The Taint and Other Novellas

by Brian Lumley

  “Fool!” Carstairs snarled. “Idiot!” And to the others, “Get him out of here. Then come back and help me collect them up.”

  After that there was a lot of hurried movement and some scrambling about on the floor, but finally Crow was left alone with Carstairs; and then the man administered that curious droning caution which Crow was certain he had heard before.

  “It was all a dream, Mr. Crow. Only a dream. There is nothing really you should remember about it, nothing of any importance whatsoever. But you will come to me tomorrow, won’t you, and tell me that you plan to spend the weekend here? Of course you will!”

  And with that Carstairs left, silently striding from the alcove like some animated corpse into the dark old house. But this time he left Crow wide awake, drenched in a cold sweat of terror and with little doubt in his mind but that this had been another attempt of Carstairs’ to subvert him to his will—at which he had obviously had no little success in the recent past!

  Eyes staring in the darkness, Crow waited until he heard engines start up and motorcars draw away from the house—waited again until the old place settled down—and when far away a church clock struck one, only then did he get out of bed, putting on lights and slippers, trembling in a chill which had nothing at all to do with that of the house. Then he set about to check the floor of the alcove, the library, to strip and check and reassemble his bed blanket by blanket and sheet by sheet; until at last he was perfectly satisfied that there was no crawling thing in this area he had falsely come to think of as his own place, safe and secure. For the library door was still locked, which meant either that Carstairs had a second key, or—

  Now, with Harry Townley’s .45 tucked in his dressing-gown pocket, he examined the library again, and this time noticed that which very nearly stood his hair on end. It had to do with a central section of heavy shelving set against an internal wall. For in merely looking at this mighty bookcase, no one would ever suspect that it had a hidden pivot—and yet such must be the case. Certain lesser books where he had left them stacked on the carpet along the frontage of the bookshelves had been moved, swept aside in an arc; and now indeed he could see that a small gap existed between the bottom of this central part and the carpeted floor proper.

  Not without a good deal of effort, Crow finally found the trick of it and caused the bookcase to move, revealing a blackness and descending steps which spiraled steeply down into the bowels of the house. At last he had discovered a way into the cellar; but for now he was satisfied simply to close that secret door and make for himself a large jug of coffee, which he drank to its last drop before making another.

  And so he sat through the remaining hours of the night, sipping coffee, occasionally trembling in a preternatural chill, and promising himself that above all else, come what may, he would somehow sabotage whatever black plans Carstairs had drawn up for his future…

  • • •

  The weekend was nightmarish.

  Crow reported to Carstairs Saturday morning and begged to be allowed to stay at The Barrows over the weekend (which, it later occurred to him in the fullness of his senses, whether he himself willed it or not, was exactly what he had been instructed to do) to which suggestion, of course, the master of the house readily agreed. And after that things rapidly degenerated.

  Carstairs was there for every meal, and whether Crow ate or not his host invariably plied him with wine; and invariably, following a routine which now became a hideous and debilitating ritual, he would hurry from dining room to bathroom there to empty his stomach disgustingly of its stultifying contents. And all of this time he must keep up the pretense of falling more and more willingly under Carstairs’ spell, though in all truth this was the least of it. For by Sunday night his eyes were inflamed through no device of his own, his throat sore with the wine and bathroom ritual, and his voice correspondingly hoarse.

  He did none of Carstairs’ “work” during those hellish days, but at every opportunity pored over the man’s books in the frustrated hope that he might yet find something to throw more light on the occultist’s current activities. And all through the nights he lay abed, desperately fighting the drugs which dulled his mind and movements, listening to cellar-spawned chantings and howlings until with everything else he could very easily imagine himself the inhabitant of bedlam.

  Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday passed in like fashion—though he did manage to get some food into his system, and to avoid excessive contact with Carstairs’ wine—until, on Wednesday evening over dinner, the occultist offered him the break he so desperately longed for. Mercifully, on this occasion, the customary bottle of wine had been more than half-empty at the beginning of the meal; and Crow, seizing the opportunity to pour, had given Carstairs the lion’s share, leaving very little for himself; and this without attracting the attention of the gaunt master of the house, whose thoughts seemed elsewhere. Crow felt relieved in the knowledge that he would not have to concern himself yet again with the morbid bathroom ritual.

  At length, gathering his thoughts, Carstairs said: “Mr. Crow, I shall be away tomorrow morning, probably before you are up and about. I will return about midafternoon. I hesitate to leave you alone here, however, for to be perfectly frank you do not seem at all well.”

  “Oh?” Crow hoarsely mumbled. “I feel well enough.”

  “You do not look it. Perhaps you are tasking yourself too hard.” His eyes bored into Crow’s along the length of the great table, and his voice assumed its resonant, hypnotic timber. “I think you should rest tomorrow, Mr. Crow. Rest and recuperate. Lie late abed. Sleep and grow strong.”

  At this Crow deliberately affected a fluttering of his eyelids, nodding and starting where he sat, like an old man who has difficulty staying awake. Carstairs laughed.

  “Why!” he exclaimed, his voice assuming a more casual tone. “Do you see how right I am? You were almost asleep at the table! Yes, that’s what you require, young man: a little holiday from work tomorrow. And Friday should see you back to normal, eh?”

  Crow dully nodded, affecting disinterest—but his mind raced. Whatever was coming was close now. He could feel it like a hot wind blowing from hell, could almost smell the sulfur from the fires that burned behind Carstairs’ eyes…

  • • •

  Amazingly, Crow slept well and was awake early. He remained in bed until he heard a car pull up to the house, but even then some instinct kept him under his covers. Seconds later Carstairs parted the alcove’s curtains and silently entered; and at the last moment hearing his tread, with no second to spare, Crow fell back upon his pillow and feigned sleep.

  “That’s right, Titus Crow, sleep,” Carstairs softly intoned. “Sleep deep and dreamlessly—for soon your head shall know no dreams, no thoughts but mine! Sleep, Titus Crow, sleep…” A moment later the rustling of the curtains signaled his leaving; but still Crow waited until he heard the receding crunch of the car’s tires on the gravel of the drive.

  After that he was up in a moment and quickly dressed. Then: out of the house and around the grounds, and upstairs to spy out the land all around. Finally, satisfied that he was truly alone, he returned to the library, opened the secret bookcase door and descended to the Stygian cellar. The narrow stone steps turned one full circle to leave him on a landing set into an arched alcove in the cellar wall, from which two more paces sufficed to carry him into the cellar proper. Finding a switch, he put on subdued lighting—and at last saw what sort of wizard’s lair the place really was!

  Now something of Crow’s own extensive occult knowledge came to the fore as he moved carefully about the cellar and examined its contents; something of that, and of his more recent readings in Carstairs’ library. There were devices here from the very blackest days of Man’s mystical origins, and Titus Crow shuddered as he read meaning into many of the things he saw.

  The floor of the cellar had been cleared toward its center, and there he found the double interlocking circles of the Persian Mages, freshly daubed in red paint. I
n one circle he saw a white-painted ascending node, while in the other a black node descended. A cryptographic script, immediately known to him as the blasphemous Nyhargo Code, patterned the brick wall in green and blue chalks, its huge Arabic symbols seeming to leer where they writhed in obscene dedication. The three remaining walls were draped with tapestries so worn as to be threadbare—due to their being centuries-old—depicting the rites of immemorial necromancers and wizards long passed into the dark pages of history; wizards robed, Crow noted, in the forbidden pagan cassocks of ancient deserta Arabia, lending them an almost holy aspect.

  In a cobwebbed corner he found scrawled pentacles and zodiacal signs; and hanging upon hooks robes similar to those in the tapestries, embroidered with symbols from the Lemegeton, such as the Double Seal of Solomon. Small jars contained hemlock, henbane, mandrake, Indian hemp and a substance Crow took to be opium—and again he was given to shudder and to wonder at the constituents of Carstairs’ wine…

  Finally, having seen enough, he retraced his steps to the library and from there went straight to Carstairs’ study. Twice before he had found this door unlocked, and now for the third time he discovered his luck to be holding. This was hardly unexpected, however: knowing Crow would sleep the morning through, the magician had simply omitted to take his customary precautions. And inside the room…another piece of luck! The keys to the desk dangled from a drawer keyhole.

  With trembling hands Crow opened the drawers, hardly daring to disturb their contents; but in the desk’s bottom left-hand drawer at last he was rewarded to find that which he most desired to see. There could be no mistaking it: the cleanly sliced margins, the woodcut illustrations, the precise early nineteenth-century prose of one Charles Leggett, translator of Ludwig Prinn. This was the missing section from Leggett’s book: these were the “Saracenic Rituals,” the Mysteries of the Worm!

  Closing the single window’s shades, Crow switched on the desk lamp and proceeded to read, and as he read so time seemed to suspend itself in the terrible lore which was now revealed. Disbelievingly, with eyes that opened wider and wider, Crow read on; and as he turned the pages, so the words seemed to leap from them to his astonished eyes. An hour sped by, two, and Crow would periodically come out of his trance long enough to glance at his watch, or perhaps pass tongue over parched lips, before continuing. For it was all here, all of it—and finally everything began to click into place.

  Then…it was as if a floodgate had opened, releasing pent-up, forbidden memories to swirl in the maelstrom of Crow’s mind. He suddenly remembered those hypnotically erased night visits of Carstairs’, the conversations he had been willed to forget; and rapidly these pieces of the puzzle slotted themselves together, forming a picture of centuries-old nightmare and horror out of time. He understood the mystery of the paintings with their consecutive dates, and he knew Carstairs’ meaning when the man had spoken of a longevity dating back almost three and a half centuries. And at last, in blinding clarity, he could see the part that the wizard had planned for him in his lust for sorcerous survival.

  For Crow was to be the receptacle, the host body, youthful haven of flesh for an ancient black phoenix risen again from necromantic ashes! As for Crow himself, the Identity, Titus Crow: that was to be cast out—exorcised and sent to hell—replaced by the mind and will of Carstairs, a monster born of the blackest magicks in midnight ruins by the shore of Galilee in the year 1602!…

  Moreover, he knew when the deed was to be done. It was there, staring at him, ringed in ink on Carstairs’ desk calendar: the first day of February, 1946.

  Candlemas Eve, “the day ordained.”

  Tomorrow night!

  X

  That night, though he had never been much of a believer, Titus Crow said his prayers. He did manage to sleep—however fitfully and with countless startings awake, at every tiniest groan and creak of the old place—and in the morning looked just as haggard as this last week had determined he should look. Which was just as well, for as the time approached Carstairs would hardly let him out of his sight.

  On four separate occasions that morning, the man came to visit him in the library, eyeing him avidly, like a great and grotesque praying mantis. And even knowing Carstairs’ purpose with him—because he knew that purpose—Crow must keep up his pretense of going. to the slaughter like a lamb, and not the young lion his looks normally suggested.

  Lunch came and went, and Crow—mainly by deft sleight of hand—once more cut his wine intake to a minimum; and at 6:00 P.M. he negotiated the evening repast with similar skill and success. And through all of this it was plain to him that a morbid excitement was building in Carstairs, an agitation of spirit the man could barely contain.

  At 7:30 P.M.—not long after Crow had finished off an entire jug of coffee and as he sat in silence by the light of one dim lamp, memorizing tonight’s monstrous rite from what he had read of it in the “Saracenic Rituals”—Carstairs came and knocked upon the library door, walking in as usual before Crow could issue the customary invitation. No need now for Crow to feign haggardness or the weary slump of his shoulders, for the agonizingly slow buildup to the night’s play had itself taken care of these particulars.

  “Mr. Crow,” said Carstairs in unusually unctuous tones, “I may require a little assistance tonight…”

  “Assistance?” Crow peered at the other through red-rimmed eyes. “My assistance?”

  “If you have no objection. I have some work to do in the cellar, which may well keep me until the middle of the night. I do not like to keep you from your bed, of course, but in the event I should call for you”—his voice stepped slyly down the register—“you will answer, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Crow hoarsely answered, his eyes now fixed on the burning orbs of the occultist.

  “You will come when I call?” Carstairs now droned, driving the message home. “No matter how late the hour? You will awaken and follow me? You will come to me in the night, when I call?”

  “Yes,” Crow mumbled.

  “Say it, Titus Crow. Tell me what you will do, when I call.”

  “I shall come to you,” Crow obediently answered. “I will come to you when you call me.”

  “Good!” said Carstairs, his face ghastly as a skull. “Now rest, Titus Crow. Sit here and rest—and wait for my call. Wait for my call…” Silently he turned and strode from the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

  Crow got up, waited a moment, switched off the one bulb he had allowed to burn. In his alcove bedroom he drew the curtains and put on the light, then quickly changed into his dressing gown. He took Harry Townley’s .45 revolver out from under his mattress, loaded it and tucked it out of sight in the large pocket of his robe. Now he opened the curtains some twelve inches and brushed through them into the library proper, pacing the floor along the pale path of light from the alcove.

  To and fro he paced, tension mounting, and more than once he considered flight; even now, close as he was to those dark mysteries which at once attracted and repelled him. The very grit of his makeup would not permit it, however, for his emotions now were running more to anger than the terror he had expected. He was to be, to have been, this monster Carstairs’ victim! How now, knowing what the outcome would be—praying that it would be as he foresaw it—could he possibly turn away? No, flight was out of the question; Carstairs would find a substitute: the terror would continue. Even if Crow were to go, who could say what revenge might or might not fly hot on his heels?

  At 9:30 P.M. cars pulled up at the house, quiet as hearses and more of them than at any other time, and through a crack in his shades Crow watched shadowy figures enter the house. For a little while then there were faint, subdued murmurings and creakings; all of which Crow heard with ears which strained in the library’s darkness, fine-tuned to catch the merest whisper. A little later, when it seemed to him that the noises had descended beneath the house, he put out the alcove light and sat in unmitigated darkness in the chair where Carstairs had left him.
And all about him the night grew heavy, until it weighed like lead upon his head and shoulders.

  As the minutes passed he found his hand returning again and again to the pocket where Townley’s revolver lay comfortably heavy upon his thigh, and every so often he would be obliged to still the nervous trembling of his limbs. Somewhere in the distance a great clock chimed the hour of eleven, and as at a signal Crow heard the first susurrations of a low chanting from beneath his feet. A cold sweat immediately stood out upon his brow, which he dabbed away with a trembling handkerchief.

  The Ritual of the Worm had commenced!

  Angrily Crow fought for control of himself…for he knew what was coming. He cursed himself for a fool—for several fools—as the minutes ticked by and the unholy chanting took on rhythm and volume. He stood up, sat down, dabbed at his chill brow, fingered his revolver…and started at the sudden chiming of the half hour.

  Now, in an instant, the house seemed full of icy air, the temperature fell to zero! Crow breathed the black, frigid atmosphere of the place and felt the tiny hairs crackling in his nostrils. He smelled sharp fumes—the unmistakable reek of burning henbane and opium—and sat rigid in his chair as the chanting from the cellar rose yet again, in a sort of frenzy now, throbbing and echoing as with the acoustics of some great cathedral.

  The time must surely approach midnight, but Crow no longer dared glance at his watch.

  Whatever it had been, in another moment his terror passed; he was his own man once more. He sighed raggedly and forced himself to relax, knowing that if he did not, that the emotional exhaustion must soon sap his strength. Surely the time—

  —Had come!

  The chanting told him: the way it swelled, receded and took on a new meter. For now it was his own name he heard called in the night, just as he had been told he would hear it.