a diplomat, Park, my boy. You can handle these Brits. Be honest with ’em, be tactful but be firm.”
Following another frustrating day, Karolina Parker and I returned to her house. Once away from the Institute, I was able to recall something of my strange experience. Karolina suggested that we repair to a local restaurant for dinner rather than return directly home. Astonished to learn that an establishment existed in Old Severnford which Karolina considered worth visiting, I agreed with alacrity.
The restaurant was located in a converted country manor — in another context I would even have termed the venue a chateau. Waiters in formal garb attended our every whim. The pre-prandial cocktails which we shared were delicious. Our table was covered with snowy linen; the silver shone, the crystal sparkled, the china was translucently thin and delicate.
The meal itself was superb. A seafood bisque, a crisp salad dressed with a tangy sauce, tiny, tender chops done to perfection and served with delicious mint jelly, baby potatoes and tiny fresh peas. For dessert a tray of napoleons and petit-fours was passed, and we ended our repast with espresso and brandy.
Our surroundings had been as splendid as our meal. We dined in a hall with vaulting ceilings, ancient stone walls and a flagged floor. A fire blazed in a huge walk-in fireplace, and suits of armor, ancient weapons and battle flags set the establishment’s motif.
A single disquieting note was sounded when, in the course of my table-talk with Karolina, I happened to mention the turret. Karolina gestured to me to drop the subject, but I realized that I had already been overheard. The table nearest ours was occupied by a dignified gentleman in dinner clothes, with snowy hair and a white moustache. His companion, a lady of similar years, was decked out in an elaborate gown and rich-appearing pearls.
The gentleman summoned the waiter, who hustled away and returned with the maitre d’hotel in tow. After a hurried conference with the elderly gentleman, the maitre d’ approached our table and, bending so that his lips were close to my companion’s ear, hastened to deliver a verbal message to her.
Karolina blanched, replied, then nodded reluctantly as the maitre d’ took his leave.
I had not fully understood a word of their brief conversation, but I could have sworn that the language in which it was conducted was that strange tongue I had heard in the streets of Severnford, and read from the faulty computer printout at the Fuchs Institute.
In any case, Karolina immediately settled our bill — she would not permit me to spend any money — and hustled us to her automobile. She spoke not a word en route to her domicile, but spun the car rapidly up the driveway, jumped from her position behind the wheel and hastened inside the house, casting a frightened look over her shoulder at the topiary garden.
Once in the main room of her home, Karolina did an extraordinary thing. She stood close to me and reached one hand to my cheek. She moved her hand as if to caress me, but as she did so I felt a peculiar pricking at my birthmark. Karolina peered into my face while a frown passed over her own, then she stood on her toes to reach my cheek (for I am a tall man and she a woman of average stature) and pressed her lips briefly to the birthmark.
I placed my hands on her shoulders and watched as she drew back from me. She ran her tongue over her lips, and I noticed a tiny drop of brilliant scarlet which disappeared as her tongue ran over it.
What could this mean? But I had no time to inquire, for Karolina made a brusque and perfunctory excuse and started up the stairs, headed for her room, with a succinct suggestion that I proceed to my own.
Once attired for repose, I found myself drawn to the comfortable chair which stood before the open window of my chamber. My eyes adjusted rapidly to the dim illumination of the night sky, and almost at once I found my consciousness focused on the illusion (if it was an illusion) of a face, gazing back at me from its place high in the Severn Hills.
Almost effortlessly I felt my soul take leave of my body. For the second time I flew across the topiary garden, across the village of Old Severnford, across the modernistic buildings of the Fuchs Institute. The brush-choked earthquake fissure in the Severn foothills passed beneath me and the tower loomed directly ahead.
Strangely enough, it seemed to have changed. Not greatly, of course, and in the pallid light that fell from the English sky it would have been difficult to make out architectural features in any great detail. But the tower looked both older and newer at the same time.
Hovering motionlessly in my weird ethereal flight, I studied the tower and in particular the turret which surmounted it, and I realized that the architectural style had been altered from that of modern, Twentieth Century England, to the form and designs of an earlier age. As I entered the turret through its great illuminated window, I briefly noted the cyclopean machines and their scurrying attendants, but sped quickly to the gray rectangular plain I had observed the previous night.
I sank toward its surface, bringing myself to a halt just high enough above the plain to make out the struggling souls there imprisoned. They had increased in number from the night before. Further, I was able to distinguish their appearance.
Again, you may wonder at my description. If a human soul is the immortal and disembodied portion of a sentient being, it would hardly be distinguished by such minutia as clothing, whiskers, or jewelry. But in some way each soul manifested the essence of its owner, whether he or she be soldie
r or peasant, monarch or cleric, houri or drab.
And the souls which I had seen on my first visit were the souls of modern men and women, while those I beheld on this, my second visit to the turret, were clearly the souls of people of an earlier age. The men wore side-whiskers and weskits; the women, long dresses and high hair styles and broad hats. No, they did not wear hair or clothing — it was their essences, as of the England of a century ago, that suggested as much.
How they had come to the turret and how they had become entrapped on the great gray plain I could not fathom, but their agony and their despair were manifest. They seemed to reach out psychic arms beseeching me to aid them, but I was unable to do so; I was totally ignorant of any way to alter their condition.
My heart was rent by pity. I flew to the attendants of the cyclopean machines, intending to plead with them to help these poor trapped creatures, but I was unable to communicate with them in any way. I studied them, hoping to discern some way of reaching them, but without success.
At last, in a state of despair, I began to move toward the great open window. I turned for one last look back, and had the peculiar sense that the attendants of the machines were themselves not human. Instead, they resembled the vague, yellowish creatures I had seen swimming beneath the surface of the Severn River.
A shudder passed through my very soul, and I sped frantically back to Old Severnford, back to Karolina Parker’s house, back to my physical form. I reentered my body, dragged myself wearily to my bed, and collapsed into sleep.
Again in the morning my recollections of the strange experience were vague and uncertain. By the time I reached my cubicle at the Institute I was unable either to summon up an image of the night’s activities, or to speak of them to anyone. I did, at one point, catch a glimpse of myself, reflected in the monitor screen of the computer work-station beside my desk. I must have nicked myself shaving, I thought, as a drop of blood had dried just on the blue birthmark on my jawline. I wiped it away with a moistened cloth, and was surprised at the fierceness of the sting that I felt.
Struggling to resolve the problems of the Zeta/Zed System, I had arranged an appointment with the chief engineer of the Fuchs Institute, a burly individual named Nelson MacIvar. When our meeting commenced, I surprised MacIvar by inquiring first as to why the Institute had been situated in so out-of-the-way a place as Old Severnford, and on the outskirts of the town at that.
MacIvar was blessed with a thick head of bushy red hair, a tangled beard of the same color, save that it was going to gray, and a complexion to match. He tilted his head and, as my employer Alexander Myshkin was sometimes wont to do, answered my question with one of his own.
“Why do you ask that, Mr. Lorentzen? What bearing has it on this damned Zeta/Zed machine and its funny behavior?”
I explained my theory that some exterior factor might be causing the system’s problems, and reasserted my original question.
“You think this is an out-of-the-way place, do you?” MacIvar pressed. “Well, indeed it is. And that’s why we chose it. I’ve been here for two-and-thirty years, Mr. Lorentzen, I was one of those who chose this spot for the Institute, and I’ll tell you now, if I had it to do over, I’d have chosen a far more out-of-the-way location. The middle of the Australian desert, mayhap, or better yet the farthest Antarctic glacier.”
I was astounded. “Why?” I demanded again. “This location must make it hard enough to bring in supplies and equipment, not to mention the difficulties of recruiting qualified workers. The people of the Severn Valley — well, I don’t mean to be offensive, Mr. MacIvar, but they don’t seem to be of the highest quality.”
MacIvar gave a loud, bitter laugh. “That’s putting it mildly, now, Mr. Lorentzen. They’re a degenerate stock, inbred and slowly sinking back toward savagery. As is all of mankind, if you ask me, and the sooner we get there, the better. This thing we call civilization has been an abomination in the eyes of God and a curse on the face of the earth.”
So, I was confronted with a religious fanatic. I’d better change my tack, and fast. “The water that drives your generators,” I said, “Miss Parker — ” MacIvar raised a bushy eyebrow — “Dr. Parker then, tells me that you use the Severn River for that purpose.”
“Aye, and she is exactly right.”
“Do you make any further use of its waters?”
“Oh, plenty. We drink it. We cook with it. We bathe in it. The Severn is the lifeline of this community. And we use it to cool our equipment, you know. Your wonderful Zeta/Zed machines can run very hot, Mr. Lorentzen, and they need a lot of cooling.”
I shook my head. “Have you tested the river for purity? Do you have a filtering and treatment system in place?”
“Yes, and yes again. Just because we’re out here in the country, Mr. American Troubleshooter, don’t take us for a bunch of hicks and hayseeds. We know what we are doing, sir.”
I gestured placatingly. “I didn’t mean to cast aspersions. I’m merely trying to make sure that we touch every base.”
“Touch every base, is it? I suppose that’s one of your American sports terms, eh?”
By now I felt myself reddening. “I mean, ah, to make sure that no stone goes unturned, no, ah, possibility unexamined.”
MacIvar glared at me in silence. I asked him, “What happens to the water after it’s been passed through the heat-exchange tanks?”
“It goes back into the river.”
“Has this had any effect on the local ecology? On the wildlife of the valley, or the aquatic forms found in the river itself?” I thought of those graceful yet oddly disquieting yellowish shapes in the river, of the glow that emanated from their curving bodies and reflected off the mist above.
“None,” said MacIvar, “none whatsoever. And that is an avenue of inquiry, Mr. Troubleshooter, that I would advise you not to waste your precious time on.”
With this, MacIvar pushed himself upright and strode ponderously from the office. Something had disturbed him and I felt that his suggestion — if not an actual warning — to steer clear of investigating the Severn River, would have the opposite effect on my work.
At the end of the working day I feigned a migraine and asked Karolina Parker to drive me home and excuse me for the remainder of the evening. I took a small sandwich and a glass of cold milk to my room and there set them aside untouched. I changed into my sleeping garments and stationed myself at the window. At this time of year the English evening set in early, for which I thanked heaven. I located the flickering face and flew to it without hesitation.
The tower had changed its appearance again. From its Victorian fustian it had reverted to the square-cut stone configuration of a medieval battlement. Once within the great turret room I sped by the cyclopean machinery and its scurrying, yellowish attendants and headed quickly to the gray plain.
Hovering over the plain, I dropped slowly until I could make out the souls struggling and suffering there. More of them were apparent this night than had previously been the case, and from their garments and equipage I could infer their identity. They were members of Caesar’s legions. Yes, these pitiable beings were the survivors — or perhaps the casualties — of the Roman occupation force that had once ruled Britain.
After a time they seemed to become aware of me and attempted variously to command or to entice me into placing myself among them. This I would not do. One legionnaire, armed with Roman shield and spear, hurled the latter upward at me. I leaped aside, not stopping to wonder what effect the weapon would have had. It was, of course, not a physical object, but a psychic one. Yet as a soul, was I not also a psychic being, and might not the spear have inflicted injury or even death upon me?
The legionnaire’s conduct furnished me with a clue, however. He had seen me; that I knew because he aimed his throw with such precision that, had I not dodged successfully, I would surely have been impaled on the spear-point. Even as the legionnaire stood shouting and shaking his fist at me, I willed myself to become invisible.
The look of anger on the ancient soldier’s face was replaced by one of puzzlement and he began casting his gaze in all directions as if in hopes of locating me. I knew, thus, that I was able to conceal myself from these wretched souls merely by willing myself to be unseen.
Remaining invisible, I proceeded farther along the gray plain. There were many more souls here than I had even imagined. Beyond the Romans I observed a population of early, primitive Britons. Hairy Picts dressed in crude animal skins danced and chanted as if that might do them some good. And beyond the Picts I spied — but suddenly, a wave of panic swept over me.
How long had I been in the turret this night? I looked around, hoping to see the window through which I had entered, but I was too near the gray plain, and all I could in any horizontal direction was a series of encampments of captive souls, the ectoplasmic revenants of men, women, and children somehow drawn to the turret and captured by the gray plain over a period of hundreds or thousands of years.
I turned my gaze upward and realized that the turret room was indeed open to the sky of the Severn Valley, and that night was ending and the morning sky was beginning to turn from midnight blue to pale gray. Soon a rosy dawn would arrive, and in some incomprehensible way I knew that it would be disastrous for me still to be in the tower when daylight broke.
Thus I rose as rapidly as I could and sped over the gray plain, past the machines and their attendants, out of the turret and home to my cousin’s house.
At work that day I met once again with Nelson MacIvar. He had appeared vaguely familiar to me at our first meeting, and I now realized that this burly, oversized man bore an uncanny resemblance to the great child who had thrown a rock at my car as it carried me from Brichester to Severnford. I came very near to mentioning the incident to him, but decided that no purpose would be served by raising an unpleasant issue.
Rather should I save my verbal ammunition for another attempt to get MacIvar to order tests of the Severn River water used in the Institute. By this time I had come to believe that the water was impregnated with some peculiar force that was interfering with the operation of the Zeta/Zed System. This force, I surmised, might be a radioactive contamination, picked up at some point in the river’s course, perhaps as a result of the fissure at the foot of the Severn Hills nearby.
The Doom That Came to Dunwich Page 9
