The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

by Ramsey Campbell

  There's some confusion about the actual advent of Glaaki on this planet. The cult believes that it didn't reach the earth until the meteor hit and formed the lake. On the other hand, the book does mention 'heretics' who insist that the spines can be found buried in certain hybrid Egyptian mummies, and say that Glaaki came before — through 'the reversed angles of Tagh-Clatur' which the priests of Sebek and Karnak knew. There are suggestions that the zombies of Haiti are the products of a horrible extract from early cult-members who got caught in sunlight, too.

  As for what was learned by the initiate — well, there are references to the '48 Aklo unveilings' and a suggestion that 'the 49th shall come when Glaaki takes each to him.' Glaaki seems to have crossed the universe from some outer sphere, stopping on worlds such as Yuggoth, Shaggai and even Tond. On this planet it occasionally draws new members to the cult by the 'dream-pull,' which I've heard about before. These days, however, the lake is so far away from everything that the use of the 'dream-pull' takes time, and without the vitality it's said to draw from the initiation it gets too weak to project the dreams to any great distance. The cultists can't come out in the daylight, so the only thing left is for people to come spontaneously and live in the houses. Like me!

  That isn't all that's in the book, by any means; the cult believed a lot of other things, but some of them are so incredible and unconventional that they'd just sound ridiculous if I wrote them down. Somehow they don't seem so idiotic in that simple style of the Revelations, perhaps because they're written by an absolute believer. You must read some of them this Christmas. If you could imagine what they suggest causes volcanic eruptions! And their footnote to atomic theory; what the scientist will see who invents a microscope which gives a really detailed view of an atom! There are other things, too — the race 'of which Vulthoom is merely a child'—the source of vampires — and the pale, dead things which walk black cities on the dark side of the moon…

  But there's no use my going on like this. You'll see all this in a few weeks, and until then my hints won't mean much to you. I promised you a quotation, so I'll copy down a passage at random:

  Many are the horrors of Tond, the sphere which revolves about the green sun of Yifne and the dead star of Baalblo. Few come near to humanity, for even the ruling race of yarkdao have retractable ears in humanoid bodies. Their gods are many, and none dares interrupt the priests of Chig in their ritual, which lasts, three years and a quarter, or one puslt. Great cities of blue metal and black stone are built on Tond, and some yarkdao speak of a city of crystal in which things walk unlike anything living. Few men of our planet can see Tond, but those who know the secret of the crystallisers of Dreams may walk its surface unharmed, if the crystalliser's hungry guardian does not scent them.

  Actually that isn't the best quotation to take — others are much less vague, but mightn't have so much impact if you read them out of context. Now you really must come down at Christmas, if only to read the book.

  Yours, Thomas

  I did not reply to his letter until the 12th. I had intended to reply sooner, if only to take his mind off this latest focus of his morbidity, but this had been a particularly crowded week at the Inland Revenue. Now, at about ten o'clock, I sat down to write to him. I meant to point out that before he had thought all this mere superstition, and that he had only discovered proof of the superstitious beliefs of a few people.

  I was just putting down the date when the telephone rang. I was not expecting anyone to call, and momentarily thought it must be a wrong number. When it had rung three times, I wearily stood up to answer it.

  'Alan? Thank God!' said a hysterical voice at the other end. 'Drop everything and come in your car — and for God's sake make it quick!'

  'Who is that — who's speaking?' I asked, for I was not sure if I recognised the voice.

  'Thomas — Thomas Cartwright!' screamed the voice impatiently. 'Listen, there's positively no time for explanation. You must come down here now in your car, at once — or it'll be dark and I'll never get out. I'm in a phone box on the road some miles from the lake, and I'll stay in here till you get here. You can't miss it — just take the lake road from Brichester; it's not as far, that's all.'

  'But why have I got to come?' I persisted, exasperated.

  'Because they've wrecked my car engine.' He was becoming very nervous; I could tell from the noticeable shaking of his voice. 'I've found out a lot more since I wrote, and they know I know it all. They don't even bother to hide, now.'

  'I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but why can't you call a taxi instead of bringing me all this way?'

  'I can't call a taxi because I don't know the number!' shrieked Cartwright. 'And why can't I look it up? Because last night they must have been here before me—they've taken the directory. I'd walk to Brichester — I don't think their influence extends any further — but if they don't call on the tomb-herd under Temphill to turn space back, the tree-creatures a couple of miles up the road might take their real shapes, and it needs the union of two wills to overcome them. Now, for God's sake, will you get your car down here, or do you want Glaaki to rise from the lake again? Perhaps this will give it the strength to broadcast further.' And immediately there came a click as the receiver was replaced.

  For some moments I stood by the telephone table. I could not telephone the police, for it would be useless to send them to Cartwright only to find circumstances which would make them think him mad. Certainly his ravings about them were not to be taken seriously. On the other hand, if the lake were having such a pronounced effect on his mind, I should surely drive down to Brichester at once. And so I did.

  I had only been to the lake once, and on reaching Brichester I had completely forgotten the route. None of the passers-by could help me; in fact, by their expressions I was almost sure that some of them could help me, but for some reason would not. Finally I asked a policeman to direct me to Bold Street, where the estate agent could tell me the way to the lake.

  He looked up as I entered, but did not seem to recognise me. 'Can I help you?' he asked.

  'About Lakeside Terrace—' I began.

  'Lakeside Terrace? No, not one of ours, sir.'

  'Yes, it is one of yours,' I insisted. 'You sold it to a friend of mine a few weeks back — a Mr Cartwright — it's supposed to be haunted. Look, you must remember; I've got to see him as soon as possible.' Some of Cartwright's nervous impatience had affected me, and the estate agent's continued puzzled expression caused me to think he could not help me.

  'Will you be at the lake after dark, then?'

  His pointless-seeming question infuriated me, particularly as I had no definite answer. 'I don't know yet. Yes, maybe. Damn it, do you know the way to the lake or don't you? I can't waste any more time. It's — what, 3:20 already, and I ought to be there by now.'

  As I drove out of Bold Street, I was still surprised by his sudden decision to direct me. I was relieved to drive away from the small building, for I had been strangely worried by the unaccustomed slowness of his speech and the rigidity of his limbs; still more by the way he would finger a spot on his chest and wince. I still could not imagine why should he ask whether I was to be at the lake after dark.

  I reached the top of Mercy Hill a few minutes later. As the car slowed at the bend which takes one past the grey hospital building, I had a view both ahead and behind; and I very nearly turned back. The red-brick houses looked far more inviting than the steep hillsides, between which plunged roads bordered by leafless trees. I remembered what the people of Mercy Hill said inhabited the lake. But I had come to rid Cartwright of his superstitious morbidity, and could not do this while I was myself superstitious.

  When I rounded the curve which brought me in sight of the telephone box, the door swung open and Cart-wright ran into the road. He reached the car as I began to slow and, running alongside, he yelled through the open window: 'Open the door on this side! Keep driving — I can jump in at this speed.'

  I did not in
tend him to be injured, and stopped the car. 'Now will you stop acting like someone in a movie and explain?'

  'All right, I'm in,' he assured me. 'Now let's get down to the lake.'

  'To the lake?' I repeated, surprised. 'The way you were going on, I thought… Oh, all right, if you're in such a hurry.'

  As I was starting the engine, I heard him muttering beside me. Some of it escaped me, but I caught: '—tried to phone the police, but I couldn't get through — wires must have been down. Must have been an accident, though. Couldn't have been their work—they could never get that far in the sunlight. The Green Decay — it's in the Revelations… Could they?'

  I ignored this, not turning to look at him. 'Listen, Thomas, I'd like some explanation. I thought you wanted to get away from the lake before nightfall? What's happened up there that's scared you off so suddenly?'

  He left my second question for a moment. 'I certainly must get away before nightfall, but I want to bring the Revelations with me. If I leave the house empty tonight and come back tomorrow they'll get in and take it. We can get down there before 4 o'clock and grab the bookcase. We'll be well towards Brichester before dark. The tree-creatures up the road may get more active after dark, but there's a ritual which I can repeat to subdue them if I can draw on your consciousness. Once we're in Brichester, we ought to be beyond their influence.'

  'But you weren't like this before. You may have believed in all this, but you weren't frightened of it. What's happening to change your feelings?'

  He fumbled a little, then: 'One of them might have been a dream, but the other… As for the thing I might have dreamed, it happened about one o'clock this morning. I was only half-asleep — I kept dreaming of strange things: that black city among the weeds down there, with a shape under a crystal trapdoor, and further back to Yuggoth and Tond — and that kept me awake. At the time I'm speaking of I kept half-opening my eyes; I got the feeling that someone was watching me, but I could never see anyone. Then I started noticing something pale which seemed to float at the edge of my vision. I realised it was near the window. I turned quickly and saw a face staring in at me.

  'It was the face of a corpse; what was worse, it was the face of Joe Bulger.'

  We had reached the last stretch of road towards the lake before he continued. 'He didn't look at me; his eyes were fixed on something at the other side of the room. All that was over there was that bookcase containing the eleven volumes of the Revelations of Glaaki. I jumped up and ran over to the window, but he began to move away with that horrible deliberate tread. I'd seen enough, though. His shirt had been torn open, and on his chest was a livid red mark, with a network of lines radiating from it. Then he moved off between the trees.'

  I stopped the car at the beginning of the lakeside pavement. As I approached the house, he was still muttering behind me: 'They'd taken him to Glaaki — that must have been all the splashing that night. But that was at eleven o'clock and Joe left about four. My God, what were they doing to him in the other seven hours?'

  I stood back to let him open the front door; he had even found a padlock somewhere and augmented the lock's strength with it. As we entered the front room I noticed the canvas-covered painting in one corner. I began to lift the canvas off, but Cartwright stopped me. 'Not yet — that's part of the other. I want to show you something else when you see that.'

  He went over to the bookcase which stood on the floor opposite the window, and took out the last book. 'When — Joe — had gone, I finally had a look at these books. I had a good idea of what he'd been looking at, but I wanted to make sure. Somehow I knocked the lot down. No damage, luckily, except to the eleventh book; but that one had fallen so that the cover had been torn off. As I was trying to fit it together again, I noticed the back cover was bulging outward a lot. When I looked closer, this is what I found.'

  He passed me the volume he had selected. Opening the cover, I saw that the back had been slit open; a sort of pocket existed, and inside it I found a folded sheet of canvas and a piece of cardboard.

  'Don't look at those for the moment,' ordered Cart-wright. 'Remember I painted The Thing In The Lake from my nightmare? This is it. Now, go ahead and compare it with those two.'

  By the time I had unfolded the canvas, he had uncovered the painting. The piece of canvas was also a painting, while the card was a photograph. The background of each was different; Cartwright's depicted the lake as surrounded by a black pavement in the middle of a desolate plain, the painting I held — inscribed 'Thos. Lee pinxit'—possessed a background of half-fluid demons and many-legged horrors, while the photograph simply showed the lake as it was now. But the focus of each was the same totally alien figure, and the one that disturbed me most was the photograph.

  The centre of each picture was, it was obvious, the being known as Glaaki. From an oval body protruded countless thin, pointed spines of multicoloured metal; at the more rounded end of the oval a circular, thick-lipped mouth formed the centre of a spongy face, from which rose three yellow eyes on thin stalks. Around the underside of the body were many white pyramids, presumably used for locomotion. The diameter of the body must have been about ten feet at its least width.

  Not only the coincidence of the pictures, but also the total abnormality of the creature, disturbed me. However, I tried to sound unconvinced as I remarked, 'Look, you said yourself that the other business was only a dream. As for the rest — what does it amount to, anyway? A few nightmares and the documents of a superstitious cult whose beliefs happen to coincide with your dreams. The photograph's very realistic, of course, but these days you can do almost anything with special photography.'

  'You still think it's my imagination?' he inquired. 'Of course you don't explain why anyone would go to the trouble of faking a photograph like that and then leave it here. Besides, remember I did that painting from my dream before I saw those. It's Glaaki sending his image from the lake.'

  I was still searching for an answer when Cartwright looked at his watch. 'Good God, it's after four o'clock! We'd better get going if we want to leave before dark. You go and start the car while I get the bookcases. I don't think they'll touch my pictures, except the latest one, and I'll bring that one with me. Tomorrow, maybe, we can come back from Brichester and get them.'

  As I climbed into the driving seat I saw Cartwright struggling across the pavement with the bookcase-handle over one arm and the picture held in front of him. He slid into the back seat as I turned the ignition key.

  There was no sound from the engine.

  Cartwright ran and threw up the bonnet. Then he turned to stare at me, his face pale. 'Now will you bloody well believe!' he screamed. 'I suppose it's my imagination that wrecked your engine!'

  I got out to look at the mass of torn wires. He did not notice whether I was listening as he continued:

  'They've been at it — but how? It's not dark yet out here, and they can't come by daylight — but they must have done it—' This seemed to worry him more than the engine's actually been wrecked. Then he slumped against the car. 'My God, of course — Joe only just joined them, and the Green Decay doesn't affect them for sixty years or so. He can come out in the light — he can follow me — he is part of Glaaki now, so he won't spare me—'

  'What do we do now?' I interrupted. 'According to you it's insane to start walking so close to nightfall, so—'

  'Yes,' he agreed. 'We must barricade ourselves in. The upper floors aren't so important, but every window and door on the ground floor must be blocked. If you think I'm crazy, humour me for your own sake.'

  Once inside, we managed to block the front-room window by upturning the bed. The back-room window was fortified with a wardrobe. When we had moved this into the room from the front, Cartwright left me to position it while he went out the back door. 'There's a hatchet lying around out here,' he explained. 'Best to have it in here — it may be useful as a weapon, and otherwise they'll get hold of it.' He brought it in and stood it by the hall table.

  He helped me t
o barricade the back door, which opened out of the kitchen; but when we had shoved the kitchen cabinet against it, he told me to take a rest. 'Go ahead, make some coffee,' he suggested. 'As for me — there's a few minutes of daylight left, and I want to take a look in the lake to see what's down there. I'll take the hatchet in case… Joe comes. Anyway, they can't move very fast — their limbs soon become half-rigid.' I began to ask what protection I would have, but he had already gone.

  He was so long away that I was beginning to worry, when I heard him knocking at the back door. I called, 'You've a short memory — go round the front,' but when no answering footsteps came I began to pull the cabinet out of position. At that moment a shout came from behind me: 'What are you doing?'

  I had the kettle ready to throw when I turned and saw Cartwright. As calmly as I could, I said: 'Somebody is knocking at the back door.'

  'It's them,' he yelled, and smashed the cabinet back into place. 'Quick — maybe it's only Joe, but it may be dark enough for the others to come out. Got to block the front door, anyway — what the hell is there?' The hall was bare of all furniture except a small table. 'Have to get the wardrobe out of my bedroom.'

  As we entered a number of noises began. Far off came a sliding sound from several directions. A muffled discordant throbbing was also audible, water was splashing nearby, and round the side of the house someone was slowly approaching. I ran to the crevice between window and upturned bed and looked out. It was already quite dark, but I could see the water rippling alarmingly at the shore near the window.

  'Help me, for God's sake!' called Cartwright.

  As I turned from the window I glimpsed something moving outside. Perhaps I only imagined that glistening shape which heaved out of the water, with long stalks twisting above it; but certainly that throbbing was much nearer, and a creaking, slithering object was moving across the pavement.