The Collected Short Fiction
Ramsey Campbell
The Collected Short Fiction Of Ramsey Campbell
An ambitious title. It is intended that, one day, this epub will contain the complete short fiction of Ramsey Campbell. This current version contains exactly one hundred stories and is, by way of celebration, released publically. The custom-made cover uses artwork by Peter Elson, used for the British release of Cold Print.
With these origins in mind, the stories are presented in chronological order, from Campbell's early forays into writing by way of Lovecraft imitation—each one a worthy tale in its own right, nonetheless—through the rising splendour of his less-is-more approach to a whole range of un-nameable horrors and onto his current imperial phase as grand magus of British horror - a true legend in the field.
An index in alphabetical order, replete with strike-throughs to show missing stories, is available here for those who have a particular favourite but cannot quite place the year it appeared. 'The' and 'A/An' are ignored for alphabetical ordering purposes, i.e. The Horror From The Bridge is to be found, quite rightly, amongst Hearing Is Believing, Heading Home and The Horror Under Warrendown.
This epub release is version 2.1
2.1 'Demons By Daylight' - Added Potential, At First Sight, The Franklyn Paragraphs, The Sentinel. Minor typographical corrections to The Tower From Yuggoth and introduction added. Further typos corrected in The Horror From The Bridge, The Stone On The Island, Cold Print, The Scar, Napier Court and The Franklyn Paragraphs. There should be no more split paragraphs other than those which happen to begin with a proper noun. Ellipses separated from full stops by a single space and ellipses followed by mysterious '8's have been corrected. Speechmarks inexplicably followed by 'was' have been corrected. - 21st November, 2001
2.0 '24 hours before it hits IRC' - Initial public release - 17th November, 2001
Errors, suggestions and, most of all, missing stories are welcomed by [email protected]
The Tower From Yuggoth (1961)
The Tower From Yuggoth is one of Campbell's earlier works, originally published in a fanzine edited by one of Campbell's friends and later re-worked as The Mine On Yuggoth. As Campbell puts it in the introduction to Alone With The Horrors: "At the time it felt very much like the start of my career as a writer; now it looks more like a phase I needed Derleth to rescue me from. At least it's eldritch—it keeps saying as much—and it also offers cackling trees and curse-muttering streams. The reader may end up knowing how they felt, and my notion of how Massachusetts rustics spoke may also be productive of a shudder. Had I conjured him up from his essential salts for an opinion, Lovecraft would undoubtedly have pointed out these excesses and many other flaws. And watch out for those peculiar erections in the woods!"
I
Of late there has been a renewal of interest in cases of inexplicable happenings. From this it seems inevitable that further interest be shown in the case of Edward Wingate Armitage, who was consigned to St Mary's Hospital, Arkham, in early 1929, later to be taken to an institution. His life had always been, by choice, the life of an outcast and recluse; for the greater part of his life outside the institution he had been interested in the occult and forbidden; and his supposed finding of incontrovertible evidence in his research into certain legendary presences outside Arkham, which sent him into that period of insanity from which he never recovered, might therefore have been a seeming triviality, portentous only to his already slightly deranged mind. Certainly there were, and still are, certain Cyclopean geological anomalies in the woods toward Dunwich; but no trace could be found of that which Armitage shudderingly described as set at the highest point of those strange slabs of rock, which admittedly did bear a certain resemblance to titan stair-treads. However, there undoubtedly was something more than the vast steps that Armitage glimpsed, for he had known of their existence for some time, and certain other things connected with the case lead an unbiased outsider to believe that the case is not quite so simple as the doctors would have it believed.
Edward Wingate Armitage was born in early 1899 of upper-class parents. As an infant, nothing peculiar may be noted concerning him. He accompanied his parents to their weekly attendance at the Congregationalist church; at home he played, ate, and slept with regularity, and in general acted as a normal child would. However, the house's welfare was naturally attended by servants, most of which, in the manner of servants, had a tendency to talk more to children than the elder Armitages; and so it was that a three-year old was noted to show unaccountable interest in what fell out of space on the Gardner farm in that year of 1882. The elder Armitages were forced to speak more than once to the servants on the subject of what was fitting for discussion with Edward.
A few years later, after a period in which Edward declined to leave the house except for walks with his parents, a change was seen to occur. It was in the summer of 1886 that this became particularly noticeable. He would indeed leave the house, but could not be seen playing anywhere nearby, though servants often saw him leave with a book from the house library under his arm—that library which had been partially built up of books from the inherited property of a grandfather. Certain of these books were on subjects occult and morbid, and Edward had been warned not to touch them—his father often considering their destruction, for he was a definite Congregationalist, and disliked such books being in the house; but never did he put this idea into practice. None of these books appeared to be missing while Edward was away, but the father was unsure quite how many there were; and the boy was never met returning, so that he might have returned whatever books he had taken. He invariably said that he had been "out walking"; but certain newspaper items, dealing with curious signs found scratched in the soil of graveyards, and certain peculiar erections, together with bodies of various wild creatures, found in the woods, gave the parents cause to wonder.
It was at this time, also, that the boy began to be avoided by all the children in the vicinity. This inexplicable avoidance began immediately after a young girl had accompanied Edward, or rather followed him, on one of his silent trips. She had seen him enter a grove of trees outside Arkham, where a peculiar arrangement of stones in the centre, somewhat resembling a monolith, caught her eye. Characteristic of the cold-bloodedness of children in those times, she did not cry out when he procured a small rat, tied helpless near the monolith, and slit its throat with a pocket-knife. As he began to read in some unknown and vaguely horrible language from the book, an eldritch shadow seemed to pass across the landscape. Then came a sinister muffled roaring sound; sinister because, the girl swore, the roaring followed the syllables shrieked by Edward Armitage, like some hideous antiphonal response. She fled, telling her friends later but not her parents. Both the parents of the various children and Edward's parents inquired into the resultant avoidance, but could elicit no information. Only tales handed down through various families now make this tale available, and it is doubtful how much of it can be believed.
As time passed, Edward's father contracted typhoid fever, further complications assured that it would be fatal, and in 1913 he was taken to St Mary's Hospital (later to see another Armitage's consignment there) where, on the twelfth of May, he died.
After the funeral, Edward was left in the care of his mother. Bereaved of her husband, she had now only her son on whom to lavish affection. Edward's upbringing after this stage was much less strict: he was able to read and use whatever books in the library he wanted; his mother did not object to this, but she disliked his frequent trips at night, whose destination he refused to reveal. It was noticeable that after one of these nocturnal trips the morning paper would be missing; and Edward, who rose before anyone else in th
e house, denied that it ever arrived on these occasions. One maid who showed a tendency to speak of certain nocturnal atrocities reported in the missing papers, was dismissed after the boy had told his mother of certain thefts which could only have been committed by this maid.
It was in 1916 that Edward left home to enrol at Miskatonic University. For a short time he gave most of his leisure up to study mathematics; but it was not long before he gained access to the restricted section of the library. After this step, his former leisure studying was eclipsed by a feverish perusal of those books residing in the library and about which so much has been written and conjectured. The hellish Necronomicon engulfed his attention in particular; and the amount of time which he spent in taking notes and copying passages from this tome of terror was only cut short by the repeated adjurations of his tutors to devote more time to his mathematical work.
However, it is obvious that he still found time to peruse these monstrous volumes; and toward such evidence is the curiously hinting tale of his tutor. Calling at the student's study while he was away, the mathematics tutor was constrained to enter and examine a few notebooks scattered over the bed. One of these was taken up with notes on the orthodox studies Edward was following; the tutor glanced through this, noting the care with which the notes had been prepared. A second was composed of passages copied from various sources—a few in Latin, but most in other, alien languages, set off by certain monstrous diagrams and signs. But the notebook which startled the tutor more than the cabalistic signs and non-human inscriptions was that containing certain speculations and references to rites and sacrifices performed by students at Miskatonic. He took this to the principal, who decided not to act as yet, but, since there were numerous references to an "Aklo Sabaoth" to be performed the next night, to send a party of tutors to spy on these proceedings.
The next night certain students were observed to leave their rooms at different hours and not to return; several of these were followed by tutors asked by the principal to report on that night's proceedings. Most of the students made their way by devious routes to a large clearing in the otherwise almost impenetrable woods west of the Aylesbury Road. Edward was noted to be one of those who seemed to be presiding over the strange gathering. He and six others, all wearing strange and sinister objects around their necks, were standing on a huge, roughly circular slab in the centre of the clearing. As the first ray of the pallid crescent moon touched the slab, the seven standing upon it moved to stand on the ground beside it, and began to gibber and shriek strange half-coherent ritual invocations.
It is only believed by one or two of the watching professors that these invocations, in languages meant for no human tongue, elicited any response. Undoubtedly it was a disturbing sight, those seven students yelling sinister syllables at that slab of stone and moving further from it on each chorused reply from the encircling watchers. This being so, the impressions of the hidden tutors may be understood. Probably it was simply an atmospheric effect which made the vast slab appear to rise, slowly and painfully; and it must merely have been nervous tension which brought one savant to hint at a huge scaly claw which reached from beneath, and a pale bloated head which pushed up the slab. It must certainly have been the marks of something natural which were found by the next day's daylight party, for such marks would lead one to believe that the reaching claw had seven fingers. At a chorused shriek from all the participants, a cloud passed over the moon, and the clearing was plunged into abysmal darkness. When the place was again illuminated, it was totally empty; the slab again was in position; and the watchers stole away, disturbed and changed by this vague glimpse of nether spheres.
The following day saw a terrible interview with the principal, by Edward, among others. His mother, perplexed, was summoned across the city; and after she and Edward had visited the principal's office, when the door was locked, they left the university, never to return. Edward had to be escorted from the office by two of his former, non-decadent fellow-students, during which he screamed curses at the unmoved principal, and called down the vengeance of Yog-Sothoth on him.
The crosstown trip was utterly unpleasant to Mrs Armitage. Her son was continuously mumbling in strange accents and swearing that he would see the principal "visited." The disturbing interview at Miskatonic University had brought on a sickening faintness and weakness of her heart, and the pavement seemed to hump and roll under her feet while the houses appeared to close in on her and totter precariously. They reached their extensive house on High Street only barely before the woman collapsed in her reaction to that terrible interview. Edward, meanwhile, left her in the front room while he repaired to the study. He seemed to be bent on discovering a certain formula; and he returned in a rage when all the forbidden books in his library would not yield it.
For some days after, Armitage, now eighteen years old, went about the house in a state of morbid introspection. From various hints dropped in what little conversation he had, it became obvious that he was mourning his loss of access to the blasphemous Necronomicon. His mother, who was fast succumbing to that heart weakness started by the unpleasant affair at the university, suggested that he should take up research into things a little nearer reality. Showing contempt at first for his mother's naïveté, he began to perceive possibilities, apparently, in this system, and told her that he might pursue research "a mite closer to home."
It was perhaps fortunate that, on November 17, Mrs Armitage was rushed to the hospital, taken with a bad fit of heart failure, the aftermath of Edward's dismissal. That night, without regaining consciousness, she died.
Freed from her restraining influence, unaffected by long university hours, and having no need to work because supported by the extensive estate he had inherited, Edward Wingate Armitage began that line of research which was to lead to the revelation of so many unsettling facts, and, finally, to his madness in 1929.
II
Christmas 1917 saw Edward Armitage's mourning period end. After the New Year holidays were ended, passers-by would notice him, now equipped with a small sports car—the only luxury he had bought with the recently inherited estate—driving in the direction of the countryside end of High Street. At such times he would start out in the early morning, and not be seen to return until late evening. When met out on the rough country roads outside Arkham, he was seen to drive at the highest speed he could drag out of the car. More than one person recollects that he turned off the road into an even more primitive driveway to a decrepit, ancient farmhouse. Those who were curious enough to inquire as to the owner of the archaic homestead were told that the old man was reputed to have an amazing amount of knowledge concerning forbidden practices in Massachusetts and was even reputed to have participated in certain of these practices. From the notes in that capacious notebook which he always carried, Armitage's trip may be reconstructed. The drive through the brooding country, unchanged for incredible aeons before the advent of civilisation in New England, is recalled in detail in the first pages, as if Edward was afraid that something might prevent him from remembering the route. The exact position of the turning off the Innsmouth road is marked on a small sketch-map.
At this point, the biographer can only imagine Armitage's route. The walks up the muddy pathway to the farmhouse, between tottering, clawing, moss-covered trees, and the reaching of the leaning building on a slight rise, may be conjectured. One can but imagine Armitage's turning to stare back across the undulant fields, colourless under the glaring sun and first mist of morning. Far off could be seen the steeple of the Arkham Congregational church, towering over the glistening gambrel roofs of the busy town. In the other direction, unseen over the horizon, would lie Innsmouth, with its half-human inhabitants, avoided by normal Arkham folk. Armitage would look out across the lonely landscape, and finally turn to batter on the door of the farmhouse before him. After repeated summonses, the shuffling footsteps of Enoch Pierce, the half-deaf owner, would be heard down the oak floorboards of the passage.
The aspect of
this man at their first meeting somehow startled the visitor. He had a long beard, a few straggling strands of hair falling over his forehead. He fumbled senilely as he spoke, but a certain fire in his eyes belied his appearance of senility. But the attribute which so startled Armitage was the curious air which hung about this primitive rustic, of great wisdom and unbelievable age. At first he tried to close Armitage out, until Armitage pronounced certain words in a pre-human language which seemed to satisfy Pierce. He ushered the visitor into the sparsely furnished living-room, and began to question him as to his reason for visiting. Armitage, making certain that the old man's sons were occupied out in the fields, turned his own questions on the old rustic. The man began to listen with growing interest, sometimes mixed with unease.
Armitage, it appeared, was desperately in need of a certain mineral, not to be found anywhere on earth except under the ice in certain sunken cities in the Arctic, but mined extensively on Yuggoth. This metal had various peculiar characteristics, and he felt that if he could discover where the crustacean beings of the black world had their outpost on earth, he could have traffic with them by virtue of the most potent incantation in R'lyehian, using the hideous and terrific name of Azathoth. Now that he had lost access to the Miskatonic copy of the Necronomicon, he would first be trying the surrounding country before visiting Harvard to attempt to peruse their copy. He had a feeling that perhaps the ancient rustic, with his reputed store of forbidden knowledge, might enlighten him, either as to the incantation or the location of the Massachusetts outpost of the race from Yuggoth. Could the man assist him?
The old man stared unseeingly at his visitor, as though his vision had suddenly opened on the abysmal, lightless vacuum of outer gulfs. He seemed to recollect something unpleasant from out of the far past. Finally he shuddered, and, now and then stretching forth a bony hand to grip his listener's lapel, he spoke.
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