***
As autumn progressed, the trees around Shorecliff shed all their leaves across the great front lawn and the heathery moors behind the house bloomed to the deep red colour of rust and old blood. The skies settled into a pattern of permanently shifting shapes of black and grey and a season of cold mists enveloped the whole region. Rolling in from the sea, these mists were so close and so thick that it became impossible to venture far from the house for fear of missing the cliff edges and plunging to a messy end. This closeness emphasised yet further the eerie isolation of the house. It was at times as though we were floating in space, Lovecraft and I, in our odd granite box completely separate from the rest of the world.
Such conditions only helped further my speculations and anxieties about the real nature of my surroundings here. The sound of waves crashing onto the rocks below the house seemed to echo everywhere so that it was virtually impossible to tell which direction was which, as though the mist itself were carrying the sound around us, mocking and playing with us all the time. Mixed in with the waves were other sounds, strange cries, not of birds exactly nor of human voices, which swirled around us rising in intensity during the day before reaching a grim peak just as darkness began to fall. During such times, I began to understand the madness of becalmed sea adventurers with their dreams of sirens and mermaids and wondered in dour fascination what black rocks these voices were trying to entice me onto.
It was a season of storms too. That November the winds rose and blew storm front after storm front in from the North East. They were cold winds, with a touch of winter in them that bit through layers of clothing and made an ordeal out of even the shortest trip outside. Each day brought a new set of squalls and gales to batter the house, pinning Lovecraft and I inside our refuge and testing the security of the work I’d only recently completed on the roof and the windows. Throughout each storm, Lovecraft would stick diligently to his window ledge patrol, pacing back and forth for hours at a time, barely stopping to rest, all the while flinching at each new lift in the intensity of the wind outside. Only when the weather broke and the rain subsided would he leap down from his perch and run to the front door to be let outside. Standing at the doorway, I would watch him as he hesitantly stepped out onto the lawn, sniffing the air carefully and scanning the horizon for some sight of whatever the thing was he was afraid of. It was a remarkable performance and remarkably consistent each time. So much so that it was impossible to think of it as a mere act of instinct or habit. So particular and careful was Lovecraft in this routine that I became convinced there was some intelligence at work in the creature, some reasoning behind his strange actions that I should be able to understand if only I paid close enough attention. This was a disconcerting thought in itself and not one I cared to linger on more deeply than I could avoid.
Still the storms kept coming; day after day of them, rising in force each time, or so it seemed. Tiles began to be ripped from the roof of the house and I spent a hair raising couple of hours on a ladder trying to secure the guttering at one side of the building where it was threatening to come away from its binding. The old barn, which sat in the grounds to the rear of the main house and which I’d never bothered to properly restore, finally gave out and was reduced part way to rubble during a particularly vicious night’s gale.
How long this went on for, I truly cannot say. Looking back now it seems like weeks, months perhaps went by with storms and winds attacking our stretch of coastline every day and every night. It feels like a long stretch of time ripped out of contact with the rest of the world, of wild, dark days and furious nights, of the sky itself extending its claws into Shorecliff House and shaking it to see how much we could stand. I know this can’t be true. I know it can’t possibly have gone on for as long as I remember it, that’s just not the way the world works. It is the way it seemed to me at the time, though, and it is how I remember those days. A long test, an examination of endurance, an extended, dark night it felt we might never emerge from in safety.
The more time that passes between now and then – and it has been many years now since the events I am describing here took place – the more dreamlike those days seem to me. I passed the whole time in a vague haze of unreality. I remember very little clearly now, beyond the roar of the wind and the clatter of the rain upon our windows – for these were the soundtrack to the lives we led, Lovecraft and I. Most of all, I remember the ever intensifying mood of anxiety that built within the house. As the days passed, so Lovecraft’s fits of nervous anticipation slowly infected themselves into me, like a virus insinuating itself in my blood and bringing me gradually to fever point. It was impossible not to become so affected, given the conditions we were living in and the curious obsessions of my companion. I became convinced myself that there was some cruel force lurking in the darkness outside the house, something living in the cliffs that was waiting for us, hunting us down. What this creature might be, I had no idea, but still I was overcome by dread for what was to come, what inevitably would happen when the storm finally tore through our defences and left us helplessly at the mercy of our unseen oppressor.
Somewhere during this strange period of feverish anxiety, I was plagued by a series of odd visions which came to me unbidden during my waking hours, but which seemed to be snatches of memories lifted from the long, restless nights I had just spent. Lovecraft and I were sleeping so little at that point that it is impossible for me to accurately distinguish between my real memories and whichever of the bizarre images I saw were merely dreams brought on by the over-agitated state I’d worked myself into. I remember the sight of Lovecraft, his eyes popping forward out of his head, his claws scratching at the window in a frantic fit of pure terror. I remember strange, dark shapes moving outside the house, almost impossible to see clearly so obscured were they by the sheets of rain which streaked our windows. I remember odd noises, as if of a giant, wet object slithering its heavy mass across our rain sodden turf; a powerful stench of putrefying fish and seaweed filling the house and choking our lungs. Most of all, I remember a flash of moonlight breaking through the clouds and illuminating for a second, just for a second, a giant, bloodshot eyeball, impossibly huge, staring at us in hunger and in fury.
I know these things cannot be. I know it and still I cannot shake them off. Even now, many years later, they stay with me, these images, a reminder either of the weird places my mind had fallen into at that time, or of the lucky escape I had from a terrible end to my story.
The Shorecliff Horror and Other Stories Page 5
