The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

by Ramsey Campbell

  " 'If true that transmission external, learned following:

  " 'Sounds in this area are equivalents of matter in another dimension. Said dimension overlaps ours at this point and certain others. City and inhabitants in dream do not appear as in own sphere, but as wd. appear if consisting of matter. Different sounds here correspond to various objects in other dimension; whirring equals pillars & cones, bass throbbing is ground, other varying sounds are people of city & other moving objects. Matter on our side they sense as odors.

  " 'The inhabitants can transmit whole concepts mentally. Leader asked me to try not to make sounds in radius of point of connection. Carried over to their dimension. My footsteps — huge crystals appeared on streets of city. My breathing — something living which they refused to show me. Had to be killed at once.

  " 'Inhabitants interested in communication with our dimension. Not dream — transmission — frequent use of Mao rite dangerous. Translator to be built on this side — enables sound to be translated into visual terms on screen, as in dream, but little else. When they build counterpart link will be effected — complete passage between dimensions. Unfortunately, their translator completely different from ours and not yet successful. Leader told me: Look in The Revelations of Glaaki for the plans. Also gave me page reference & said where to get copy.

  " 'Must get copy. If no plan, all coincidence & can return to normal research. If plan, can build machine, claim discovery of other dimension!' "

  "I've been thinking," I interrupted. "Arnold Hird — there was something — wasn't he asked to leave the university because he attacked someone when they disagreed with him? Said he'd return and astonish everybody some day, but was never heard of again."

  "I don't know," said Tony. "Anyway, he continues: " 'January 12: Got Revelations of Glaaki. Had to take drastic measures to obtain it, too. Plan here — book 9, pp. 2057-9. Will take some time to build, but worth it. To think that besides me, only superstitious know of this — but will soon be able to prove it!'

  "Hmmm — well, there don't seem to be any very interesting entries after that, just 'not much progress today' or 'screen arrangement completed' or here 'down to Severnford today — had to order strings at music shop. Don't like idea of using it, but must keep it handy in case.'"

  "So that's it," Frank said, standing up. "The man was a lunatic, and we've been sitting here listening to his ravings. No wonder he was kicked out of the University."

  "I don't think so," I disagreed. "It seems far too complex—"

  "Wait a minute, here's another entry," called Tony. '—December 7.'" Frank gave him a protesting look, but sat down again. " 'December 7: Got through. Image faint, but contact sufficient — beings aware. Showed me unfinished translator on their side — may take some time before completion. Few more days to perfect image, then will publicise.'

  " 'December 8: Must be sure about weapon I have constructed. Revelations give reason for use, but way of death is horrible. If unnecessary, definitely will destroy. Tonight will find out — will call Alain.' "

  "Well, Frank?" I asked as Tony replaced the diary and began to search the shelves. "Crazy, maybe — but there are those sounds — and he called something that night where his diary ends — and there's that peculiar stuff all over the bed—"

  "But how will we know either way?" Tony asked, removing a book.

  "Set up all that paraphernalia, obviously, and see what comes through on the screen."

  "I don't know," Tony said. "I want to look in the Revelations of Glaaki—that's what I've got here — but as for trying it ourselves, I think that's going a bit far. You'll notice how careful he was about it, and something happened to him."

  "Come on, let's look at the book," interrupted Frank. "That can't do any harm."

  Tony finally opened it and placed it on the table. On the page we examined diagrams, and learned that "the screen is attached to the central portion and viewed, while the receiver is directed toward the sounds before attachment." No power was necessary, for "the very sounds in their passing manipulate the instrument." The diagrams were crude but intelligible, and both Frank and I were ready to experiment. But Tony pointed to a passage at the end of the section:

  "The intentions of the inhabitants of S'glhuo are uncertain. Those who use the translator would be wise to keep by them the stringed sounding-board, the only earthly weapon to touch S'glhuo. For when they build the translator to complete the connexion, who knows what they may bring through with them? They are adept in concealing their intentions in dream-communication, and the sounding-board should be used at the first hostile action."

  "You see?" Tony said triumphantly. "These things are unfriendly — the book says so."

  "Oh, no, it doesn't," contradicted Frank, "and anyway it's a load of balls — living sounds, hah! But just suppose it was true — if we got through, we could claim the discovery — after all, the book says you're safe with this 'weapon.' And there's no rush back to the University."

  Arguments ensued, but finally we opened the doors and dragged the instruments outside. I returned for the sounding-board, noticing how rusted it was, and Tony brought the volume of the Revelations. We stood at the edge of the area of sound and placed the receiver about midway. The screen was connected to the central section, and at last we clipped the wire from the screen to the rest.

  For a minute nothing happened. The screen stayed blank; the coils and wire did not respond. Tony looked at the sounding-board. The vibrations had taken on a somehow expectant quality, as if aware of our experiment. And then the blue light bulb flickered, and an image slowly formed on the screen.

  It was a landscape of dream. In the background, great glaciers and crystal mountains sparkled, while at their peaks enormous stone buildings stretched up into the mist. There were translucent shapes flitting about those buildings. But the foreground was most noticeable — the slanting streets and twisted pillar-supported cones which formed a city on one of the icy mountains. We could see no life in the city brooding in a sourceless blue light; only a great machine of tubes and crystals which stood before us on the street.

  When a figure rose into the screen, we recoiled. I felt a chill of terror, for this was one of the city's inhabitants — and it was not human. It was too thin and tall, with huge pupil-less eyes, and a skin covered with tiny rippling scales. The fingers were boneless, and I felt a surge of revulsion as the white eyes stared unaware in my direction. But I somehow felt that this was an intelligent being, and not definitely hostile.

  The being took out of its metallic robe a thin rod, which it held vertically and stroked several times. Whatever the principle, this must have been a summons, for in a few minutes a crowd had formed about the instrument in the street. What followed may only have been their method of communication, but I found it horrible; they stood in a circle and their fingers stretched fully two feet to interlace in the centre. They dispersed after a short time and spread out, a small group remaining by the machine.

  "Look at that thing in the street," said Tony. "Do you suppose—"

  "Not now," Frank, who was watching in fascination, interrupted. "I don't know if it'd be better to switch off now and get someone down from the University — no hell, let's watch a bit longer. To think that we're watching another world!"

  The group around the machine were turning it, and at that moment a set of three tubes came into view, pointing straight at us. One of the beings went to a switchboard and clutched a lever with long twining fingers. Tony began to speak, but simultaneously I realised what he was thinking.

  "Frank," I shouted, "that's their translator! They're going to make the connexion!"

  "Do you think I'd better switch off, then?"

  "But suppose that's not enough?" yelled Tony. "Do you want them to come through without knowing what they'll do? You read the book — for God's sake use the weapon before it's too late!"

  His hysteria affected us all. Frank ran to the sounding-board and grabbed the lever. I watched the being on the
machine, and saw that it was nearly ready to complete the connexion.

  "Why aren't you doing anything?" Tony screamed at Frank.

  He called back: "The lever won't move! Must be rust in the works — quick, Les, see if you can get them unstuck."

  I ran over and began to scrape at the gears with a knife. Accidentally the blade slipped and twanged across the strings.

  "There's something forming, I can't quite see," Tony said—

  Frank was straining so hard at the lever that I was afraid it would snap — then it jerked free, the gears moved, the plectrum cylinder spun and an atrocious sound came from the strings. It was a scraping, whining discord which clawed at our ears; it blotted out those other sounds, and I could not have stood it for long.

  Then Tony screamed. We whirled to see him kick in the screen and stamp ferociously on the wires, still shrieking. Frank shouted at him — and as he turned we saw the slackness of his mouth and the saliva drooling down his chin.

  We finally locked him in the back room of the house while we found our way back to Brichester. We told the doctors only that he had become separated from us, and that by the time we found him everything was as they saw it. When they removed Tony from the house, Frank took the opportunity to tear a few pages out of The Revelations of Glaaki. Perhaps because of this, the team of Brichester professors and others studying conditions there are making little progress. Frank and I will never go there again; the events of that afternoon have left too deep a mark.

  Of course, they affected Tony far more. He is completely insane, and the doctors foresee no recovery. At his worst he is totally incoherent, and attacks anyone who cannot satisfactorily explain every sound he hears. He gives no indication in his coherent periods of what drove him mad. He imagines he saw something more on that screen, but never describes what he saw.

  Occasionally he refers to the object he thinks he saw. Over the years he has mentioned details which would suggest something incredibly alien, but of course it must have been something else which unbalanced him. He speaks of "the snailhorns," "the blue crystalline lenses," "the mobility of the faces," "the living flame and water," "the bell-shaped appendages," and "the common head of many bodies."

  But these periods of comparative coherency do not last long. Usually they end when a look of horror spreads over his face, he stiffens and screams something which he has not yet explained:

  "I saw what it took from its victims! I saw what it took from its victims!"

  The Return of the Witch

  Few outsiders passed through the Mercy Hill area of Brichester at the end of the first World War, for it was notorious for crime, and routes through it led nowhere important. Those who entered that area of narrow streets and tall red-brick houses with their hostilely peering tenants might vaguely notice that the streets toward the hilltop, around the hospital, were less crowded and dirty; but that was all. Hardly any remarked the desertion of Victoria Road as a thoroughfare, and the furtiveness of the tenants in the buildings there; but, of course, they were outsiders. Nobody living on Mercy Hill would have gone down Victoria Road so nonchalantly. For everyone in the area knew that Gladys Shorrock, who lived at no. 7 in that road, was a witch.

  She had come to no. 7 in the late 1910’s with her son Robert, and soon after they had settled in the dull red-brick house everybody knew what she was. Nobody noticed the lesser details at first, until later when they assumed a new importance; they overlooked the way the shutters went up at the first-floor window of no. 7 overlooking the street during the first week, and did not come down. They even tried not to notice when bushes grew in the garden of no. 7 to a height of three feet from seed inside a month, and did not heed the insistence of Mrs. Hancock next door that "it rains on’t garden at them Shorrocks, though there ain’t no wet ground anywhere else!”

  It was Robert Shorrock who made the mistake. Later people said that his mother must have realized he had to work, to avert suspicion which would have arisen if they had lived without external earnings. Robert was not intelligent, and did not know enough to conceal his dabblings in witchcraft. He went to work on rebuilding a street at the foot of the Hill, and would have made a competent worker, had not the owner of a nearby house complained that her black cat had disappeared — for Robert Shorrock finally confessed that he had walled it up in imitation of an ancient street-christening ceremony. They did not demolish the wall after what he hinted of the consequences, but quickly took his job from him.

  After that, many tales grew up around the tenants of no. 7, many of them probably exaggerated; but the Shorrocks’ neighbors now consisted only of scoffers at sorcery, people surely unlikely to invent wild stories. Everyone saw something amiss around the red-brick building, and all scraped the signs under their windows which had hitherto been necessary only on a few nights of the year. In 1924 Robert died, and the undertaker who came from Camside to attend to the funeral suddenly left his profession and took to drink. An expectant terror took hold of Mercy Hill.

  1925 saw the climax. That year people said many things: what flapped from the roof of no. 7 were not birds; that the vines which climbed that wall swayed back and forth on windless nights; and once someone saw Gladys Shorrock leave the house, mutter something, and the gate open and close itself behind her. Toward the end of October the tales became hysterical, especially that of one man who had boldly followed her toward Severnford and fled a gigantic glowing figure which strode after him through the forest. The inhabitants of Mercy Hill felt sure that she was preparing for something, and waited trembling for the outcome.

  It came when, on October 31, Gladys Shorrock died. It must have been that day, for the people opposite saw her sit down facing the window, her lips moving, and stare out, with occasional glances upward — where was the room with the shuttered window. Next morning they saw she was in the same position, and on November 2 a passer-by noticed her glazed eyes and called a doctor. She had been dead two days, but the doctor, a Brichester man, did not ask why he had not been informed sooner. He merely diagnosed heart failure — for, after all, she exhibited all the symptoms — and arranged a quick funeral.

  On November 4 two men entered the Shorrock house. Braver than the rest, they had determined to see what lay inside; but they soon left hurriedly, Nothing in the front room horrified them; most of the titles in the bookcase were foreign, and the searchers did not know enough to fear the queerly shaped, highly polished objects in glass cases round the room. On the stairs something scurried into the shadows; but one said it was only a mouse, although the other had seen characteristics of something less pleasant. But they could not stand the locked door at the top of the stairs, the door which they could not bring themselves to break down, because it led into the shuttered room.

  Before long terror had risen around the house again. Late home- comers would go out of their way to avoid passing down Victoria Road, and many would take another route even in the daytime. The terror centered around that shuttered window above the street, and nearly everybody passed on the other side of the road, looking away from no. 7. Those who dared to go near said that while the witch might be dead, something lived in that house; for if one listened outside the window, one could hear a hollow murmuring from behind the shutters.

  So no. 7 fell into disuse. No Brichester person would take it, and the Mercy Hill area did not appeal to outsiders. Few people entered the house, even thirty years later; and its history was gradually forgotten, except that it should still be avoided.

  Until, on February 1, I960, Norman Owen came to Brichester.

  Owen was a novelist who had grown bored with life in Lancashire’s Southport, and sought a change. The Severn area had appealed to him, and after reading an advertisement in the Brichester Weekly News he had bought no. 7 Victoria Road outright. Unfortunately, the Southport train came in at Lower Brichester, rather than the Mercy Hill station; and bystanders seemed to be as uncertain as he how to reach his destination.

  "Victoria Road, please,” he ordered on
e taxi-driver.

  "Sorry, can’t say as I’ve heard of it,” said the driver. " — Mercy ’ill? No road called that up there as I know of.”

  "Excuse me — did you say you were looking for Victoria Road?” Owen turned and saw a middle-aged man in a tweed suit, with his hand on a car door.

  "Yes — I’ve bought a house there, actually, but this man doesn’t seem to know where it is.”

  "Well, I’m going up Mercy Hill,” the other told him, "and I could drop you off if you want a lift.” As Owen got into the car, the driver muttered: "But there’s no empty house on Victoria Road, except—”

  They drove out of the station, and Owen saw the many converging streets rising to meet at the grey hospital. He turned as the man beside him remarked:

  "I’d better introduce myself — I’m Stanley Nash, a doctor at the hospital. Would I be right in thinking that you’ve bought no. 7?”

  "Well, I’m Norman Owen — an author, I have to admit — and you’re right about the address. But how did you guess — do you live next door or something?”

  "No,” said Nash, "I live in Gladstone Place at the bottom of the Hill. It’s just that this house you’ve bought has something of a reputation — rather infamous round here. You see, not so long ago it belonged to a witch.”

  "Really! Well, I ought to write something good here!”

  "I wouldn’t joke about it,” reproved the doctor. "There’s often something of truth in these stories, you know.”

  "I thought you were a doctor,” Owen said.

  "I think you ought to take notice of what they say about your house,” Nash told him. "It’s seldom that these stories are entirely imaginary — and there’s a widespread fear of a shuttered room overlooking the street, which I’d advise you to remember. It’s never been opened since Gladys Shorrock’s death — she was the witch — and why would anyone lock and shutter a room as soon as they bought a house?”