The Symbiot

by Michel Weatherall

  The second incident was when we were in Paris, France. Lorne and I had stopped at the Bibliotheque Nationale. He became entranced in some readings. He seemed incredibly excited about it, almost desperate. I thought it was healthy to see him so interested in something since his mysterious disinterest with music, that was at one time his passion.

  He spent two full days at the Bibliotheque. Apparently the authorities would not allow him to see some exhibit or other. A book it was. He called it the – now what was it? Necro-, necro-something. I think it meant “Book of the Dead”. When we left he was extremely withdrawn into himself. He wanted to return home immediately.

  After our tour ended and we arrived home Lorne regressed back into his old routine of never leaving the house, except this time he had reasons. He ordered many books regarding languages. Ancient Greek, Latin, and even Arabic. He became a recluse. For three years he would never leave the house. All he did was read and study, eat and sleep, nothing more.

  And then, all of a sudden, his taste for travel was rekindled! He wanted to travel again. He said he was researching something of great importance to both of us and that now he needed to see certain ancient tomes and volumes which were located at various libraries around the world.

  We traveled to Paris again, Buenos Aires, and various universities with a particularly long stay at the Miskatonic University in Arkham, Mass. Lorne seemed interested in certain libraries: the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, the Widener Library at Harvard, the Miskatonic University’s library and the University of Buenos Aires. Apparently his new interest was ancient books. He told me of many titles, such as the Livre d’Eibon, the Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt, the Celæno Fragments, the Cultes des Goules by d’Erette, de Vermis Mysteriis, the Dhor Chants, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Dr. Dee Manuscripts, and – now I remember the name after hearing it – the dreaded Necronomicon!

  When we returned to Montréal he began to receive letters from the Miskatonic University. The correspondences were long and often packages were sent. Lorne was extremely private about these going-ons. I started to believe him to be involved in some cult.

  Please do not misunderstand me. My son-in-law is no fool and does not possess such a character as to accept cults, but you must realize that he was under great strains and could not accept his wife’s death. I thought a cult was using him. He was sending large sums of money to the university and receiving articles he wouldn’t allow me to see. He was looking for any way to get his wife back and if some cult or other were to tell him there was a way, Lorne would have tried it.

  When I asked him who the letters were from he would only answer the Miskatonic University. When I pressured him further he said they were from a Professor H. Neilson, who was assisting him in his research, but never more.

  It had gone too far. I believed this university professor - if indeed this H. Neilson was truly a professor - was brainwashing my poor son-in-law, using his grief for his lost wife. It was at this point that Lorne did something quite confusing. He purchased a viola and began to teach himself. Why the sudden interest in music again was baffling. I must admit that I wasn’t sure what exactly to do. We both shared the house. It was as much his as my own and I couldn’t barge into his room and read the letters, so I went to my sister Karen’s to talk. I told her all that she hadn’t known. Karen wanted to call the police but knew well enough that there were no charges to be laid. I had expected such callousness from her. She had blamed Marie and Henri’s deaths both on Lorne. If it hadn’t been for his selfishness and greediness we would have never gone to England and this whole affair would have never taken place. She had never liked Lorne since the deaths of Marie and Henri. She on more than one occasion attempted to talk me out of staying with Lorne. She would have had him arrested that very moment if she could have.

  But when she found out about his occult dealings – she insisted that we immediately return to my house, barge in his room and either confront him should he be there or go through his belongings if he should prove to be out. She said that she’d accompany me if I so desired, but I knew that she wanted to more for herself than for me.

  When we returned Lorne was home at the time, much to Karen’s liking.

  Karen began, “Lorne, we know that you’re involved with some cult from Boston,” she sneered.

  Lorne seemed quite surprised, almost shocked. “Cult? What are you talking about?” His tone was not pleasant. Karen’s dislike of Lorne was a shared feeling between the two. I felt that if I did not intervene these two would fight. “Yes, cult,” I added softly. “You have been writing to a Professor H. Neilson in Arkham.”

  “That’s part of my research, I told you ‘bout that before,” he answered stressing the final word. “I’m almost done.”

  “You’re damned right you’re almost done!” my sister blurted, “This is ending right now!”

  At this point I knew Lorne would not react hospitably. He did not like Karen and was very touchy on this topic. For a moment his mouth hung open. “Now listen here!” he bellowed out, “You have no Goddamned business in my affairs!” his face turned purple. “You, neither of you, know what I’m up to, how vitally important it is, nor how close to completing it I am.”

  “I want to see those letters and what you’ve received from your Professor H. Neilson.” Karen mocked the name. “Veronica told me you're keeping it in your room. I’m going to see for myself!” And with that she began to walk towards Lorne’s bedroom.

  As for Lorne, he gave me a hard look for an instant and hastily rushed after Karen. My sister however beat Lorne to the door. He caught her by her arm after the fact. She had already flung open his bedroom door. I couldn’t believe what I saw. His room was covered with ancient scripts and moldy-crusted diagrams of things I’m not too sure of. There were pentagrams carved in strange greenish-gray soapstone and many old moldering books, many of foreign languages; all occult items.

  Lorne was defeated. His eyes took on a glassy appearance and his hand slowly slipped down Karen’s arm. She roughly pulled her arm away from Lorne’s faltering grip and with a nod of her head stated that she had seen all she needed to see and that she would call the police if he hadn’t removed and discarded all of this occult trash by the next day. Although I knew she wouldn’t call the police, as there was no crime committed, Lorne took it quite hard.

  My sister left. Lorne entered his room listlessly and locked the door. Although I attempted to talk with him through the door he would not even answer me. I do love my son-in-law. He is – or was – a good man, but at this point I was quite frightened. He did possess, as I saw with my own eyes and would never had believed if I hadn’t, pentagrams and other odd fetishes. He wouldn’t talk to me or answer me at all. I called back my sister and asked if I could spend the night.

  Oh, how I regret it now. I can’t but help think that I could have helped or even saved Lorne if I had only believed in him and stayed with him on that terrible night.

  When I returned the next morning with Karen, we found the house abandoned and Lorne's bedroom door still locked. We knocked and tried to convince him to unlock the door to no avail. It wasn’t long that we noticed a breeze from beneath his door. Karen went outside and around the house and saw that the bedroom window was smashed! She immediately called the police to report a burglary.

  I had tried to open the door with my spare key before the police arrived only to find that Lorne must have had the lock changed for my key would not work.

  When the police arrived and opened the door we found his room in a torn mess. Wallpaper was torn off the walls, furniture was scattered and smashed to pieces, paper and books were thrown everywhere and torn to fragments. All the light bulbs were mysteriously burnt out. The window was smashed but all the glass lay on the torn carpeted floor, as though blown into the room from outside. After a thorough search all that was found was Lorne's pistol, empty of bullets, and a tape recorder with a tape inside.

  That was the last I saw of my son-in-
law, Lorne S. Gibbons.

  Feb. 16, 1992

  Veronica L. François

  [What follows is a transcript of the tape recorder’s message]

  L.S. Gibbons’ voice: Mom, I’m doing this for both of us. I know you don’t believe that Marie and Henri are still alive…but I do believe it, and I think I’ve found a way to find them. Nadia opened some sort of gateway to the… I don’t know… to the outside. She must have made a mistake somewhere, somehow. I think I can repeat what she played that night but correctly. I think I can open that same gateway but this time go through it, not let Nyarlathotep out, for I believe that it was Nyarlathotep that we encountered in Nadia’s flat on the night of the horror.

  I’m going to repeat that melody she played. I was so nearly finished my research when your sister came last night… I can’t allow her to stop me, not now. I haven’t completed my research but am sure I can perform the piece correctly. I hope nothing goes wrong. If I’m right and I’m not insane, I should return with both Marie and Henri…

  I love you…

  Transcript’s Notes: At this point it was audible Lorne clearing his throat and sitting. The tuning of his viola followed this. Then he began to play. Slow at first and then picking up tempo. Faster and faster the viola screamed. Then the volume rose. It sounded like a bad recording or a radio station that was not properly tuned in. I attribute this to the actual volume of the piece. The sound was so loud as to distort the recording. It crackled and hissed, but you could still recognize that cacophony of nightmares. There joined in another instrument. I can not say what. I have had other professors of music listen to this recording but they couldn’t identify the instrument.

  The recording began to have blank spots in it where I believe the volume grew too loud. There was a sound of some minor explosion and falling glass. I presume this to be the window breaking. The cacophony of screaming viola and the other unidentified instrument was joined by a howling wind. This I found to be somewhat of an oddity as there was no wind in Montréal on the evening of the incident.

  Lorne screamed horribly and the viola stopped playing, but the music still continued.

  Lorne can be heard mumbling something I couldn’t make out and crying. There followed six gunshots and a new voice. Mrs. François insists that it was Nadia de LaFountaine’s voice, but it could not have been hers. She had died in the explosion of her apartment in 1987. What this new voice said was disturbing. It was loud enough to clearly hear but was very inarticulate and disjointed. I will attempt to write down phonetically what was said for I do not believe it to be any known language.

  “Mwl’fgah pywfg fhtagn Gh’tyaf nglyf lghyal!”

  After this was ululated Lorne burst out with the formless sound of ultimate terror and then all fell into a tense silence. All the sound at one single moment stopped.

  Slowly the tape recorder began to pick up the more subtle outside sounds: the traffic of early morning, the sound of the street lamps buzzing, a cat caterwauling… eventually the click as the tape ended.

  Chapter III: Acquisitions

  A month had passed since Lorne S. Gibbons had gone missing. His mother-in-law knew the truth – that he would never be found. Veronica lived in the Hell of solitude.

  How many times had she watched a television program or listened to the radio to forget when something minute reminded her of her daughter or her husband, or her son-in-law? How many nights had she spent lying in the darkness crying? Weeping tears that no one knew of, wishing she could just wake up out of this living nightmare. All she wanted was Henri to come home and hold her, to tell her everything was alright… not to cry, that things would get better.

  Today had been different. She had toured old Montréal, ate at a street vendor’s hot dog stand and did some minor shopping. The day had been sunny. Oh, how she loved eating on the streets of old Montréal in the springtime! It made her forget about all her problems. She stopped feeling so alone.

  She returned home, getting her mail as she did so. She placed the envelopes on the glass cocktail table in the living room and went to the kitchen to put on the kettle for some tea.

  She returned to the living room and sat down to look through her mail. Hydro, Bell, Cable, Visa. Bills mostly, but what was this? A letter postmarked Arkham, Mass., from a Professor H. Neilson, addressed to Lorne S. Gibbons. This brought tears to her eyes. Oh, how she missed her son, Lorne – for that was how she saw him, as her son, not just her son-in-law.

  She placed the letter down like it was made of glass. Silence… motionlessness.

  She watched through her own tears the sun set through her great bay windows. A single tear streamed down her cheek. She began sobbing. She knew she would have to write the correspondence to inform him of her son-in-law’s death. It would be so difficult. She knew she could always write the word ‘deceased’ on the letter and have it returned, but she felt it cold and stoic to do so. Yes, she would write to this Prof. Neilson and officially inform him. It was the only proper thing to do.

  The sun slipped beneath the horizon. The kettle began to whistle. Veronica thought of the night of the horror in ’87. Nadia’s flat. The kettle whistling. Oh God, it had been horrible! It reminded her of Lorne again. How the two of them would sit by this very same bay window watching the sun set together over a pot of tea. Oh, how she missed him.

  The kettle whistled. Veronica began openly weeping into her palms.

  * * *

  She lay in bed in pitch-blackness crying. Her day had been fairly good until she returned home. Lorne’s letter from Arkham, Mass. had done it. She knew she would have to eventually write him. She didn’t know where she would ever find the strength to continue, but she knew that continue she must.

  She sluggishly crawled out of bed and turned on the night lamp. Her eyes felt crusty from her dried tears and the light was too bright.

  She decided to write the letter to the Professor. How could she say it? Should she cover up the truth like with the horror on Mackenzie Street? No, not this time. It didn’t matter anymore to her what people thought. If Professor H. Neilson thought her crazy, then so be it! She would tell him the complete story, from beginning to end, even the horror of Mackenzie Street.

  She spent the entire night writing the correspondence for her late son-in-law. The letter was not overly long; it wasn’t the actual writing that took so much time – all evening. It was her sobbing fits that delayed the actual writing that took all night. But by the first rays of another empty gray day she had finished it.

  Her plans for this day were to mail the letter. Nothing else. What else was there to do? She had no job, nothing. There was no longer purpose in her life. Her world had turned a hazy shade of gray. The world went on around her but did not include her.

  So it was for another month. She spent many nights with her sister Karen, but she felt her welcome lessening. Karen’s husband seemed irritated at her constant presence, so she returned to her gloomy life alone.

  It was around this time that she received a letter from Professor H. Neilson addressed to her. It was typed on a University’s letterhead.

  The letter read as follows:

  Mrs. V.L. Francois,

  La Bellefeuille Maison,

  Montreal, P.Q.,

  Canada

  Dear Mrs. Francois,

  My most sincere apologies. Had I known of Mr. Gibbons' demise I would have ceased our communications immediately. You have my and the University's deepest sympathies.

  I would however like to inform you of Mr. Gibbons' activities. You seemed to think him involved in a cult. He was not. He was researching something of which I am not at liberty to discuss through a written letter.

  You had mentioned that a tape recording was found in Mr. Gibbons' bedroom. I would greatly wish to hear it. I am very much interested. I would even be interested in purchasing it from you, with your approval and permission of course.

  Please do not sent the tape through the mail. It is of utmost importance that you do no
t.

  If you will grant me a hearing of the tape, please write me. We can work out a meeting. I would be more than happy to visit Montreal city this summer.

  You may also reach me at the University's phone number listed on this letterhead during any schooling hours.