The Second Wish and Other Exhalations

by Brian Lumley

  In the first-class compartment on the London-Glasgow train, on our way north, having exhausted the more obvi­ous questions I had wanted to put to my restored brother questions to which, incidentally, his answers had seemed guardedly noncommittal — I had taken out a pocketbook and started to read. After a few minutes, startled by a passing train, I had happened to glance up … and was immediately glad that Julian and I were alone in the com­partment. For my brother had obviously found something of interest in an old newspaper, and I do not know what others might have thought of the look upon his face … As he read his face bore an unpleasant and, yes, almost evil expression. It was made to look worse by those strange spectacles; a mixture of cruel sarcasm, black triumph, and tremendous contempt. I was taken aback, but said nothing, and later — when Julian went into the corridor for a breath of fresh air — I picked up the newspaper and turned to the section he had been reading, which perhaps had caused the weird distortion of his features. I saw at once what had affected him, and a shadow of the old fear flickered briefly across my mind as I read the article. It was not strange that what I read was new to me — I had hardly seen a newspaper since the horror began a year previously — but it was as though this was the same report I had read at that time. It was all there, almost a duplicate of the occurrences of that night of evil omen: the increased ac­tivities of lunatics all over the country, the sudden mad and monstrous actions of previously normal people, the cult activity and devil-worship in The Midlands, the sea-things sighted off Harden on the coast, and more inexplicable occurrences in the Cotswolds.

  A chill as of strange ocean-floors touched my heart, and I quickly thumbed through the remaining pages of the paper — and almost dropped the thing when I came across that which I had more than half expected. For submarine disturbances had been recorded in the ocean between Greenland and the northern tip of Scotland. And more — I instinctively glanced at the date at the top-centre of the page, and saw that the newspaper was exactly one week old … It had first appeared on the stands on the very morning when Dr. Stewart had found my brother huddled beneath the blankets in the room with the barred windows.

  Yet apparently my fears were groundless. On our return to the house in Glasgow the first thing my brother did, to my great delight and satisfaction, was destroy all his old books of ancient lore and sorcery; but he made no attempt to return to his writing. Rather he mooned about the house like some lost soul, in what I imagined to be a mood of frustration over those mazed months of which he said he could remember nothing. And not once, until the night of his death, did I see him without those spectacles. I believe he even wore the things to bed — but the significance of this, and something he had mumbled that night in my room, did not dawn on me until much later.

  But of those spectacles: I had been assured that this photophobia would wear off, yet as the days went by it became increasingly apparent that Dr. Stewart’s assurances had gone for nothing. And what was I to make of that other change I had noticed? Whereas before Julian had been almost shy and retiring, with a weak chin and a personality to match, he now seemed to be totally out of character, in that he asserted himself over the most trivial things whenever the opportunity arose, and his face — his lips and chin in particular — had taken on a firmness completely alien to his previous physiognomy.

  It was all most puzzling, and as the weeks passed I be­came ever more aware that far from all being well with that altered brother of mine something was seriously wrong. Apart from his brooding, a darker horror festered within him. Why would he not admit the monstrous dreams, which constantly invaded his sleep? Heaven knows he slept little enough as it was; and when he did he often roused me from my own slumbers by mumbling in the night of those same horrors, which had featured so strongly in his long illness.

  But then, in the middle of October, Julian underwent what I took to be a real change for the better. He became a little more cheerful and even dabbled with some old manuscripts long since left abandoned — though I do not think he did any actual work on them — and towards the end of the month he sprang a surprise. For quite some time, he told me, he had had a wonderful story in mind, but for the life of him he could not settle to it. It was a tale he would have to work on himself; and it would be necessary for him to do much research, as his material would have to be very carefully prepared. He asked that I bear with him during the period of his task and allow him as much privacy as our modest house could afford. I agreed to everything he suggested, though I could not see why he found it so necessary to have a lock put on his door; or, for that matter, why he cleared out the spacious cellar beneath the house ‘for future use.’ Not that I questioned his actions. He had asked for privacy, and as far as I could assist him he would have it. But I admit to having been more than somewhat curious.

  From then on I saw my brother only when we ate — which for him was not any too often — and when he left his room to go to the library for books, a thing he did with clockwork regularity every day. With the first few of these excursions I made a point of being near the door of the house when he returned, for I was puzzled as to what form his work was going to take and I thought I might perhaps gain some insight if I could see his books of reference.

  If anything, the materials Julian borrowed from the library only served to add to my puzzlement. What on Earth could he want with Lauder’s Nuclear Weapons and Engines, Schall’s X-Rays, Coudere’s The Wider Universe, Ubbelohde’s Man and Energy, Keane’s Modern Marvels of Science, Stafford Clarke’s Psychiatry Today, Schubert’s Einstein, Geber’s The Electrical World, and all the many volumes of The New Scientist and The Progress of Science with which he returned each day heavily burdened? Still, nothing he was doing gave me any cause to worry as I had in the old days, when his reading had been anything but scientific and had involved those dreadful works, which he had now destroyed. But my partial peace of mind was not destined to last for very long.

  One day in mid-November — elated by a special success which I had achieved in the writing of a difficult chapter in my own slowly shaping book — I went to Julian’s room to inform him of my triumph. I had not seen him at all that morning, but the fact that he was out did not become apparent until, after knocking and receiving no reply, I entered his room. It had been Julian’s habit of late to lock his door when he went out, and I was surprised that on this occasion he had not done so. I saw then that he had left the door open purposely so that I might see the note he had left for me on his bedside table. It was scribbled on a large sheet of white typing paper in awkward, tottering letters, and the message was blunt and to the point:

  Phillip,

  Gone to London for four or five days.

  Research. Brit. Museum …

  Julian

  Somewhat disgruntled, I turned to leave the room and as I did so noticed my brother’s diary lying open at the foot of his bed where he had thrown it. The book itself did not surprise me — before his trouble he had always kept such notes — and not being a snoop I would have left the room there and then had I not glimpsed a word — or name — which I recognized on the open, hand-written pages: “Cthulhu.”

  Simply that … yet it set my mind awhirl with renewed doubts. Was Julian’s trouble reasserting itself? Did he yet require psychiatric treatment and were his original delusions returning? Remembering that Dr. Stewart had warned me of the possibility of a relapse, I considered it my duty to read all that my brother had written — which was where I met with a seemingly insurmountable problem. The difficulty was simply this: I was unable to read the diary, for it was written in a completely alien, cryptically cuneiform script the like of which I had ever seen only in those books which Julian had burned. There was a distinct resemblance in those weird characters to the minuscules and dot-groups of the G’harne Fragments — I remembered being struck by an article on them in one of Julian’s books, an archeological magazine — but only a resemblance; the diary contained nothing I could understand except that one word, Cthulhu, and even that
had been scored through by Julian, as if on reflection, and a weird squiggle of ink had been crammed in above it as a replacement.

  I was not slow to come to a decision as to what my proper course of action should be. That same day, taking the diary with me, I went down to Wharby on the noon train. That article on the G’harne Fragments which I had re­membered reading had been the work of the curator of the Wharby Museum, Professor Gordon Walmsley of Goole; who, incidentally, had claimed the first translation of the fragments over the claim of the eccentric and long-vanished antiquarian and archeologist Sir Amery Wendy-Smith. The professor was an authority on the Phitmar Stone — that contemporary of the famous Rosetta Stone with its key inscriptions in two forms of Egyptian hieroglyphs — and the Geph Columns Characters, and had several other trans­lations or feats of antiquarian deciphering to his credit. Indeed, I was extremely fortunate to find him in at the museum, for he planned to fly within the week to Peru where yet another task awaited his abecedarian talents. Nonetheless, busy with arrangements as he was, he was profoundly interested in the diary; enquiring where the hieroglyphics within had been copied, and by whom and to what purpose? I lied, telling him my brother had copied the inscriptions from a black stone monolith somewhere in the mountains of Hungary; for I knew that just such a stone exists, having once seen mention of it in one of my brother’s books. The professor squinted his eyes suspiciously at my lie but was so interested in the diary’s strange characters that he quickly forgot whatever it was that had prompted his suspicion. From then until I was about to leave his study, located in one of the museum’s rooms, we did not speak. So absorbed did he become with the diary’s contents that I think he completely forgot my presence in the room. Before I left, however, I managed to extract a promise from him that the diary would be returned to my Glasgow address within three days and that a copy of his translation, if any, would accompany it. I was glad that he did not ask me why I required such a translation.

  My faith in the professor’s abilities was eventually borne out — but not until far too late. For Julian returned to Glasgow on the morning of the third day — earlier by twenty-four hours than I had been led to believe, and his diary still had not been returned — nor was he slow to discover its loss.

  I was working half-heartedly at my book when my brother made his appearance. He must have been to his own room first. Suddenly I felt a presence in my room with me. I was so lost in my half-formed imaginings and ideas that I had not heard my door open; nonetheless I knew something was in there with me. I say something; and that is the way it was! I was being observed — but not, I felt, by a human being! Carefully, with the short hair of my neck prickling with an uncanny life of its own, I turned about. Standing in the open doorway with a look on his face which I can only describe as being utterly hateful was Julian. But even as I saw him, his horribly writhing features composed themselves behind those enigmatic dark glasses and he forced an unnatural smile.

  “I seem to have mislaid my diary, Phillip,” he said slowly. “I’m just in from London and I can’t seem to find the thing anywhere. I don’t suppose you’ve seen it, have you?” There was the suggestion of a sneer in his voice, an unspoken accusation. “I don’t need the diary really, but there are one or two things in it which I wrote in code — ideas I want to use in my story. I’ll let you in on a secret! It’s a fantasy I’m writing! I mean — horror, science fiction, and fantasy — they’re all the rage these days; it’s about time we broke into the field. You shall see the rough work as soon as it’s ready. But now, seeing as you obviously haven’t seen my diary, if you’ll excuse me, I want to get some of my notes together.”

  He left the room quickly, before I could answer, and I would be lying if I said I was not glad to see him go. And I could not help but notice that with his departure the feeling of an alien presence also departed. My legs felt suddenly weak beneath me as a dreadful aura of foreboding settled like a dark cloud over my room. Nor did that feeling disperse — rather it tightened as night drew on.

  Lying in my bed that night I found myself going again and again over Julian’s strangeness, trying to make some sense of it all. A fantasy? Could it be? It was so unlike Julian; and why, if it was only a story, had his look been so terrible when he was unable to find his diary? And why write a story in a diary at all? Oh! He had liked reading weird stuff — altogether too much, as I have explained — but he had never before shown any urge to write it! And what of the books he had borrowed from the library? They had not seemed to be works he could possibly use in connection with the construction of a fantasy! And there was some­thing else, something which kept making brief appearances in my mind’s eye but which I could not quite bring into focus. Then I had it — the thing which had been bothering me ever since I first saw that diary: where in the name of all that’s holy had Julian learned to write in hieroglyphics?

  That cinched it!

  No, I did not believe that Julian was writing a story at all. That was only an excuse he had created to put me off the track. But what track? What did he think he was doing? Oh! It was obvious; he was on the verge of another break­down, and the sooner I got in touch with Dr. Stewart the better. All these tumultuous thoughts kept me awake until a late hour, and if my brother was noisy again that night I did not hear him. I was so mentally fatigued that when I eventually nodded off I slept the sleep of the dead.

  Is it not strange how the light of day has the power to drive away the worst terrors of night? With the morning my fears were much abated and I decided to wait a few more days before contacting Dr. Stewart. Julian spent all morning and afternoon locked in the cellar, and finally — again becoming alarmed as night drew near — I determined to reason with him, if possible, over supper. During the meal I spoke to him, pointing out how strangely he seemed to be acting and lightly mentioning my fears of a relapse. I was somewhat taken aback by his answers. He argued it was my own fault he had had to resort to the cellar in which to work, stating that the cellar appeared to be the only place where he could be sure of any privacy. He laughed at my mention of a relapse, saying he had never felt better in his life! When he again mentioned ‘privacy’ I knew he must be referring to the unfortunate incident of the missing diary and was shamed into silence. I mentally cursed Professor Walmsley and his whole museum.

  Yet, in direct opposition to all my brother’s glib ex­planations, that night was the worst; for Julian gibbered and moaned in his sleep, making it impossible for me to get any rest at all; so that when I arose, haggard and withdrawn, late on the morning of the 13th, I knew I would soon have to take some definite action.

  I saw Julian only fleetingly that morning, on his way from his room to the cellar, and his face seemed pale and cadaverous. I guessed that his dreams were having as bad an effect upon him as they were on me; yet rather than appearing tired or hag-ridden he seemed to be in the grip of some feverish excitement.

  Now I became more worried than ever and even scribbled two letters to Dr. Stewart, only later to ball them up and throw them away. If Julian was genuine in whatever he was doing, I did not want to spoil his faith in me — what little of it was left — and if he was not genuine? I was becoming morbidly curious to learn the outcome of his weird activities. None the less, twice that day, at noon and later in the evening, when as usual my fears got the better of me, I hammered at the cellar door demanding to know what was going on in there. My brother completely ignored these efforts of mine at communication, but I was determined to speak to him. When he finally came out of the cellar, much later that night, I was waiting for him at the door. He turned the key in the lock behind him, carefully shielding the cellar’s contents from my view, and regarded me curiously from behind those horrid dark glasses before offering me the merest parody of a smile.

  “Phillip, you’ve been very patient with me,” he said, taking my elbow and leading me up the cellar steps, “and I know I must have seemed to be acting quite strangely and inexplicably. It’s all very simple really, but for the m
oment I can’t explain just what I’m about. You’ll just have to keep faith with me and wait. If you’re worried that I’m heading for another bout of, well, trouble — you can forget it. I’m perfectly all right. I just need a little more time to finish off what I’m doing — and then, the day after tomorrow, I’ll take you in there” — he nodded over his shoulder — “into the cellar, and show you what I’ve got. All I ask is that you’re patient for just one more day. Believe me, Phillip, you’ve got a revelation coming which will shake you to your very roots; and afterwards — you’ll understand everything. Don’t ask me to explain it all now — you wouldn’t believe it! But seeing is believing, and when I take you in there you’ll be able to see for yourself.”

  He seemed so reasonable, so sensible — if a trifle feverish — and so excited, almost like a child about to show off some new toy. Wanting to believe him, I allowed myself to be easily talked around and we went off together to eat a late meal.

  Julian spent the morning of the 14th transferring all his notes — great sheaves of them which I had never sus­pected existed — together with odds and ends in small cardboard boxes, from his room to the cellar. After a meagre lunch he was off to the library to ‘do some final checking’ and to return a number of books lately bor­rowed. While he was out I went down to the cellar — only to discover that he had locked the door and taken the key with him. He returned and spent the entire afternoon locked in down there, to emerge later at night looking strangely elated. Still later, after I had retired to my room, he came and knocked on my door.