The Dulwich Horror & Others

by David Hambling

  “Who is the man hanging from the tree, do you think?”

  I could hardly make out his words, because the chanting was so loud.

  “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” they were saying, over and over. “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

  “‘Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,’” I repeated.

  I turned my head, feeling something close by. Dr Hamilton was standing right next to me, his face transfigured into a kind of furious joy as he transcribed what I was saying. This was something splendid for him; he had struck a vein of purest gold, and he was digging it out as fast as his pen could move.

  Behind him was the window, and the daylight was blotted out.

  The entire window was crowded with black gargoyle forms with dragon wings, pressing their faces, their bodies, their clawed hands against the glass.

  I must have screamed and recoiled backwards, because the next thing I knew I was on the floor. I could hear the echo of shrieking in my ears. The door was open and Dr Hamilton’s receptionist was there.

  “It’s quite all right,” Dr Hamilton was saying to her. “There’s no danger. Miss Hetherington is externalising some of her unconscious thought-forms, and the process was more successful than I expected. Remarkably so.”

  He sounded nothing short of smug. The two of them helped me to my feet and someone passed me a glass. I took a sip and almost spat it out in disgust. They had given me a glass of water. Both beamed at me as though I had passed an exam.

  The masks were still ugly, but they were just masks. There was no chanting, no shadows, nothing outside the window except a bare lawn with some wrought-iron furniture and a scattering of dead leaves. I was still reeling with the effects of the hypnosis. Those winged things were not real, not entirely real, but the menace was there.

  “I really think we achieved something there,” Dr Hamilton was saying. Even then, that ‘we’ of his grated on me. “It was a breakthrough. Next time we must—”

  “I have to go now,” I said.

  I ran to the station, where I hailed a taxi. Out of breath, I gave the driver the address of Herbert’s studio and sat panting in the back of the cab.

  I had not seen Herbert for weeks. People came and went, appeared and disappeared so often that one rarely noticed. The hypnosis had pulled loose those winged shapes from the depths of my memory. The door to the old bicycle factory was not locked. I opened it gingerly.

  “Hullo—Herbert!” I called. “Is anybody home?”

  I called again; only my echoes replied. Inside it was freezing, colder than outside. I pulled my coat about me and walked through.

  The old factory still smelled of oil, and there were still cardboard boxes and odd litter in the corners. Something scuttled away as I approached, almost certainly a rat.

  My breath made little clouds in the air. The sculptures were still there under their dustsheets. Herbert’s work benches were off on the other side of the room. The floor had a faint covering of plaster dust which showed tracks in it, little rat tracks going from sculpture to sculpture. The butcher’s brains and tripe had not gone to waste after all. The rodents had eaten every last scrap.

  The thing about paranoia is that you see everything with a paranoid eye. As far as Dr Hamilton knew, I could be going through the newspapers looking for stories that fitted with my paranoid vision. He had only my word for it that I had known any of these people…and so did I. Since my encounter with Daisy I was beginning to mistrust my memory. I thought she had disappeared, been declared dead, but I was not quite positive that I had not seen her at George’s funeral. In fact, I had a very definite image in my mind of Daisy in a black dress with a veil, and where else could I have seen that?

  The difference between a false interpretation of the world and a true one is, as I believe you always told George, that an accurate picture of the world can be tested. Anybody can explain away past events with a bit of twisting; the deciding factor is whether your theory makes predictions which can be verified.

  I had made a prediction, and as I walked gingerly between the dust-covers, I was getting ready to test it. The statues were still here. I had not expected them to have flown away, not quite.

  There was a breath of colder air, and I looked up to see an open skylight, in fact several open skylights. No wonder it was so cold in here.

  I found Herbert draped across a chair behind one of the sculptures. He was, of course, quite dead. The more lurid newspapers said later he had been “very extensively” gnawed by rats, which had been attracted to the offal that had formed part of the exhibition. They also said the cause of death was impossible to determine because he was badly decomposed. Well, that’s a matter of opinion; I would say he was rather well decomposed.

  Perhaps Herbert had just sunk into the chair one night after too many brandies and had frozen to death. Or perhaps the failure of his latest exhibition had been too much for him. Both of those theories would be put forward. But I did not think so, for three reasons.

  Firstly, there was his face. The rats had taken his eyes, of course, and the flesh was dried out and the skin shrivelled. But even so, he was locked into a rictus scream of such intensity that I did not believe his last moments could have been peaceful.

  Secondly, a bag of plaster near him had been ripped open, and that was the source of the fine coating everywhere. Close by there were more footprints; not just the rat tracks, but a woman’s shoes and other prints.

  Thirdly, I had remembered that Carl had mentioned Herbert’s mysterious new muse was a girl he called Marguerite. A pretty enough name, which just happens to be French for daisy.

  I swallowed several times and backed away slowly. I did not scream. I was past screaming now.

  It was still light outside, though the sky had closed in and it was starting to spin. I walked towards Virgo Fidelis convent school nearby. It is a great Victorian Gothic edifice on the side of the hill. It has soaring windows set in pointed lancet arches, a transept spire, an inset statue of our Lady. But the rooflines are free from gargoyles. Whatever Julian had seen up there had not been architectural embellishment, but winged creatures waiting for their hour. My mind was in a whirl. I had suspected Herbert—but he was dead. I suspected Chuck, but he did not fit. For a moment I even suspected the cat, the witch’s black cat…but the real question was whether I could trust Dr Hamilton. Or whether Dr Hamilton was, in fact, the source of the whole problem. Could his prodding and poking in my brain be helping unleash those things? He knew about the background to my case, he knew about the Dulwich Horror, and perhaps he had his own ideas about that outbreak of madness. He was a Jungian, and he believed in the reality of the collective unconscious… Perhaps Daniel might have been able to help, but Daniel was gone. I would have to face the doctor on my own.

  “You can’t see Dr Hamilton now,” said the receptionist, or nurse, or whatever she was. “He’s with another patient.”

  “I have to,” I said firmly. “It’s about a murder.”

  She looked at me steadily. Psychiatrists’ receptionists see a lot of melodramatic behaviour.

  “It’s not possible at the moment,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like to wait? Dr Hamilton will see you presently.”

  I thought about rushing past her, but she would just have dragged me back and it could have turned into an ugly scene. She was probably better at wrestling than I am, and I suspected she had a chloroform pad ready under her desk for difficult patients.

  I glared at the wall, thinking furiously about what I would say, what I would do. There were a string of deaths all around me. I did not know what was happening, but I had some idea. Daniel had brought Daisy back; I was convinced of that. It was the rest of it I was trying to understand: the bat-winged things that Herbert had tried to depict in his work and Julian had seen, the human sacrifices.

  I looked at my watch again. It was well past the hour. The receptionist was intent on reading
something and was determined not to look back at me.

  Psychiatrists are the most punctual of professionals; you pay for an hour, and you get sixty minutes exactly before you are turfed off the couch for the next paying client. Their consulting rooms always have two doors, so you never see the person before you leaving. I assumed the next patient must be still there for some particular reason. Perhaps that hour might be extended for a patient going through a crisis, or one he was especially interested in, who was young and pretty or—

  I sat bolt upright.

  “The patient he’s seeing now,” I said. “It’s not Daisy, is it? Blonde girl, very pretty, petite, in her early twenties—”

  “You know perfectly well I can’t possibly discuss Dr Hamilton’s other patients,” she said briskly. Perhaps she thought I was jealous, or was a paranoid accusing the doctor of having an affair with Daisy. But she looked down at her notes. It seemed the receptionist was not going to budge, but once I had settled down again she looked at the clock, then got up without a word and went down the hallway to Dr Hamilton’s office and knocked softly at the door.

  I was already on my feet when she opened it. I might have been beyond screaming, but the receptionist was not, and her scream startled me.

  I did not need to see the body to know that Dr Hamilton was dead. I heard later that he had hanged himself, but not before he did some peculiar injuries to himself with a pair of scissors. Perhaps both of those things were true.

  I left the scene while the receptionist was calling for help. It was completely dark outside, and I was afraid. I found another taxi to take me home and had it wait outside the house while I threw things together. Claudia looked at me rushing around like a mad thing.

  “Strugnell’s lot have a poetry reading in Tulse Hill later, if you can be bothered,” she suggested.

  “Not tonight,” I said. “But you must. And—would you mind staying away for a few days?”

  She watched me gathering together Carl’s things from his room and stuffing them back into the holdall he had brought with him.

  “Oh dear,” she said.

  I took notes from my purse and pressed them into her hand. “Take this. Stay in an hotel. Find an unsuitable man. Shock people.”

  I kissed her. Claudia, for all her oft-stated death wished, deserved to live. Then I grabbed the holdall, seized Carl’s overcoat from the hall cupboard, and hurried out to the taxi. I directed the driver through the dark and what was now a steady rain to the studio Carl shared with half a dozen others.

  The artists were slouching about drinking tea when I arrived. Barely greeting them, I dragged Carl away from the assembly and forced him into the taxi.

  “Good news, you’re going to Paris,” I said.

  “Why, Sophie, this is so sudden,” he said with a grin.

  “I can’t go with you. Darling, it was simply wonderful but now it’s over. Please, please don’t say anything at all. Goodbye forever.” I kissed his confused young face and pressed an envelope into his hand. “You have to go, or your life is in danger. Here’s some money, get yourself to Paris and paint! If you ever loved me even a little bit, go, go now—and don’t look back.”

  I gave the taxi driver far too much money and strict instructions to drive straight to Victoria Station and not under any circumstances whatsoever to stop and pick up a female passenger. He was to ignore Carl’s protests until they arrived. The driver gave me a knowing look, and they were gone into the rainy night.

  It was the best thing I could think of; if I had gone with him the danger would have been greater.

  Carl, that sweet boy, did not look back. I do not know what happened to him. I like to think he did go to Paris and had grandes affaires with voluptuous and petulant courtesans, that his paintings were cruelly rejected by all the salons, and he suffered properly for his art with some picturesque but not too serious illness. Then after a couple of years he would have given it up to live in Kent with an English girl, with a job in an office somewhere, and three children. He would wistfully paint watercolours on Sundays and think of his youth in Norwood, and me. I like to think that. I like to think that he got far enough away fast enough to escape.

  I do not like to remember that last canvas he was working on at his studio.

  I don’t like to think of a taxi passing a blonde woman, skidding in the wet and overturning on a corner, while winged shadows flitted around the wreck. Of Carl’s dead and oddly damaged body being discovered some time later.

  The house was silent, dark, and empty when I got back. Claudia had gone. I never saw her again either. Surely she survived.

  I sat in the kitchen for a while, massaging my temples. Everyone was gone. It was just me now, me and my madness. Rain slashed against the window, wind whistled around the eaves. It was indeed the dark and stormy night beloved of Bulwer-Lytton and every other third-rate novelist.

  I brushed my hair and arrayed myself to meet what the night might bring. I put on my best dress, a black crepe silk affair, with some gold bracelets and gold drop earrings. I topped off the ensemble by unwrapping from its tissue paper an ancient gold tiara of oriental design, the only piece left me by my grandmother, with its eight long, dangly gold extensions. I slipped into shoes that added a good four inches to my hauteur. I applied make-up with particular care, adding the tiniest dab of scent behind my ears.

  The woman in the mirror looked magnifique. To fight darkness, you must shine.

  I prepared the house for what was to come, did a little tidying, and made some arrangements. Then I read through The Waste Land again, looking for clues, reading passages out loud to enjoy the sound of the words. It seemed as good a way of summoning as any.

  At almost half past eleven there was a knock at the door. Daisy was there, arriving like a pale owl swooping out of the night.

  “Hello,” she said. “I thought I’d find you in.”

  “Hello, Daisy,” I said.

  She hung up her slick coat and her umbrella. Daisy was fresh as her name-sake in a white floral print dress, the same motif repeated in her headband. It’s a look that works well for ten-year-olds. It worked for Daisy. Griddlebone rubbed round her calves, purring.

  “Gosh, Soph, you look fabulous,” she said. “Like a pagan high priestess.” There was no trace of archness or hidden menace. This was going to be harder than I thought. I led her to the big wooden kitchen table where my newspaper cuttings were laid out like a Tarot reading. They were supplemented by some hastily handwritten notes about what had happened to Herbert and Dr Hamilton.

  “Mind the markings on the floor,” I said.

  Daisy stepped easily over the chalk patterns, careful not to tread on the lines, as she came over to look at my assemblage.

  “You showed me this bit before,” she said.

  “You must recognise some of these stories,” I said. “Names, faces, places, dates. I am passing mad, and I may be wrong, but I am not making all this up.”

  Daisy looked up at me oddly. “Of course I recognise them. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  We faced each other over the kitchen table, as though for a game. A game of chess? It was my move.

  “Once upon a time there was a beautiful woman called Helen—the most beautiful woman in the world,” I started. Daisy listened patiently.

  “She was so beautiful she started fights. Theseus abducted her and Helen went along, then her brothers brought her back. Her suitors decided that one of them would marry her and all the others would support him. Menelaus married her; Helen went along with it. Then Aphrodite, goddess of love, awarded Helen to Prince Paris of Troy, and Helen trotted off to Troy with him. Her husband came after her with his friends—and a wooden horse and everything—and they burned down Troy and killed Paris. Helen came back with her husband.”

  “What does it mean?” Daisy asked.

  “Helen kept changing sides depending on who she was with,” I said. “As though she had no will of her own.”

  Even as I said it, I saw how
empty the accusation was. Daisy was simply doing what she had always done. When George had sent her on errands or used her to open doors, she had always gladly acted as his tool without understanding his motives or his ends. And it was my fault. I had acted as procuress, won her over for George’s cause.

  “You know I don’t have sides, Sophie,” said Daisy. “I’m just me. But I’ll always be your friend.”

  It was an emotional jiu-jitsu move: by offering no resistance, Daisy left me completely off-balance. The tables were turned; if this was a game of chess, I would have to take the black pieces. Daisy was still my friend, and I loved her. That made it ten times more dreadful than if she had been a stranger.

  Thunder boomed and rolled off in the distance.

  “Those men see you, and they die,” I said. “Why is that?”

  Daisy did not seem to understand the question, and she obviously thought I was being unfair, but she rallied and tried to meet me on my own ground.

  “Do you remember, Sophie,” Daisy said, “I once asked you why kittens had to be drowned? And why all those boys had to die in the war? Do you remember what you told me?”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. I could imagine all too easily what sort of flip, facile answer I must have given. About it being the way of the world, and the necessity of evil for the greater good, and that the innocent will always suffer. I may even have told her about theodicy, that entire branch of religious study which exists to twist logic until it explains how evil can exist in a world ruled by a loving God.

  “I don’t remember,” I said again. “But whatever I told you was bad, and stupid, and wrong.”

  I could not win this argument against myself. Could I tell her that human sacrifice was simply wrong? Daisy would not have an answer, but I did: Abraham agreed to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar of Jehovah willingly enough. Is that not a clear enough example?

  I could try telling her that Cthulhu was evil, but how hypocritical would that have been after my attempts to persuade you that a position of objective neutrality was needed? Jehovah smote a few cities when he felt like it, and the gods of Olympus regularly destroyed mortals on a whim.