by Brian Lumley
Well, as I’ve said, Borszowski’s letter was rambling and disjointed—but he’d written it in a rather convincing manner, hardly what you’d expect from a real madman. He quoted references from the Holy Bible (particularly Exodus 20:4) and emphasized again his belief that the star-shaped things were nothing more or less than prehistoric pentacles (pentagrams?), laid down by some great race of alien scientists many millions of years ago. He reminded me of the heavy, unusual mists we’d had and of the queer way the cod had gone for Nick Adams. He even brought up again the question of the dicky sea-phones and computer—making, in toto, an altogether disturbing assessment of Sea-Maid’s late history as applicable to his own odd fancies.
I did some checking on Joe’s background that same afternoon, discovering that he’d travelled far in his earlier years and had also been a bit of a scholar in his time. Too, it had been noticed on occasion—whenever the mists were heavier than usual—that he crossed himself with a certain sign over his left breast. A number of the lads had seen him do it and they all told the same tale of that sign; it was pointed with one point straight up, two down and wide, two more still lower and closer together; yes, his sign was a five-pointed star!
In fact, Borszowski’s letter so disturbed me I was still thinking about it that evening after we’d shut down for the day. That was why I was out on the main platform having a quiet pipeful—I can concentrate, you know, with a bit of ’baccy. Dusk was only a few minutes away when the accident happened.
Davies, the steel-rigger, was up tightening a few loosened nuts near the top of the rig. Don’t ask me where the mist came from, I wouldn’t know, but suddenly it was there; swimming up from the sea, a thick, grey blanket that cut visibility down to no more than a few feet. I’d just shouted up to Davies that he better pack it in for the night when I heard his yell and saw his lantern come blazing down out of the greyness. The light disappeared through an open hatch and a second later Davies followed it. He went straight through the hatchway, missing the sides by inches, and then there came the splashes as first the lantern, then the man, hit the sea. In two shakes of a dog’s tail Davies was splashing about down there in the mist and yelling fit to ruin his lungs—proving to me and the others who’d rushed from the mess at my call that his fall had done him little harm. We lowered a raft immediately, getting two of the men down to the water in less than a minute, and no one gave it a second thought that Davies wouldn’t be picked up. He was, after all, an excellent swimmer. In fact the lads on the raft thought the whole episode was a big laugh—that is, until Davies started to scream.
I mean, there are screams and there are screams, Johnny! Davies wasn’t drowning—he wasn’t making noises like a drowning man! He wasn’t picked up, either.
No less quickly than it had settled, the mist lifted, so that by the time the raft touched water visibility was normal for a November evening—but there was no sign of the rigger. There was something, though, for the whole surface of the sea was silver with fish; big and little, of almost every indigenous species you could imagine; and the way they were acting, apparently trying to throw themselves aboard the raft, I had the lads haul themselves and the raft back up to the platform as soon as it became evident that Davies was gone for good. Johnny!—I swear I’ll never eat fish again.
That night I didn’t sleep very well at all. Now you know I’m not being callous. I mean, aboard an ocean-going rig after a hard day’s work, no matter what has happened during the day, a man usually manages to sleep. Yet that night I just couldn’t drop off. I kept going over in my mind all the…well, the things. The occurrences, the happenings on the old Sea-Maid; the trouble with the instruments; Borszowski’s letter; and finally, of course, the queer way we lost Davies—until I thought my head must burst with the burden of wild notions and imaginings going around and around inside it.
Next afternoon the chopper came in (with Wes Atlee complaining about having had to make two runs in two days), and delivered all the booze and goodies for the party the next day or whenever. As you know, we always have a blast when we strike it rich—and this time we figured we were going to. We’d been out of booze a few days by that time (bad weather had stopped Wes from bringing in anything heavier than mail) and so I was running pretty high and dry. Well, you know me, Johnny. I got in the back of the mess with all those bottles and cracked a few. I could see the gear turning from the window, and, over the edge of the platform, the sea all grey and eerie looking, and somehow the idea of getting a load of drink inside me seemed a good one.
I’d been in there topping-up for over an hour when Jeffries, my 21C, got through to me on the ’phone. He was in the instrument-cabin and said he reckoned the drill would go through to pay-dirt within a few minutes. He sounded worried, though, sort of shaky, and when I asked him why this was he didn’t rightly seem able to answer—mumbled something about the seismograph mapping those strange blips again; as regular as ever but somehow stronger, closer…
About that time I first noticed the mist swirling up from the sea, a real pea-souper, billowing in to smother the rig and turn the men on the platform to grey ghosts. It muffled the sound of the gear, too, altering the metallic clank and rattle of pulleys and chains to distant, dull noises such as I might have expected to hear from the rig if I’d been in a suit deep down under the sea.
It was warm enough in the back room of the mess there, yet unaccountably I found myself shivering as I looked out over the rig and listened to the ghostly sounds of the shrouded men and machinery.
That was when the wind came up. First the mist, then the wind—but I’d never before seen a mist that a good strong wind couldn’t blow away! Oh, I’ve seen freak storms before, Johnny, but believe me this was the freak storm! She came up out of nowhere—not breaking the blanket of grey but driving it round and round like a great mad ghost—blasting the already choppy sea against the old Sea-Maid’s supporting legs, flinging up spray to the platform’s guard-rails and generally (from what I could see from the window) creating havoc. I’d no sooner recovered from my initial amazement when the ’phone rang again. I picked up the receiver to hear Jimmy Jeffries’ somewhat distorted yell of triumph coming over the wires:
“We’re through, Pongo!” he yelled. “We’re through and there’s juice on the way up the bore right now!” Then his voice took the shakes again, turning in tone from wild excitement to terror in a second, as the whole rig wobbled on her four great legs. “Holy Heaven!—what…?” the words crackled into my ear. “What was that, Pongo? The rig…wait…” I heard the clatter as the ‘phone at the other end banged down, but a moment later Jimmy was back. “It’s not the rig—the legs are steady as rocks—it’s the whole sea-bed! Pongo, what’s going on. Holy Heaven—!”
This time the ’phone went completely dead as the rig moved again, jerking up and down three or four times and shaking everything loose inside the mess store-room. I still held on to the instrument, though, and just for a second or two it came back to life. Jimmy was screaming incoherently into the other end. I remember then that I yelled for him to get into a life-jacket, that there was something terribly wrong and we were in for big trouble, but I’ll never know if he heard me. The rig rocked again, throwing me down on the floor-boards among the debris of bottles, crates, cans and packets; and there, skidding wildly about the tilting floor, I collided with a life-jacket. God only knows what the thing was doing there in the store-room; they were normally kept in the equipment shed and only taken out following storm-warnings (which, it goes without saying, we hadn’t had) but somehow I managed to struggle into it and make my way into the mess proper before the next upheaval.
By that time, over the roar of the wind and waves outside (the broken crests of the waves were actually slapping against the outer walls of the mess by then) I could hear a whipping of free-running pulleys and a high-pitched screaming of revving, uncontrolled gears—and there was another sort of screaming….
In a blind panic I was crashing my way through the tumble of t
ables and chairs in the mess towards the door leading out onto the platform when the greatest shock so far tilted the floor to what must have been thirty degrees and saved me my efforts. In a moment—as I flew against the door, bursting it open and floundering out into the storm—I knew for sure that Sea-Maid was going down. Before, it had only been a possibility; a mad, improbable possibility; but now—now I knew for sure. Half stunned from my collision with the door I was thrown roughly against the platform rails, to cling there for dear life in the howling, tearing wind and chill, rushing mist and spray.
And that was when I saw it.
I saw it—and in my utter disbelief—in one crazy moment of understanding—I relaxed my hold on the rails and slid under them into the throat of that banshee, demon storm that howled and tore at the trembling girders of the old Sea-Maid.
Even as I fell, a colossal wave smashed into the rig, breaking two of the legs as though they were nothing stronger than match-sticks, and the next instant I was in the sea, picked up and swept away on the great crest of that same wave. Even in the dizzy, sickening rush as the great wave hurled me aloft, I tried to spot Sea-Maid in the maelstrom of wind, mist and ocean. It was futile, and I gave it up in order to put all effort to my own battle for survival.
I don’t remember much after that—at least, not until I was picked up, and even that’s not too clear. I do remember, though, while fighting the icy water, a dreadful fear of being eaten alive by fish; but so far as I know there were none about. I remember, too, being hauled aboard the life-boat from the mainland in a sea that was flat as a pancake and calm as a mill-pond.
The next really lucid moment came when I woke up to find myself between clean sheets in a Bridlington hospital.
But there, I’ve held off from telling the important part—and for the same reason Joe Borszowski held off: I don’t want to be thought a madman. Well, I’m not mad, Johnny, but I don’t suppose for a single moment that you’ll take my story seriously—nor, for that matter, will Seagasso suspend any of its North-Sea commitments—but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing I tried to warn you.
Now I ask you to remember what Borszowski said about great, alien beings lying asleep and imprisoned beneath the bed of the sea; “gods” capable of controlling the actions of lesser creatures, capable of bending the very weather to their wills—and then explain the sight I saw before I found myself floundering in that mad ocean as the old Sea-Maid went down.
It was simply a gusher, Johnny, a gusher—but one such as I’d never seen before in my whole life and hope never to have to see again. For instead of reaching to the heavens in one solid black column—it pulsed upwards, pumping up in short, strong jets at a rate of about one spurt in every five seconds—and it wasn’t oil, Johnny—oh God!—it wasn’t oil! Booze or none I swear I wasn’t drunk; not so drunk as to make me colour-blind, at any rate!
Like I said, old Borszowski was right, he must have been right. There was one of those great god-creatures down there, and our drill had chopped right into the thing!
Whatever it was it had blood pretty much like ours—good and thick and red—and a great heart strong enough to pump that blood up the bore-hole right to the surface!
Think of it, that monstrous heart beating down there in the rocks beneath the sea! How could we have guessed that right from the beginning our instruments had been working at maximum efficiency—that those odd, regular blips recorded on the seismograph had been nothing more than the beating of a great submarine heart?
All of which explains, I hope, my resignation.
Bernard “Pongo” Jordan,
Bridlington,
Yorks.
Name and Number
In the tradition of a good many writers of weird fiction before me (E. A. Poe, Seabury Quinn, and Manly Wade Wellman spring most easily to mind) I created my own”occult investigator” in the shape of Titus Crow. He featured first in “The Caller of The Black”, (the first story in this current volume) but was destined for greater adventures in many a story (not to mention several novels) that were still to come. “Name and Number” is one such story. Written in 1981, just one month after I left the Army (following twenty-two years’ service), it first appeared in Francesco Cova’s excellent glossy Anglo-Italian fanzine (Kadath), in the 5th issue, dated July 1982. Nominated for a British Fantasy Award, which it didn’t win, its most recent appearance was in TOR Books’ Harry Keogh: Necroscope, & Other Weird Heroes. But the best (in my opinion) Titus Crow story, “Lord of the Worms”, can be found in this book’s companion volume…
I
Of course, nothing now remains of Blowne House, the sprawling bungalow retreat of my dear friend and mentor Titus Crow, destroyed by tempestuous winds in a freak storm on the night of 4 October 1968, but…
Knowing all I know, or knew, of Titus Crow, perhaps it has been too easy for me to pass off the disastrous events of that night simply as a vindictive attack of dark forces; and while that is exactly what they were, I am now given to wonder if perhaps there was not a lot more to it than met the eye.
Provoked by Crow’s and my own involvement with the Wilmarth Foundation (that vast, august and amazingly covert body, dedicated to the detection and the destruction of Earth’s elder evil, within and outside of Man himself, and working in the sure knowledge that Man is but a small and comparatively recent phenomenon in a cosmos which has known sentience, good and evil, through vast and immeasurable cycles of time), dark forces did indeed destroy Blowne House. In so doing they effectively removed Titus Crow from the scene, and as for myself…I am but recently returned to it.
But since visiting the ruins of Crow’s old place all these later years (perhaps because the time flown in between means so very little to me?), I have come to wonder more and more about the nature of that so well-remembered attack, the nature of the very winds themselves—those twisting, rending, tearing winds—which fell with such intent and purpose upon the house and bore it to the ground. In considering them I find myself casting my mind back to a time even more remote, when Crow first outlined for me the facts in the strange case of Mr. Sturm Magruser V.
• • •
Crow’s letter—a single hand-written sheet in a blank, sealed envelope, delivered by a taxi driver and the ink not quite dry—was at once terse and cryptic, which was not unusual and did not at all surprise me. When Titus Crow was idling, then all who wished anything to do with him must also bide their time, but when he was in a hurry—
Henri,
Come as soon as you can, midnight would be fine. I expect you will stay the night. If you have not eaten, don’t—there is food here. I have something of a story to tell you, and in the morning we are to visit a cemetery!
Until I see you—
Titus
The trouble with such invitations was this: I had never been able to refuse them! For Crow being what he was, one of London’s foremost occultists, and my own interest in such matters amounting almost to obsession—why, for all its brevity, indeed by the very virtue of that brevity—Crow’s summons was more a royal command!
And so I refrained from eating, wrote a number of letters which could not wait, enveloped and stamped them, and left a note for my housekeeper, Mrs. Adams, telling her to post them. She was to expect me when she saw me, but in any matter of urgency I might be contacted at Blowne House. Doubtless the dear lady, when she read that address, would complain bitterly to herself about the influence of “that dreadful Crow person,” for in her eyes Titus had always been to blame for my own deep interest in darkling matters. In all truth, however, my obsession was probably inherited, sealed into my personality as a permanent stamp of my father, the great New Orleans mystic Etienne-Laurent de Marigny.
Then, since the hour already approached twelve and I would be late for my “appointment”, I phoned for a taxi and double-checked that my one or two antique treasures were safely locked away; and finally I donned my overcoat. Half an hour or so later, at perhaps a quarter to one, I stood on Cro
w’s doorstep and banged upon his heavy oak door; and having heard the arrival of my taxi, he was there at once to greet me. This he did with his customary grin (or enigmatic smile?), his head cocked slightly to one side in an almost inquiring posture. And once again I was ushered into the marvellous Aladdin’s cave which was Blowne House.
Now, Crow had been my friend ever since my father sent me out of America as a child in the late ’30s, and no man knew him better than I; and yet his personality was such that whenever I met him—however short the intervening time—I would always be impressed anew by his stature, his leonine good looks, and the sheer weight of intellect which seemed invariably to shine out from behind those searching, dark eyes of his. In his flame-red, wide-sleeved dressing gown, he might easily be some wizard from the pages of myth or fantasy.
In his study he took my overcoat, bade me sit in an easy chair beside a glowing fire, tossed a small log onto ruddy embers and poured me a customary brandy before seating himself close by. And while he was thus engaged I took my chance to gaze with fascination and unfeigned envy all about that marvellous room.
Crow himself had designed and furnished that large room to contain most of what he considered important to his world, and certainly I could have spent ten full years there in constant study of the contents without absorbing or even understanding a fifth part of what I read or examined. However, to give a brief and essentially fleshless account of what I could see from my chair: