Best New Horror 27

by Stephen Jones

  Along the edges of the road pedestrians walked slowly toward the museum, many of them in coarse robes, their heads and necks wrapped or otherwise covered. “Some of the groups who come here do not trust motorised transportation,” Clarence said beside him. “So they visit on foot.”

  “Their clothing—where are they from? Or is it some religious thing?”

  “I suspect they are foreign born. Something about the eyes, don’t you think? The way they appraise you, as if they have never encountered your kind before. And I agree, there is this worshipful air about them—sometimes I see them in the museum with their eyes closed for long periods of time, as if they’re praying. But they never say anything—at least nothing a person with average hearing might hear. I believe myself to be a tolerant man, with very few prejudices. But I do not like them, I am afraid—they make me uneasy. People like that, you never know what they have come from, what they are thinking, what they might do.”

  James was shocked. He could hardly say he himself was comfortable with these people. But he hadn’t really been comfortable since his arrival in England.

  The gate opened for the buses that had come from the train. They descended into a huge circular lot, parking along its circumference. The buses emptied quickly and the passengers climbed the concrete stairs to the grand entrance, double doors two-storeys tall, each carved with several very tall figures. From a distance the figures appeared to be women, but as James got closer he thought perhaps they were some sort of animal with a tall neck, walking upright. Their mouth-parts were disturbingly complicated. He could not look into their faces long.

  The bus drivers had become ushers, standing at the top of the stairs and between the crowd and the closed doors. They admonished the visitors to be patient and assured them that the doors would open soon. The vast collection of visitors milled about in their restricted space, murmuring to one another, looking anxious. Suddenly there was an explosive, metallic sound, like that great foghorn trumpet the alien tripods made in Spielberg’s film version of War of the Worlds. A few people cried out in alarm. There were scattered chuckles during a brief pause. Then the rest began moving forward. The great doors were easing open.

  James was frustrated at being able to see so little from his position in the mass of moving bodies, but as soon as the crowd flowed inside, it thinned and separated rapidly. He found the ticket booths just inside the doors, each containing an ornately lettered sign: FREE TODAY.

  “I hear those signs have become permanent fixtures,” Clarence said above him.

  “How do they make any money?”

  “The gift shop appears somewhat popular, but I doubt that income makes much of a dent in the operating costs. I don’t know—perhaps they don’t need the income. Since no one understands where the money to fund the construction came from in the first place, I suppose any scenario is as likely as the next.”

  From the size of those exterior doors and just the general aspect of this grand building, James had expected the entryway to be equally grand, and in its way it was—every inch of the rock-like walls and ceiling appeared to be inscribed with delicate, fussy script, a kind of intricate lettering, but if these were letters they were from a language unlike any he had ever encountered before, and the length of some of the words surely made them impossible to articulate within the space of a single breath. The lighting in the room was remarkably deceitful, changing drastically depending on where he stood, transforming inch by inch so that as the initial room revealed itself, he realised that some of the walls he’d thought perfectly straight were in fact curved, and that the ceiling was inconsistent and in places much lower than he had first thought, dipping down so far in spots Clarence actually had to walk hunched over with legs bowed.

  By the time they got to the centre of this first room, James had begun to realise that there was something nautilus-like about the architecture. Chambers appeared to spiral into chambers off this main entryway, and the various openings to each one were of non-uniform size.

  No one else seemed amazed by this arrangement. Even Clarence, for all his hunching and bowing, proceeded across the room as if this were an everyday stroll. James looked in vain for some sort of directory.

  “How do we find our way around?” Some parts of his speech were amplified and some parts distorted by the strange acoustics.

  “I believe it is intended that you discover your own path.” Clarence looked around intently with barely a glance spared for James. “The intention, I gather, is that every visitor’s experience be different, and that with successive trips a sense of the whole is, I suppose, accumulated.”

  “Are there guides?”

  “I believe so, although I’ve never encountered any. I gather they find you, if they will, rather than the reverse.”

  “It all seems…” James stopped himself. He didn’t want to be critical. He wanted to reserve any sort of judgement.

  “In keeping with the design, I suggest that we separate, and find our individual ways through the exhibits,” Clarence said. “We should attempt to honour the intention of the Lovecraft Museum. I think that would be particularly beneficial for you, James.”

  “Oh, why so?”

  “I simply mean that as an American you’re accustomed to an alternative way of doing things. But if you are forced to simply follow the architecture of the museum, if you are pressured into its patterns, it will be, oh, much more rewarding, I think.”

  James felt vaguely annoyed, condescended to. Obviously Clarence simply wanted to go about by himself. Fine, then. “Of course, naturally,” he replied, and headed off in the direction of the nearest opening, the one that appeared to have the fewest number of visitors crowding through.

  But before going he turned around briefly, looking for Clarence in the scattering crowd. He saw him on the other side of the room, or at least he saw much of his head rising above the shorter examples of humanity surrounding him. He appeared to be uncharacteristically smiling, reaching out to their shadowed, dark heads.

  Immediately inside this next hall, the texture of the walls changed into something less refined, less finished. If this hadn’t been a brand-new building, in fact, James would have thought he’d entered a much older, less well-maintained part of the structure. The corridor narrowed to three feet or less, and now the flooring was wooden planks so scuffed they looked as if livestock had been driven over them. The wall grew spotted with mould, and wept an amber colour. Fine plaster powder gritted under his shoes. He was sure he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, or perhaps an employee had left a door open, allowing access to an area the public wasn’t meant to see. The air became a little breezy, bringing with it the sour rot of fish and vegetation standing in stagnant ocean-side pools, and hints of a worst stench waiting just underneath. He thought to turn and retrace his steps, but then he came upon the window.

  It was smallish and filthy with a yellow oil scum, and much of its area layered over with old boards and rusted scrap nailed in place, but it did give a distorted sense of the outside, which was nothing like the outside James had just come from. He glimpsed a line of weathered buildings and docks. How had they managed it?

  A few more steps brought him to a sagging staircase dropping down a flight, ending in a shabby, peeling door. He took those crumbling steps two at a time and used his momentum to push the warped door open, the top of it bowing out as the bottom scraped across a trash-littered threshold. He didn’t imagine he’d ever be able to get it closed again.

  He wasn’t sure if what surrounded him was intended to be Innsmouth—the curators hadn’t bothered to erect a sign, but it was certainly as James had always imagined that rundown seacoast town. Although there had been no attempt at creating a convincing sky, the high ceiling was vaulted and draped with cloth stained a variegation of whites, greys, and blues, and some source of moving air was evident in the ways the cloth periodically bent and warped to provide some illusionary cloud movement. The unpainted and weatherworn structures below spread in al
l directions, so that James really couldn’t quite see the end of them. Perhaps some matte painting was involved, or strategically positioned mirrors? Otherwise the setting would seem to go on for miles, and that was impossible, wasn’t it?

  The space was densely constructed, with building after building crowding into each other until the edges spilled into the sea, their lower levels drowned. Some areas had been patched and repaired, supported and reinforced by ingenious home-made means so that the boundaries between buildings were blurred.

  The detailing was remarkable—no single surface appeared wholly intact. Broken windows were stuffed with oily rags of an almost beautiful foulness. Here and there, shells with slimy tissue hanging from their openings had been strategically placed, and dead fish were scattered in the oddest locations atop roofs and snagged in closed doors. Weeds and the dead remains of aquatic plants had taken root in thresholds and along gutters, wedged between clapboards and growing out of window-frames.

  Very few people were about, unless they were hiding deep inside the structures. Among the figures visible, it was difficult to distinguish between museum personnel made up to look like Innsmouth citizens and tourists unusually dressed for a holiday visit. A number of the bandaged people moved about in ways that suggested physical damage. And the way they moved in and out of doorways—suddenly appearing in some high window or other, or sitting down by the edge of the pier, dangling their clothed limbs nonchalantly in that foul amber water—was disturbing to watch.

  Three tall steeples towered above all the gables and gambrel roofs, one’s clock dials replaced with howling holes, the other two collapsing, their timbers imploding. They made a convincing simulacrum of decay, as did the patchworked collection of ruins below them, but here and there James spied the faint traces of minute activity among these poor materials, the kind that an infestation of vermin might account for, so that he had to wonder if some of the progressive devastation might be actual. Of course there were finer houses—Georgians and stately Queen Anne’s—but they were set so far back from the waterfront they were likely part of the painted scenery designed to give depth to this elaborate illusion.

  He moved down the wooden walkways cautiously, afraid that at any moment the supports would break and dump him into that terrible foul-smelling liquid. He tried to pay attention to everything, but there really was too much to see. Finally he followed a family clump of four or five of the bandaged, crooked folk as they made their way through a tall pair of church doors carved with figures of an unrecognisable and unlikely morphology. And found himself in another juncture of the museum, the rock walls cold and dripping a briny, gelatinous secretion.

  From this mercifully brief and unpleasant tunnel, James travelled through a series of much smaller rooms apparently meant to in some way represent some of Lovecraft’s short stories. In the ‘The Dreams in the Witch House’ room, a young scholar was having his heart eaten out of his chest by a giant rat. The rat might have been an automaton of some sort, or something rigged up out of wax, rags, and pumps. Or it might have been an actor in a hideous costume, just like the actor portraying the poor student himself.

  Almost as bad was the ‘Shadow Over Innsmouth’ room, in which the young man turned into something vaguely subhuman, fish-like, reptilian, all the while delivering this terribly sad and delirious monologue running the gamut from repulsion to outright celebration.

  A long portrait gallery featured not only a variety of photographs taken of Lovecraft over the years, but also interpretations of the man and his family in paint, sculpture, and other media. The tall, gaunt figure looked pretty much the same in every image, although some interpretations exaggerated his chin or his facial blemishes or both. In several paintings, he was portrayed as walking about the streets of Providence, Rhode Island, under the cover of darkness, peering from around hedges or the corners of old buildings.

  On an elaborate Grecian stand at the end of this exhibit hall was Lovecraft’s fedora beneath a bell jar, labelled with a flowing inscription engraved on a brass plate. The hat was layered in a thick grey fur of dust, preserving both hat and dust together. James thought he had seen a picture or two of Lovecraft wearing this hat, and didn’t think it particularly suited the man.

  In the warren of rooms and alcoves and intersecting corridors that followed, various items from Lovecraft’s house, along with antiques belonging to relatives and friends, even odd associational objects from the Providence of Lovecraft’s time were displayed. But although a few of Lovecraft’s own things were properly labelled—toiletries and clothing and books and the like—most appeared to have simply been dumped, overflowing the rooms and stacked dangerously high with only narrow passages contrived between them to accommodate visitors.

  James was astounded that they actually allowed the public into this area. These particular acquisitions seemed obsessional, more the results of the hoarding of anything even vaguely Lovecraftian than the careful selections of a serious collector and sane museum curator. What kind of person would put so much time and money into transplanting this eccentric slice of Rhode Island kitsch to England, of all places? And then to care so little about how these dubious collectibles were presented?

  Visitors to this area acted as if they were at a suburban garage sale. James could hardly blame them. He was sure some of the smaller artefacts were being pocketed. It was shameful.

  There was a fine line between what people valued and made some attempt to preserve, and what was simply thrown away as having exhausted its significance. How did you decide? If he died today what would be kept, and more importantly, who would bother to keep it? The objects of a life must necessarily accumulate haphazardly, like the trash that’s overflowed the bin, if we’ve made no rules, devised no strategy for moving on. Not only couldn’t you take it with you, but best be careful about what you left behind. It was as if a poet left a final poem for all the world to see, but didn’t even bother to edit it.

  He thought about life with Chloe and Henry—what they’d had and what they’d done, and how none of that would be truly past, but co-existed, dream-like, with the present. At least as long as James was alive to experience it. His own house was certainly no better organised than this hodgepodge of items—he just lacked a sign that said MUSEUM. But he could take care of that particular oversight. Perhaps it was an odd thing to do, but who would ever see it other than him?

  For all its flaws, the museum was wonderful, and James was excited to be there. But an unease had followed him through the various exhibits, indeed had come along with him in his trip out here from London. Something poorly ignored, incompletely avoided. He was in England, where his only child had disappeared. And though the trail was years cold, he had no business enjoying himself, and the self-loathing he’d been so adamantly pushing down came suddenly racing, and he staggered over to the wall, ill. He gasped, holding his chest, choking and crying with his face turned from the crowd, who doubtless would not have paid much attention to him in any case.

  If he were any kind of father he’d be back in the city, retracing the stops of his first trip, focusing on the things which had fascinated Henry at the time, because perhaps they might fascinate him still. James’ chances of finding Henry were negligible, of course, but at least he could tell himself he’d done everything. Perhaps there was a bus that might take him back early. Surely not everyone could be expected to last an entire day. There were old people here, parents with their young children. Not everyone was an obsessive.

  James couldn’t decide what might be the quickest way out, but could not bring himself to shove his way back through the crowds and clutter. The museum appeared to have a predetermined traffic pattern, a natural flow through the exhibits, and it seemed foolish to struggle against it. So he permitted this tide to push him along into the final room in this particular sequence, before the next voluminous hall.

  The room was announced by tall gold lettering on the black mahogany door: MISKATONIC UNIVERSITY: SPECIAL COLLECTIONS. He aggress
ively pushed his way inside, bumping the people crowded in ahead of him. He wasn’t sure that they spoke English—their outfits appeared stylish, but slightly odd. Some avant-garde designer’s work, some European maverick, although he really didn’t know that much about the subject.

  He supposed it wasn’t a surprise that this room was so popular. One of the most intriguing aspects of Lovecraft’s work was the many strange and mysterious books he and his disciples referenced, and this homage to that mythic Miskatonic apparently housed most of them: the arcane De Vermis Mysteriis, the Book of Eibon, the Celaeno Fragments, Cultes des Goules, the Dhol Chants, a worn and heavily annotated working play script for The King in Yellow, The Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan, and various translations of the Necronomicon of the Arab Abdul Alhazred.

  These were displayed in glass cases scattered throughout the room, which had an extremely tall ceiling with narrow, apparently faux windows at the top of each wall showing a shiny silver sky with reddish highlights. Below these the bookcases towered, the upper shelves accessed by long thin ladders which swayed under the weight of dark-cloaked, diminutive librarians. The shelves were dusty and jammed, and some housed reams of yellowed pages dissolving around the edges, bundled into groups and tied together with old string. Rolls of parchment were jammed side by side with fan-shaped books attached to broken black lacquer handles, books carved into rough planks of wood and woven books created out of discoloured rags.

  Something he’d never seen before, or even imagined, were several books floating in glass jars full of a yellowish liquid. Thin wires dipped down through the wide mouths, to stir the pages and cause new words to emerge, as if a variety of invisible inks were gradually being activated, but if one kept agitating that liquid, other words slowly disappeared. A certain care had to be taken. Twist the sheet too much and individual letters would literally pop off the page, float out into the liquid and dissolve.