He scratched his beard audibly, which I took as my signal to take my leave.
Upstairs much longer than ever before. Lights didn't work. Sat in a trapezoid of moonlight for many silent moments.
Began to get worried and came downstairs before getting the doctor's go-ahead.
It was quiet, much too. The doctor squatted on the landing of the staircase, his face buried in his hands. He was half-sobbing to himself, saying: "Wrong, wrong, all wrong."
"What happened?" I asked. "Where is everybody?"
"They all ran out the back door," he said, pointing. "They must be down by the lake by now."
'"No problem," I said consolingly. "I'll just finish things there."
He stared at me straight in the face, and I didn't like the look in his old surgeon's eyes.
"You don't understand."
"What do you mean?" I asked without having to.
"They still have much of their brains left," he answered, also without having to. But I did not expect him to add: "And mouths, too. Mouths that can speak to you."
There was, of course, every reason for my not hesitating another second, for not thinking about it at all. I proceeded quickly, though not wildly, toward the door at the back of the house; but by the time it slammed itself behind me, I was running as fast as I could down to the lake in the pines. The moon overhead was full and bright and beautiful.
I followed the voices which mingled with the sounds of the wind. When I reached the lake, I saw them all scrambling along the shore. But some of them had already begun that kind of dancing which is so dreadful to watch: none of them was larger than a dinner plate and their multiple radiating legs (with pincers by now) made them look like unholy pinwheels spinning in the moonlight. Very dreadful. And the doctor was right, they still had much of their brains left. Too much... they knew what was happening to them. Not like the other times. And they did have their mouths, yes indeed, right in the middle of their brittle pink bodies. When my presence became generally known, they began scuttling around my feet.
"Kill us, kill us," they chanted in their many tiny voices. "Kill us before we change more. Some of us are dancing ones. Some of us have gone into the lake forever. Kill us, please, kill us."
"That's what I'm here for," I said, but only to myself.
I picked up a few heavy rocks and went to work. I think I got most of them, too. Later, when I returned to the house, I told the doctor I had got them all. He didn't challenge me on it. Needed to believe me, poor man. Also, he promised to take precautions to insure that this kind of thing would never happen again. Gave me a bonus that seemed to make it all worthwhile.
The Puppet Masters (1994)
First published in its original form in Crypt Of Cthulhu #68, 1989 as 'Puppet Horror', a section of Studies In Horror.
Also published in this revised form in: Noctuary
The one sitting all cock-eyed was telling me things. Of course its soft and carefully sewn mouth was not moving, none of their mouths move unless I make them. Nonetheless I can still understand them when they have something to say, which is actually quite often. They have lived through things no one would believe.
And they are all over my room. This one is on the floor, lying flat on its little stomach with its head propped within the crux of its two hands, a tiny foot waving in the air behind. That one is lazily sprawled high upon an empty shelf, leaning on its elbow, a thin leg of cloth peaked like a triangle. They are everywhere else too: in the fireplace that I would never light; in my most comfortable chair which they make seem gigantic; even under my bed, a great many of them, as well as in it. I usually occupy a small stool in the middle of the room, and the room is always very quiet. Otherwise it would be difficult to hear their voices, which are faint and slightly hoarse, as might be expected from such throats as theirs.
Who else would listen to them and express what they have been through? Who else could understand their fears, however petty they may seem at times? To a certain degree, then, they are dependent on me. Patiently I attend to histories and anecdotes of existences beyond the comprehension of most. Never, I believe, have I given them reason to feel that the subtlest fluctuations of their anxieties, the least nuance of their cares, have not been accounted for by me and given sympathetic consideration.
Do I ever speak to them of my own life? No; that is, not since a certain incident which occurred some time ago. To this day I don't know what came over me. Absent-mindedly I began confessing some trivial worry, I've completely forgotten what it was. And at that moment all their voices suddenly stopped, every one of them, leaving an insufferable vacuum of silence.
Eventually they began speaking to me again, and all was as it had been before. But I shall never forget that interim of terrible silence, just as I shall never forget the expression of infinite evil on their faces which rendered me speechless thereafter.
They, of course, continue to talk on and on... from ledge and shelf, floor and chair, from under the bed and in it.
The Spectral Estate (1994)
First published in its original form in Crypt Of Cthulhu #68, 1989 as 'Spectral Horror', a section of Studies In Horror.
Also published in this revised form in: Noctuary
One may be alone in the house and yet not alone.
There are so many rooms, so many galleries and mysteries, so many places where a peculiar quiet resounds with secrets. Every object and surface of the house seems darkly vibrant, a medium for distant agitations which are felt but not always seen or heard: dusty chandeliers send a stirring through the air above, walls ripple within patterns of raised filigree, grimy portraits shudder inside their gilded frames. And even if the light throughout much of the house has grown stale and become a sepia haze, it nevertheless remains a haze in ferment, a fidgeting aura that envelops this museum of tremulous antiquities.
So one cannot feel alone in such a house, especially when it is a remote edifice which clings to the very edge of the land and hovers above a frigid ocean. Through an upper window is a view of coastal earth falling away into gray, heaving waters. The lower windows of the house all look into the rustling depths of a garden long overgrown and sprouting in prolific tangles. A narrow path leads through this chaotic luxuriance, ending at the border of a dense wood which is aroused to life by a mild but perpetual wind. Ocean, garden, learn to become intoxicated by the mood of mystery itself, by the odor of the unknown. We are entranced by the subtle scents and wavering reflections of the unimaginable.
In the beginning it is not our intention to seek order within madness or to give a name to certain mysteries. We are not concerned with creating a system out of the strangeness of that house. What we seek—in all its primitive purity—is the company of the spectral. But ultimately, as if possessed by some fatal instinct, we succumb to the spirit of intrigue and attempt to find a drab focus for the amorphous glories we have inherited.
We are like the man who, by some legacy of fate, has come to stay in another old house, one very much like our own. After passing a short time within the cavernous and elaborate solitude of the place, he becomes a spectator to strange sights and sounds. He then begins to doubt his sanity, and at last flees the advancing shadows of the house for the bright shelter of a nearby town. There, amid the good society of the local citizens, he learns the full history of the house. (It seems that long ago some tragedy occurred, an irreparable melodrama that has continued to be staged many years after the deaths of the actors involved.) Others who have lived in the house have witnessed the same eerie events, and its most recent guest is greatly relieved by this knowledge. Faith in his mental soundness has been triumphantly restored: it is the house itself which is mad.
But this man need not have been so comforted. If the spectral drama could be traced to definite origins, and others have been audience to it, this is not to prove that all testimony regarding the house is unmarked by madness. Rather, it suggests a greater derangement, a conspiracy of unreason implicating a plurality of lunatics
, a delirium that encompasses past and present, houses and minds, the claustral cellars of the soul and the endless spaces outside it.
For we are the specters of a madness that surpasses ourselves and hides in mystery. And though we search for sense throughout endless rooms, all we may find is a voice whispering from a mirror in a house that belongs to no one.
The Tsalal (1994)
First published in Best New Horror 5, 1994
Also published in: Noctuary, The Nightmare Factory, The Shadow At The Bottom Of The World.
1 Moxton's leavetaking
None of them could say how it was they had returned to the skeleton town. Some had reached the central cross streets, where a single traffic light, long dead, hung down like a dark lantern. There they paused and stood dumbstruck, scarecrows standing out of place, their clothes lying loose and worn about scrawny bodies. Others slowly joined them, drifting in from the outskirts or disembarking from vehicles weighted down with transportable possessions. Then all of them gathered silently together on that vast, gray afternoon.
They seemed too exhausted to speak and for some time appeared not to recognize their location among the surrounding forms and spaces. Their eyes were fixed with an insomniac's stare, the stigma of both monumental fatigue and painful attentiveness to everything in sight. Their faces were narrow and ashen, a few specks mingling with the dusty surface of that day and seeking to hide themselves within its pale hours. Opposing them was the place they had abandoned and to which they had somehow returned. Only one had not gone with them. He had stayed in the skeleton town, and now they had come back to it, though none of them could say how or why this had happened.
A tall, bearded man who wore a flat-brimmed hat looked up at the sky. Within the clouds was a great seeping darkness, the overflow of the coming night and of a blackness no one had ever seen. After a moment the man said, "It will be dark soon." His words were almost whispered and the effort of speaking appeared to take the last of his strength. But it was not simply a depleted vigor that kept him and the others from turning about and making a second exodus from the town.
No one could say how far they had gone before they reversed their course and turned back toward the place which they believed themselves to have abandoned forever. They could not remember what juncture or dead end they had reached that aborted the evacuation. Part of that day was lost to them, certain images and experiences hidden away. They could feel these things closeted somewhere in their minds, even if they could not call them to memory. They were sure they had seen something they should not remember. And so no one suggested that they set out again on the road that would take them from the town. Yet they could not accept staying in that place.
A paralysis had seized them, that state of soul known to those who dwell on the highest plane of madness, aristocrats of insanity whose nightmares confront them on either side of sleep. Soon enough the wrenching effect of this psychic immobility became far less tolerable than the prospect of simply giving up and staying in the town. Such was the case with at least one of these cataleptic puppets, a sticklike woman who said, "We have no choice. He has stayed in his house." Then another voice among them shouted, "He has stayed too long."
A sudden wind moved through the streets, flapping the garments of the weary homecomers and swinging the traffic light that hung over their heads. For a moment all the signals lit up in every direction, disturbing the deep gray twilight. The colors drenched the bricks of buildings and reflected in windows with a strange intensity. Then the traffic light was dark once more, its fit of transformation done.
The man wearing a flat-brimmed hat spoke again, straining his whispery voice. "We must meet together after we have rested."
As the crowd of thin bodies sluggishly dispersed there was almost nothing spoken among them. An old woman shuffling along the sidewalk did not address anyone in particular when she said, "Blessed is the seed that is planted forever in darkness."
Someone who had heard these words looked at the old woman and asked, "Missus, what did you say?" But the old woman appeared genuinely confused to learn she had said anything at all.
2—The one who stayed behind
In the house where a man named Ray Starns and a succession of others before him once resided, Andrew Maness ascended the stairway leading to the uppermost floor, and there entered a small room that he had converted to a study and a chamber of meditation. The window in this room looked out over the rooftops in the neighborhood to offer a fair view of Moxton's main street. He watched as everyone abandoned the town, and he watched them when they returned. Now far into the night, he was still watching after they had all retreated to their homes. And every one of these homes was brightly illuminated throughout the night, while Main Street was in darkness. Even the traffic light was extinguished.
He looked away from the window and fixed his eyes on a large book that lay open on his desk a few steps across the room. The pages of the book were brown and brittle as fallen leaves. "Your wild words were true," he said to the book. "My friends did not go far before they were sent trudging back. You know what made them come home, but I can only guess.
So many things you have devoutly embellished, yet you offer nothing on this point. As you say, The last vision dies with him who beholds it. Blessed is the seed that is planted forever in darkness.' But the seed that has been planted still grows." Andrew Maness closed the book. Written in dark ink upon its cover was the word TSALAL.
3—The power of a place
Before long everyone in Moxton had shut themselves in their houses, and the streets at the center of town were deserted. A few streetlights shone on the dull facades of buildings: small shops, a modest restaurant, a church of indefinite denomination, and even a movie theater, which no one had patronized for some weeks. Surrounding this area were clusters of houses that in the usual manner collect about the periphery of skeleton towns. These were structures of serene desolation that had settled into the orbit of a dead star. They were simple pinewood coffins, full of stillness, leaning upright against a silent sky. Yet it was this silence that allowed sounds from a fantastic distance to be carried into it. And the stillness of these houses and their narrow streets led the eye to places astonishingly remote. There were even moments when the entire veil of desolate serenity began to tremble with the tumbling colors of chaos.
Everything seems so unusual in the plainness of these neighborhoods that clutter the margins of a skeleton town. Often no mention is made of the peculiar virtues of such places by their residents. Even so, there may be a house that does not stand along one of those narrow streets but at its end. This house may even be somewhat different from the others in the neighborhood. Possibly it is taller than the other houses or displays a weathervane that spins in the wind of storms. Perhaps its sole distinguishing quality is that it has been long unoccupied, making it available as an empty vessel in which much of that magical desolation of narrow streets and coffin-shaped houses comes to settle and distill like an essence of the old alchemists. It seems part of a design—some great inevitability—that this house should exist among the other houses that clutch at the edges of a skeleton town. And the sense of this vast, all-encompassing design in fact arises within the spindly residents of the area when one day, unexpectedly, there arrives a red-headed man with the key to this particular house.
4—Memories of a Moxton childhood
Andrew Maness closed the book named TSALAL. His eyes then looked around the room, which had not seemed so small to him in the days when he and his father occupied the house, days too long ago for anyone else to recall with clarity. He alone was able to review those times with a sure memory, and he summoned the image of a small bed in the far corner of the room.
As a child he would lie awake deep into the night, his eyes wandering about the moonlit room that seemed so great to his doll-like self. How the shadows enlarged that room, opening certain sections of it to the black abyss beyond the house and beyond the blackness of night, reaching into a
blackness no one had ever seen. During these moments things seemed to be changing all around him, and it felt as if he had something to do with this changing. The shadows on the pale walls began to curl about like smoke, creating a swirling murkiness that at times approached sensible shapes—the imperfect zoology of cloud-forms—but soon drifted into hazy nonsense. Smoky shadows gathered everywhere in the room.
It appeared to him that he could see what was making these shadows which moved so slowly and smoothly. He could see that simple objects around him were changing their shapes and making strange shadows. In the moonlight he could see the candle in its tarnished holder resting on the bedstand. The candle had burned quite low when he blew out its flame hours before. Now it was shooting upwards like a flower growing too fast, and it sprouted outward with tallowy vines and blossoms, waxy wings and limbs, pale hands with wriggling fingers and other parts he could not name. When he looked across the room he saw that something was moving back and forth upon the windowsill with a staggered motion. This was a wooden soldier which suddenly stretched out the claws of a crab and began clicking them against the windowpanes. Other things that he could barely see were also changing in the room; he saw shadows twisting about in strange ways. Everything was changing, and he knew that he was doing something to make things change. But this time he could not stop the changes. It seemed the end of everything, the infernal apocalypse...
Only when he felt his father shaking him did he become aware that he had been screaming. Soon he grew quiet. The candle on his bedstand now burned brightly and was not as it had been a few moments before. He quickly surveyed the room to verify that nothing else remained changed. The wooden soldier was lying on the floor, and its two arms were fixed by its sides.
He looked at his father, who was sitting on the bed and still had on the same dark clothes he had worn when he held church services earlier that day. Sometimes he would see his father asleep in one of the chairs in the parlor or nodding at his desk where he was working on his next sermon. But he had never known his father to sleep during the night.
The Collected Short Fiction Page 70