Simon Gregory William stepped out from woodland coverage, with Sebastian at his side, playing his diabolic melody as he observed the candlelit silhouette of Jon-Eric le Seuil at the window of his room above the Old Curiosity Shop. He stayed there as the rain began to fall, paying no heed to Sebastian’s shivering, and he stared at the old man in his shadowed room until the ancient satyr face turned away from the window. He stopped his performance and hugged Sebastian’s neck with an arm, then walked with him into the building. “The proprietor of this place is in Europe, but you will meet him anon. We’ve found a nice room for you upstairs. During our days of travel I’ve had some of your personal affects transported, so you won’t feel totally adrift in an alien place. This way, Grimm. Watch your step.” They climbed the carpeted stairway that led to an upper region, and Sebastian realized that the building was much larger than he had initially supposed. He breathed heavily as they climbed, and the air taken in was unnatural, containing a surfeit of sweetness that was not pleasant. The scented air reminded him of the smell he had detected when the beast was very close to him, an odor the nature of which he could not fathom. Was it animal? Was it of the woods through which he had been guided by
the beast, the rocks over which he had stumbled? He followed Simon down a dusky hallway and into a room the door to which was open. Sebastian stepped into the room and gasped. There were the two study bookcases that he had inherited from his grandmother, and all of his books. There was his favorite reading chair and lamp. And there – the antique escritoire, looking uncannily at home in this unfamiliar room. Sebastian wanted to rush to it and investigate its secret panel, but he felt certain that neither of the spectacles would be there.
He felt Simon’s arm around his waist, and lips brushed the back of his neck. “This will be your home, for a little while. Pretend that you actually accomplished your suicidal folly, and this is the new realm to which your soul has flown. Pretend that you are among friends, or friendly fiends. You have a gift, Grimm – it is there on the pages of your one published book, and it shews more than imagination. Perhaps we shall detect it in the manuscript of your novel as well, which I will soon begin to devour. Your psyche has found a link with lonesome places. Yes, you are and will always be an outsider – but to be an outsider here is an interesting occupation. And we will keep you occupied, I promise.” The large mouth kissed his neck, gently, yet something in the feel of it filled Sebastian with horror. He shuddered for some little while, until he realized that he stood alone.
He listened, to the rain, and to the distant humming, a soft human sound that came from some place near. Resisting once more the urge to investigate Van Prinn’s desk, Sebastian turned to the door, which had not been closed, and walked into the dim hallway. He followed the sound two doors down and knocked. The melody swiftly died, and a high voice rasped, “Entré.” Sebastian pushed open the door and entered the room, gazing at the back of the man who sat upon a stool and looked out a window, into night. One slim taper burned on a desk near to where the fellow sat, and the old man
motioned with a hand to the chair at that desk. Going to the chair, Sebastian sat.
“Can you smell the starlight?” asked a high and wizened voice. A withered hand reached for the teacup that sat on the window sill, and the old man drained the cup of its contents and then returned it to its place before the pane. “They’ve been obscured by storm, yet I smell them still, the stars.” How frail that high thin voice sounded as it spoke. The figured turned to face Sebastian, with one hand massaging a thin throat.
“Are you ill?”
The elderly gentleman shook with subtle mirth. “Only with that dread disease – mortality.” Sebastian took in this skinny old man who sat crookedly on the tall stool. He noticed the violin on the floor beside the stool. The hand remained at the scrawny neck. “I’m still getting used to the gift of speech,” he said, smiling as he shrugged. “It is a painful process.”
“May I pour you some more tea? Is that your herbal remedy?”
“No, no. The tea serves other purposes. The pain is part of the bargain with the beast. He offered me the gift of gab, with subtle pain the price to pay. I don’t mind. It’s wonderful to hear the words from my mouth instead of merely in my head.”
“The beast? Is that what you call him? Did he kidnap you as well?”
Night wind shook at the window, and some elemental thing slipped through a tiny crevice, chilling the room a little and causing the candlelight to flicker and dim. “Do you call it kidnapping? Wasn’t it, rather, seduction? He doesn’t coerce – he beguiles. He finds you when there is little left to live for, and he instructs you in your uncanny art, whatever it may be. Thus we aid the aura of this vale.”
The fellow began to cough, and Sebastian went to him, placed his arms around him and helped him off the stool.
“You need rest. Let me help you to bed.”
“Oh, heavens – bed! That is not the safest of place in Sesqua Valley, my friend. It encourages dreaming.
You want to guard your dreaming in this land, believe me. No, seat me in the chair you have vacated. I shall rest my head in my arms and think of the new music I must compose. Yes, there we are, thank you. He’s given you the middle room, I think. It’s quite comfortable. You may be happy there. Goodnight.” He turned his back to Sebastian and cupped his face in his hands. The younger man backed to the door and exited the room, despite his keen desire to talk about this place to which he had been lured.
Sebastian listened to the rain that drummed on the roof above him. Walking to the stairs, he cautiously found his way down to the lower level. He investigated a hallway and found a small kitchen and a water closet. Investigating further, he found a wide foyer that was charmingly decorated with what were obviously choice antiques. He forgot his sense of fear for a little while as he smoothed his hands over ancient wood and brass; for he had a special affection for antiques, and for the sense of the past they conveyed. He liked to imagine that he would have preferred to have lived in an earlier era, a time when, perhaps, life would not have been so complicated for a fellow such as himself. He had often felt a loner in the modern world, which was one reason he loved books, that world into which he could escape neoteric time. He felt, here in this entrance way to the building, that he had stepped into earlier epoch, away from the dull prevailing age.
He came upon closed double doors, which were locked. Squinting through the crack between them, he could espy a spacious blue-litten room that was crowded with curious shapes, the aspects of which disturbed him. Turning, Sebastian returned to the hallway, then stopped before a curiously small door composed of filagreed wood, a door that seemed to him older than the rarest of the antiques he had just fondled. He touched its knob of sculptured ivory and pushed. Blue illumination spilled into his eyes and fondled his imagination. He bent low so as to cross the threshold, and when he stood upright he grew confused. This was the Old Curiosity Shop – and it was certainly well named. The blue light was from a source he could not ascertain, and it filled the crowded place with an eerie aura that aided strangeness. Sebastian startled when he saw what looked like someone standing in one corner, watching him; but then he realized that the figure was wax and attired in clothes that might have been popular in the 1920’s. Stepping to it, he was troubled by the wolfish face, for it resembled that of the beast yet was obviously not Simon Gregory Williams. Poking out of a lapel pocket was a thin flute composed of red wood, highly polished. Sebastian took hold of the reed and placed it in his mouth. Without thinking, he tried to play a little tune that he had recently heard – ah, yes, the melody that Simon had performed as they stood in rain and watched the old man at his window. His replication of the song was clumsy, and so he replaced the flute into its pocket and merely whistled the remembered song; and as the notes issued from his lips, the blue light died and he stood in darkness. He could hear wind and rain outdoors, and cautiously stepped along the floor until his knee bumped into a sofa, on which he sat and le
t his eyes try to adjust to the darkness. How heavy those eyes were. When had he last slept? He had been led by Simon to various small towns on their way to Sesqua Valley, but what they did there, whom they met, he could not now recall.
From some place above him there came the muffled sound of someone playing a violin. The shadows of the room seemed to subtly surge and boil around him. The blue illumination returned, drifting to and touching his weary eyes. Sebastian Grimm lowered his head to the cozy arm of the sofa. He would think about all of this at some other time. Now he just wanted to watch the dance of shadows and listen to the rain. He closed his eyes.
III.
He awakened to a ladder of sunlight beaming through a window, and he awakened in bed. Looking around the room, he saw those few items that had been taken from his apartment, and then he noticed the tall man who stood before a tarnished mirror. Simon Gregory Williams, wearing the enchanted spectacles, gazed at his image in the mirror and muttered to himself in a voice that was inaudible; and then Simon seemed to become aware that he was being watched, and turned. He studied Sebastian for some little while, smiling. “What a depraved mind you have, sirrah,” he said at last. “How loud it shrieks.” He removed the spectacles. “Ah – better. I’ve just been having a little chat with myself,” he continued, indicating the mirror. “Fascinating, and a little depressing. My bond with humankind is far more complex and personal than I understood. There is some vague relationship, whereas I was hoping that we shadow children were a separate species altogether. But, no – we are linked by shadow and dreaming, and have far more in common than pleases me. Sigh.”
“I don’t understand a word you speak. Nor do I care. I insist that you release me and let me return home.”
“Ah, your rest has restored your mettle. It’s good to see some gumption. You’re free to go, of course, you certainly aren’t my captive. Return to your unimaginative little life in your small apartment, and when you next place your pistol to your head, I won’t be there to stop you. But first – ” Sebastian watched as Simon stepped to the antique mahogany desk and pulled the second pair of spectacles from its secret panel. “I want you to try these on and tell me what you see.”
“I won’t.”
The beast stalked slowly to the bed and sat. “Why not?” he whispered. “Of what is there to fear? Take them. You see, the glass is of a different hue, inky rather than amber.” His voice grew
lower, and he spoke more to himself than to Sebastian. “I knew that he had made a second pair. Why else would he have queried me about the Outer Ones and Yuggoth on the Rim?”
Sebastian could not help but laugh. “You knew Prinn?”
“Van Prinn,” Simon corrected. “Knew him? No. I – encountered him. My curiosity was aroused by a series of letters he sent me concerning certain formulae found in occult texts with which I am intimate. It was rare to have such correspondence with an American; most such contacts, in those days, were European.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Van Prinn disappeared over a century ago.”
“Not quite a century, dear fellow. He never wrote me from his actual address, and thus I knew nothing of the squalid house on the docks, from which you pilfered the bureau in which he had sequestered his magick glasses. He was cautious in some things. But the letters were postmarked from that unimaginative little place in which you both dwelt. How I wish I could have examined his library.”
“All those rotted leather-bound books.”
“Yes. I’ll never realize all that he knew.” Simon looked steadily at Sebastian. “But we can benefit from his genius. Put on these spectacles.”
Sebastian brutishly plucked them from Simon’s paw. He saw that they were identical in form to the other pair, the frames composed of similar metal. He studied the little designs that had been engraved into the temples, and thought they were similar to some of the weird faces that had been carved into the escritoire’s wood. He examined the word that had been carved into the bridge for the nose, carved in peculiar square letters: Arcanum. What did that actually mean – deep mystery or some such matter? Some secret thing, some philosophers’ stone? With quick and sudden movement, he placed the spectacles over his eyes. The world vanished before him, swallowed by obscurity. What was it he was looking into? Some audient void, a blackness that listened to his breathing, and as it listened seem to coax his breath to form alien words that, now, began to bubble in his brain? Sebastian
moved his lips as he looked into the unsubstantial eidolon before him, and as his voice spilled into space some thing began to boil and burst within the darkness, something red and volcanic, from which there rose another form, a sleek black figure that wore no face.
He removed the spectacles from his eyes. Simon’s blurred countenance was very near, and a large clawed hand took the glasses from Sebastian’s grasp. Simon’s hand actually trembled as he held the glasses to sunlight and watched the dark lenses, once so black, that were now colored with a dark crimson taint. They watched, as gradually the newer shade melted away, leaving the lenses, again, pure obsidian.
“Tell me what you saw,” the beast commanded.
“I don’t understand what I saw. I can’t describe it.”
Angrily, Simon leaped off the bed. “Pish. You’re a writer, and a good one at that. I’ve supplied you with paper and pens there, in the drawer of Van Prinn’s desk. You will sit there and pen for me a description of that on which you have looked, the thing that still haunts those spools, your eyes. Yes, by Yuggoth – your eyes are tainted with something wondrous and awful. Sit there at the desk and write.”
“Wear the things yourself, if you’re so hot to peel their mystery. Or are you afraid?”
Smiling, Simon pocketed the spectacles. “I will, in time. But now I’ll leave you to your task. I’ll be in my tower chamber, should you need me. Anyone can show you the way there. Good day.”
Sebastian shut his eyes and listened to the beast’s departure. As he kept his eyes closed he saw again a revenant of the vision he had experienced when wearing the second spectacles, and this so disturbed him that he opened his eyes to the misty sunlight that, more and more, filled his room. He stood on the cool wooden floor and looked around, and he saw that the room was actually quite cozy, containing a sofa near the wall where his bookcases had been placed, and in one corner a small table on which there sat an old typewriter and a ream of paper. He walked to Van Prinn’s secretary and saw two stacks of paper, one of which was the holograph manuscript of his completed novel, the other a stack of manila paper awaiting his script, his record. He picked up one of the many pens that sat beside the sheets, a démodé implement for another era, and admired its delicate beauty, its feel. Yes, he would enjoy writing with such an instrument. He examined the antique Windsor chair that had been positioned before the desk, and then sat down on its padded surface, finding it extremely comfortable. Placing a hand on top of the pile of blank sheets, he began to try and find the language with which he could express the vision he had experienced.
Someone tapped at the frame of the door to his room. Turning, he saw that Simon had not shut the door, and that the old violinist now stood there, leaning on a cane and looking in. The elderly gentleman bowed. “I’m going to breakfast,” he said in his high frail voice. “Will you join me? There’s a delightful brasserie just down the lane. Do you enjoy scones and crêpes?”
This talk of food had an instantaneous effect, and Sebastian realized that he was famished. He panicked for a moment and reached into his pants pocket; but when he pulled out and examined his wallet, he saw that it was stuffed with bills. “That would be excellent – um...” He motioned to the man with an inquiring hand.
“Jon-Eric le Seuil, your servant,” the fellow answered as he bowed once more. Sebastian rose and went to the musician.
“Sebastian Grimm.”
“You are an author.”
“You’ve read my work?” the other asked, astonished.
“No – but only writers are allowed to r
eside in this room. The other fellow was quite moody, can’t say I’m sad to see him gone.”
“Ah – he left?”
The old man shrugged. “He’s gone. Come, let’s breakfast before the day grows older.” He turned and began to walk with the assistance of his stick, and the two men descended the stairs together. The weather was warm, and soft sunlight filled the valley. Sebastian gasped as he witnessed the beauty of Sesqua Valley – the deep green of the woodland, the abundance of flowers in the yards of the few small houses, and particularly the sparkling white stone of the majestic twin-peaked mountain. He had never dwelt in a place that could be called enchanted – until now. His companion watched the newcomer’s expression, and he laughed. “Oui, the valley wears a beautiful mask.”
They walked along a sidewalk of sturdy wooden planks until coming to a small establishment, into which Jon-Eric led the outsider. Asked if he ate meat, Sebastian answered that he did as they sat in a booth. When a young server attended them, Jon-Eric ordered in French without looking at a menu. When, after a little wait, the food arrived, Sebastian devoured the French toast and Eggs Benedict like a greedy thing, with the musician looking pleasantly on.
“The Hollandaise sauce is made of an especially fine dry white wine, but how they achieve such a vivid chrome yellow coloring remains a mystery.” He sipped from his cup, which contained dark tea rather than the coffee that had been served Sebastian, and the writer observed, now and then, the look of pain in the old man’s face when he spoke, and the hand that soothed the wizened throat. “What were you doing, Sebastian, when Simon descended upon you?”
The Strange Dark One Page 14