The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991)

by David G. Hartwell (Ed. )

  notebook and stub of pencil. Busily he began to sketch the

  more intricate structures. Perhaps someone could explain

  them; perhaps there was something to their insane complexity

  that warranted closer study for his own work.

  Leverett was roughly two miles from the bridge when he

  came upon the ruins of a house. It was an unlovely colonial

  farmhouse, box-shaped and gambrel-roofed, fast falling into

  the ground. Windows were dark and empty; the chimneys on

  either end looked ready to topple. Rafters showed through

  open spaces in the room, and the weathered boards of the

  walls had in places rotted away to reveal hewn timber beams.

  The foundation was stone and disproportionately massive.

  From the size of the unmortared stone blocks, its builder had

  intended the foundation to stand forever.

  The house was nearly swallowed up by undergrowth and

  rampant lilac bushes, but Leverett could distinguish what had

  been a lawn with imposing shade trees. Farther back were

  gnarled and sickly apple trees and an overgrown garden where

  a few lost flowers still bloomed—wan and serpentine from

  years in the wild. The stick lattices were everywhere—the

  lawn, the trees, even the house were covered with the uncanny structures. They reminded Leverett of a hundred misshapen spider webs—grouped so closely together as to almost ensnare the entire house and clearing. Wondering, he

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  sketched page on page of them, as he cautiously approached

  the abandoned house.

  He wasn’t certain just what he expected to find inside. The

  aspect of the farmhouse was frankly menacing, standing as

  it did in gloomy desolation where the forest had devoured the

  works of man—where the only sign that man had been here

  in this century were these insanely wrought latticeworks of

  sticks and board. Some might have turned back at this point.

  Leverett, whose fascination for the macabre was evident in

  his art, instead was intrigued. He drew a rough sketch of the

  farmhouse and the grounds, overrun with the enigmatic devices, with thickets of hedges and distorted flowers. He regretted that it might be years before he could capture the eeriness of this place on scratchboard or canvas.

  The door was off its hinges, and Leverett gingerly stepped

  within, hoping that the flooring remained sound enough to

  bear even his sparse frame. The afternoon sun pierced the

  empty windows, mottling the decaying floorboards with great

  blotches of light. Dust drifted in the sunlight. The house was

  empty—stripped of furnishings other than indistinct tangles

  of rubble mounded over with decay and the drifted leaves of

  many seasons.

  Someone had been here, and recently. Someone who had

  literally covered the mildewed walls with diagrams of the

  mysterious lattice structures. The drawings were applied directly to the walls, crisscrossing the rotting wallpaper and crumbling plaster in bold black lines. Some of the vertiginous

  complexity covered an entire wall like a mad mural. Others

  were small, only a few crossed lines, and reminded Leverett

  of cuneiform glyphics.

  His pencil hurried over the pages of his notebook. Leverett

  noted with fascination that a number of the drawings were

  recognizable as schematics of lattices he had earlier sketched.

  Was this then the planning room for the madman or educated

  idiot who had built these structures? The gouges etched by

  the charcoal into the soft plaster appeared fresh—done days

  or months ago, perhaps.

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  A darkened doorway opened into the cellar. Were these

  drawings there as well? And what else? Leverett wondered if

  he should dare it. Except for streamers of light that crept

  through cracks in the flooring, the cellar was in darkness.

  “ Hello?” he called. “ Anyone here?” It didn’t seem silly

  just then. These stick lattices hardly seemed the work of a

  rational mind. Leverett wasn’t enthusiastic with the prospect

  of encountering such a person in this dark cellar. It occurred

  to him that virtually anything might transpire here, and no

  one in the world of 1942 would ever know.

  And that in itself was too great a fascination for one of

  Leverett’s temperament. Carefully he started down the cellar

  stairs. They were stone and thus solid, but treacherous with

  moss and debris.

  The cellar was enormous—even more so in the darkness.

  Leverett reached the foot of the steps and paused for his eyes

  to adjust to the damp gloom. An earlier impression recurred

  to him. The cellar was too big for the house. Had another

  dwelling stood here originally—perhaps destroyed and rebuilt

  by one of lesser fortune? He examined the stonework. Here

  were great blocks of gneiss that might support a castle. On

  closer look they reminded him of a fortress—for the dry-wall

  technique was startlingly Mycenaean.

  Like the house above, the cellar appeared to be empty,

  although without light Leverett could not be certain what the

  shadows hid. There seemed to be darker areas of shadow

  along sections of the foundation wall, suggesting openings to

  chambers beyond. Leverett began to feel uneasy in spite of

  himself.

  There was something here—a large tablelike bulk in the

  center of the cellar. Where a few ghosts of sunlight drifted

  down to touch its edges, it seemed to be of stone. Cautiously

  he crossed the stone paving to where it loomed—waist-high,

  maybe eight feet long and less wide. A roughly shaped slab

  of gneiss, he judged, and supported by pillars of unmortared

  stone. In the darkness he could only get a vague conception

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  of the object. He ran his hand along the slab. It seemed to

  have a groove along its edge.

  His groping fingers encountered fabric, something cold and

  leathery and yielding. Mildewed harness, he guessed in distaste.

  Something closed on his wrist, set icy nails into his flesh.

  Leverett screamed and lunged away with frantic strength.

  He was held fast, but the object on the stone slab pulled

  upward.

  A sickly beam of sunlight came down to touch one end of

  the slab. It was enough. As Leverett struggled backward and

  the thing that held him heaved up from the stone table, its

  face passed through the beam of light.

  It was a lich’s face—desiccated flesh tight over its skull.

  Filthy strands of hair were matted over its scalp, tattered lips

  were drawn away from broken yellowed teeth, and, sunken

  in their sockets, eyes that should be dead were bright with

  hideous life.

  Leverett screamed again, desperate with fear. His free hand

  clawed the iron skillet tied to his belt. Ripping it loose, he

  smashed at the nightmarish face with all his strength.

  For one frozen instant of horror the sunlight let him see

  the skillet crush through the mould-eaten forehead like an

  axe—cleaving the dry flesh and brittle bone. The grip on his

  wrist failed. The
cadaverous face fell away, and the sight of

  its caved-in forehead and unblinking eyes from between which

  thick blood had begun to ooze would awaken Leverett from

  nightmare on countless nights.

  But now Leverett tore free and fled. And when his aching

  legs faltered as he plunged headlong through the scrub-

  growth, he was spurred to desperate energy by the memory

  of the footsteps that had stumbled up the cellar stairs behind

  him.

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  2

  When Colin Leverett returned from the war, his friends

  marked him a changed man. He had aged. There were streaks

  of gray in his hair; his springy step had slowed. The athletic

  leanness of his body had withered to an unhealthy gauntness.

  There were indelible lines to his face, and his eyes were

  haunted.

  More disturbing was an alteration of temperament. A mordant cynicism had eroded his earlier air of whimsical asceticism. His fascination with the macabre had assumed a darker mood, a morbid obsession that his old acquaintances found

  disquieting. But it had been that kind of a war, especially for

  those who had fought through the Apennines.

  Leverett might have told them otherwise, had he cared to

  discuss his nightmarish experience on Mann Brook. But Leverett kept his own counsel, and when he grimly recalled that creature he had struggled with in the abandoned cellar, he

  usually convinced himself it had only been a derelict—a crazy

  hermit whose appearance had been distorted by the poor light

  and his own imagination. Nor had his blow more than glanced

  off the man’s forehead, he reasoned, since the other had recovered quickly enough to give chase. It was best not to dwell upon such matters, and this rational explanation helped restore sanity when he awoke from nightmares of that face.

  This Colin Leverett returned to his studio, and once more

  plied his pens and brushes and carving knives. The pulp

  magazines, where fans had acclaimed his work before the

  war, welcomed him back with long lists of assignments.

  There were commissions from galleries and collectors, unfinished sculptures and wooden models. Leverett busied himself.

  There were problems now. Short Stories returned a cover

  painting as “ too grotesque.” The publishers of a new anthology of horror stories sent back a pair of his interior drawings—“ too gruesome, especially the rotted, bloated faces of

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  those hanged m en.” A customer returned a silver figurine,

  complaining that the martyred saint was too thoroughly martyred. Even Weird Tales, after heralding his return to his ghoul-haunted pages, began returning illustrations they considered “ too strong, even for our readers.”

  Leveret tried half-heartedly to tone things down, found

  the results vapid and uninspired. Eventually the assignments

  stopped trickling in. Leverett, becoming more the recluse

  as years went by, dismissed the pulp days from his mind.

  Working quietly in his isolated studio, he found a living

  doing occasional commissioned pieces and gallery work,

  from time to time selling a painting or sculpture to major

  museums. Critics had much praise for his bizarre abstract

  sculptures.

  3

  The war was twenty-five years history when Colin Leverett

  received a letter from a good friend of the pulp days—Prescott Brandon, now editor-publisher of Gothic House, a small press that specialized in books of the weird-fantasy genre.

  Despite a lapse in correspondence of many years, Brandon’s

  letter began in his typically direct style:

  The Eyrie/Salem, Mass. /Aug. 2

  To the Macabre Hermit o f the Midlands:

  Colin, I ’m putting together a deluxe three-volume

  collection o f H. Kenneth Allard’s horror stories. / well

  recall that Kent’s stories were personal favorites o f

  yours. How about shambling forth from retirement and

  illustrating these fo r me? Will need two-color jackets

  and a dozen line interiors each. Would hope that you

  can startle fandom with some especially ghastly draw-

  ings fo r these—something different from the hackneyed

  skulls and bats and werewolves carting o ff half-dressed

  ladies.

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  Interested? I ’ll send you the materials and details,

  and you can have a free hand. Let us hear— Scotty.

  Leverett was delighted. He felt some nostalgia for the pulp

  days, and he had always admired Allard’s genius in transforming visions of cosmic horror into convincing prose. He wrote Brandon an enthusiastic reply.

  He spent hours rereading the stories for inclusion, making

  notes and preliminary sketches. No squeamish subeditors to

  offend here; Scotty meant what he said. Leverett bent to his

  task with maniacal relish.

  Something different, Scotty had asked. A free hand. Leverett studied his pencil sketches critically. The figures seemed headed in the right direction, but the drawings needed something more—something that would inject the mood of sinister evil that pervaded Allard’s work. Grinning skulls and leathery bats? Trite. Allard demanded more.

  The idea had inexorably taken hold of him. Perhaps because Allard’s tales evoked that same sense of horror; perhaps because Allard’s vision of crumbling Yankee farmhouses and

  their depraved secrets so reminded him of that spring afternoon at Mann Brook . . .

  Although he had refused to look at it since the day he had

  staggered in, half-dead from terror and exhaustion, Leverett

  perfectly recalled where he had flung his notebook. He retrieved it from the back of a seldom used file, thumbed through the wrinkled pages thoughtfully. These hasty sketches

  reawakened the sense of forboding evil, the charnel horror

  of that day. Studying the bizarre lattice patterns, it seemed

  impossible to Leverett that others would not share his feeling

  of horror that the stick structures evoked in him.

  He began to sketch bits of stick latticework into his pencil

  roughs. The sneering faces of Allard’s degenerate creatures

  took on an added shadow of menace. Leverett nodded,

  pleased with the effect.

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  4

  Some months afterward a letter from Brandon informed

  Leverett he had received the last of the Allard drawings and

  was enormously pleased with the work. Brandon added a

  postscript:

  For God’s sake Colin—What is it with these insane

  sticks yo u ’ve got poking up everywhere in the illos! The

  damn things get really creepy after awhile. How on

  earth did you get onto this?

  Leverett supposed he owed Brandon some explanation.

  Dutifully he wrote a lengthy letter, setting down the circumstances of his experience at Mann Brook—omitting only the horror that had seized his wrist in the cellar. Let Brandon

  think him eccentric, but not madman and murderer.

  Brandon’s reply was immediate:

  Colin—Your account o f the Mann Brook episode is

  fascinating—and incredible! It reads like the start o f

  one o f Allard’s stories! I have taken the liberty o f forwarding your letter to Alexander Stefroi in Pelham. Dr.

  Stefroi is an earnest scholar o f this region’s history—

  as you may already know. I ’m certain your acco
unt will

  interest him, and he may have some light to shed on

  the uncanny affair.

  Expect 1st volume, Voices from the Shadow, to be

  ready from the binder next month. The proofs looked

  great. Best—Scotty.

  The following week brought a letter postmarked Pelham,

  Massachusetts:

  A mutual friend, Prescott Brandon, forwarded your

  fascinating account o f discovering curious sticks and

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  stone artifacts on an abandoned farm in upstate New

  York. I found this most intriguing, and wonder i f you

  recall fiirther details? Can you relocate the exact site

  after thirty years? I f possible. I ’d like to examine the

  foundations this spring, as they call to mind similar

  megalithic sites o f this region. Several o f us are interested in locating what we believe are remains o f megalithic constructions dating back to the Bronze Age, and to determine their possible use in rituals o f black magic

  in colonial days.

  Present archaeological evidence indicates that ca.

  1700-2000 b.c . there was an influx o f Bronze Age peoples into the Northeast from Europe. We know that the Bronze Age saw the rise o f an extremely advanced culture, and that as seafarers, they were to have no peers until the Vikings. Remains o f a megalithic culture originating in the Mediterranean can be seen in the Lion Gate in Mycenae, in the Stonehenge, and in dolmens,

  passage graves and barrow mounds throughout Europe.

  Moreover, this seems to have represented fa r more than

  a style o f architecture peculiar to the era. Rather, it

  appears to have been a religious cult whose adherents

  worshipped a sort o f Earth-mother, served her with fertility rituals and sacrifices, and believed that immortality o f the soul could be secured through interment in megalithic tombs.

  That this culture came to America cannot be doubted

  from the hundreds o f megalithic remnants found—and

  now recognized—in our region. The most important

  site to date is Mystery Hill in N .H ., comprising a great

  many walls and dolmens o f megalithic construction-

  most notably the Y Cavern barrow mound and the

  Sacrificial Table (see postcard). Less spectacular megalithic sites include a group o f cairns and carved stones at Mineral M t., subterranean chambers with stone passageways such as at Petersham and Shutesbury, and