by S. T. Joshi
Fyodor leaned closer yet. The next words were whispered, hardly audible. “…is Howard. Howard Phillips. Howard Phillips Lovecraft…”
Then Roman was asleep. That was the natural course of the drug’s effects. There was no waking him, now, not safely, to ask questions.
Stunned, Fyodor sat beside Roman, staring at the peacefully sleeping young man. Seeing his eyelids flickering with REM sleep. What was he dreaming of?
* * *
FYODOR HAD GROWN UP IN PROVIDENCE. EVERYONE here had heard Lovecraft’s name. Young Fyodor Cheski had his own Lovecraft period. But his mother had found the books—he was only thirteen—and she’d taken them away, very sternly, and threatened that he would lose every privilege he could even imagine if he read them again. She knew about this Lovecraft, she said. Things whispered to him—things people shouldn’t listen to.
It was one of his mother’s fits of paranoia, of course, but after that Fyodor was taken with a more modern set of writers, Bradbury and then Salinger—and a veer into Robertson Davies. Never gave Lovecraft another thought. Not a conscious thought, anyway.
His mother, in her manic periods, would babble about a cat she’d had as a small girl, a cat that used to talk to her; she’d look into its eyes, and she’d hear it speaking in her mind, hissing of other worlds—dark worlds. And one day she could bear it no more, and she’d driven the cat into the street, where it was hit by a passing truck. She feared its soul had haunted her, ever since; and she feared it would haunt Fyodor.
A chill went through Fyodor as he realized he had fallen entirely under the spell of Roman’s convoluted narrative. He had almost believed that this man was the reincarnation of the writer who’d died in 1937. Perhaps he did have a little of his mother’s… susceptibility.
He shuddered. God, he needed a drink.
He thought of the wine in the basement. It was still there. Hal said it was vinegar, but he hadn’t tested the other bottles. Fyodor had a powerful impulse to try one out. Perhaps he’d see something down there that would spark some insight into Roman…
His patient was sleeping peacefully. Why not?
He went downstairs, to find that Roman’s mother, anxious, had gone to see her sister. Leah was yawning at her desk.
He looked at her, thinking he really should take her out, once, see what happened. She’s not dating anyone, as far as he knew.
He almost asked her then and there. But he simply nodded and said, “I’ll take care of things here. He’s sleeping… he’ll stay the night… You can go home.”
He watched her leave, and then turned to the basement door, remembering the agent had mentioned the house had belonged to the Dunn family for generations. Doubtless Roman had found out about the house’s background, somehow, woven it into his fantasies. Probably he was a Lovecraft fan.
Fyodor found the switch at the top of the steps, switched on the light and descended to the basement. Really, that bulb was too bright for the basement space. It hurt his eyes. Ugly yellow light bulb.
He crossed to the corner where he’d replaced the cap over the hole in the floor. The crowbar was still there. He pried up the cover of cement and wood—took more effort than he’d supposed. But there were the bottles. How was he to open them?
Why not be a little daring, opening the bottle as they did in stories? He pulled a bottle out and struck the neck on the wall; it broke neatly off. Wine splashed red as blood against the gray concrete.
He sniffed at the bottle. The smell wasn’t vinegary, anyway. The aroma—the wine’s bouquet—was almost a perfume.
The bottle neck had broken evenly. No risk in having a quick swig. He sat on one of the crates, put the bottle neck to his lips, and tasted, expecting to gag and spit out the small sip…
But it was delicious. Apparently this one had been sealed better than the one his friend Hal had looked at. Strange to think it had been here undisturbed all those years—even when his mother had been here. Only once had she mentioned the name of the people who’d adopted her. The Dunn family…
He wanted badly to sit here awhile and drink the wine. Quite out of character—he was more the kind to have a little carefully selected Pinot in an upscale wine bar. But here he was…
Strange to be down here, drinking from a broken wine bottle, in the concrete and dust.
It’s not like me. It’s as if I’m still under the spell, the influence, of Roman’s ramblings. It’s as if something brought me here. Something is urging me to lift the bottle to my lips… to drink deeply…
Why not? One drink more. If he was going to ask Leah out he’d need to be more spontaneous. He could call her up, tell her the wine was better than they’d supposed. Might be worth something. Ask her to come and try some…
He licked his lips—and drank. The wine was delicious; a deep taste, and unusual. Like a tragic song. He laughed to himself. He drank again. What was it Roman had said?
I never used to drink. I wanted to take it up, starting with something old and fine. I want a new life. I desire to do things differently. Live!
Fyodor drank again… and looked up at the light bulb. He blinked in its fierce sulfurous glare, its assaultive parhelion. It seemed almost part of an eye, a glowing yellow eye, looking at him from some farther place…
He stood up suddenly, shaking himself, his twitching hands dropping the bottle—it shattered on the concrete with a gigantic sound that seemed to resound on and on, echoing… and in the echo was a voice. His mother’s voice… the part of her mind that had spoken to him through the sea of static. This time it said something else.
“We need souls. We have few left in our world. Come to us, across the Great Deeps. Restore our world. Become one with us.”
The room, which should be dull gray, seemed to quiver in ugly colors. He turned and staggered to the stairs. His head buzzed.
Then he looked up to see that Roman Boxer was standing at the head of the stairs. “Doctor? Are you well? You are Doctor Cheski, are you not? I believe that was the name…”
Fyodor started wobblingly up the stairs. Alcohol level must have gotten very high in the wine. Seeing things. Unable to climb a damn basement stairs very well…
He got to the third step from the top—and Roman put out his hand to him. “Here—take my hand. You look a trifle unsteady.”
But Fyodor held back, afraid to touch Roman and not sure why. “You… should be asleep.”
“Yes, well—I simply woke up. And everything was fine! Whatever you gave me helped me enormously. The pain in my stomach is gone! I was surprised to be no longer in the hospital… Yes. Thought I was a goner. Kind of you to bring me home—if that’s what this place is. That nurse—is she here?”
“The nurse? What…” Fyodor licked his lips. “What is your name?”
“You really have overindulged, my friend. I am your patient, Howard Lovecraft…” Roman smiled widely and once more reached for him. Fyodor jerked back, irrationally afraid of that hand. The hand of a dead man.
And Fyodor tipped backwards, flailed, tumbled down the stairs. He heard a sickening crunch…
Darkness entered through the crack in his skull. It swept him up, carried him away…
He drifted through the darkness—orbiting a far world. Beginning to sink toward that cloud-clotted planet…
No. He refused to go.
“In time, you will come. We traded him for you…”
Fyodor struggled, psychically writhing, to get back. A long ways back, and an endless time somehow folded within a few minutes… Then he was crawling across the basement floor. Someone was helping him up. Roman… was that his name?
The young man, quite solicitous, helped him up the stairs to the front hall—and then Leah stepped in the door. “Oh my God! Fyodor! Roman, what happened! Have you hurt him? He’s got blood on his head! I knew something was wrong! I was sure of it! Never mind, just sit down, Fyodor, I’ll call an ambulance… and the police.”
* * *
HOW THE SEASONS WHEEL BY. SPRING, S
UMMER, FALL, winter; spring, summer, fall; a year and another… And then an early summer day… the roses were pretty, quite new, not yet chewed by the fungus… Mom drooped in her chair, across from him, eyes completely hidden in sunglasses. She would want to play cards when she woke up. He preferred the puzzle.
“Fyodor?” It was Leah, speaking from the back door. Smiling. Dressed up rather formally. “We’re going out. To the book signing.”
“Hm?” Fyodor looked up from his Old Providence jigsaw puzzle. Mother had been grumpily helping him put the puzzle together on the card table, in the late summer sunshine; the rose garden behind the Dunn house. But Mom had gone to sleep, a jigsaw piece in her hand, slumped in her chair. She looked contented, snoring away there.
Roman was so good to take care of her—to care for them both here.
“I said, we’re going to Roman’s signing—for his book? You sure you won’t come? The man from the New York Times is going to interview him.”
“Is he? That’s good. Big crowd?”
“Oh, yes. It looks to be a bestseller. I know you don’t like crowds.”
“No. Crowds and cats…”
He had heard Roman’s agent, a pretty blonde lady, chattering away over breakfast. “They’re framing it as Roman Theobald, the man Lovecraft might have become…” Then she’d turned to him. “How are you this morning, Fyodor? Would you like some more orange juice?”
Very kind of her. Everyone was very kind to him, since the accident. Since the damage to his head.
Leah had married “Roman Theobald”—that was his pen name. Roman Boxer was his real name. Anyway—the name on his birth certificate. Sometimes, in the house, she used a funny little affectionate name for him. “Howard.” Odd choice. Anyway, she was Mrs. Roman Boxer now. She was almost ten years too old for Roman, but Mrs. Boxer had approved. She’d bought the Dunn house as a wedding gift for them. Mrs. Boxer had died, soon after the wedding, of cancer. Buried at Swan Point Cemetery.
Fyodor felt good, thinking about it. Maybe it was the Prozac. But still—it was true, everyone was very kind. Roman, Leah, the doctors. And Leah made sure he took his pills in the evening. He really couldn’t sleep without them. Particularly the pills against nightmares. He was quite sure that if he dreamed of that place again, the place the bells in the sea spoke of, that he would not wake up the next morning. He might never wake up again. And mother, then, poor old mumsy, would be all alone. Until they came for her too.
* * *
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TOM FLETCHER
Tom Fletcher was born in 1984. He is married and currently lives in Manchester, England. He is the author of two novels—The Leaping (Quercus, 2010) and The Thing on the Shore (Quercus, 2011)—and numerous short stories. He blogs at www.endistic.wordpress.com, his Twitter username is @fellhouse, and he can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tomfletcherwriter.
* * *
“JUST THE HALLWAY ALONE IS WORTH IT,” NEIL SAID. “Look at the banisters, the tiles, the space.”
It was a very impressive hallway. The floor was surfaced with black and white tiles, chequered. They were polished to a high sheen. The banisters of the spiralling staircase were heavy-looking. Dark, solid wood. Also well-polished. And the space—the chequerboard floor seemed vast, the tiles seeming to diminish in size to nothing at the far side of the room.
“It’s like being in a painting,” Neil said.
It was like being in a painting.
* * *
THE ESTATE AGENT WAS AN INCREDIBLY TALL MAN with a perfectly bald head that gleamed as cleanly as the tiles. He wore a grey suit with a cream-coloured shirt. He carried a clipboard that held a few sheets of paper—information about the house, judging by the way he would look down at the clipboard and then impart some fact or other. His deep-set eyes blinked slowly whenever he spoke.
“This flooring is the original flooring,” he said, his voice sonorous and profound, “dating back to when the first part of the house was constructed in 1782. Extensions have been made since then, of course, outwards and upwards and even downwards.”
“Outwards?” I asked. “I thought this was a terrace?”
“It is a terrace,” the estate agent said. “You’ll see what I mean when we head upstairs. I propose that I show you around the ground floor to start with, and then take you to the upper floors, and then, after that, we’ll come back down and you can explore the basement. After that, I’ll give you some time to talk between yourselves. How does that sound?”
“Sounds good,” Neil said, looking up at the ceiling.
* * *
THE KITCHEN WAS AS IMPRESSIVE AS THE HALLWAY. Marble tops, a Belfast sink, those beautiful tiles throughout. Cupboards and drawers that looked custom made, and again, that lovely dark wood.
“Cheri,” Neil said, “this house is amazing. We should go for it. We should definitely go for it.”
“It is amazing, so far,” I said, “but we haven’t seen it all yet. Let’s just see it all before we make our minds up. We need to think about the cost of it too. We can’t just fall for the first place we see. We don’t want to hurt ourselves, financially.”
“Mmm,” Neil said, waggling his head around, “yeah…”
The estate agent grinned and gestured towards the back door.
* * *
THE GARDEN WAS A LONG, THIN STRIP OF A THING, but it was verdant, bright, and green beneath the autumn mist. It was enclosed by a tall wooden fence. A healthy-looking vegetable patch thrived at the far end. The bright tops of a few ripe pumpkins bulged up, regularly spaced. Neil squeezed my hand. “When we have kids,” he said, “this garden would be perfect.”
When we turned to look back at the house, I realised how low the mist had come. Even the windows of the first floor were obscured.
* * *
THE LIVING ROOM WAS COSY AND SQUARE, WITH WARM wooden floorboards—smooth and glowing with varnish—and an open fire, lit even then, just for the viewing. It roared merrily away like a happy animal. The walls had been given an even coat of pale lime green paint. It looked flawless—quite fresh.
The estate agent took us back out into the hallway and grinned his huge, toothy grin.
“As you can see,” he said, “this is a very desirable property. Now. Let’s go upstairs.”
* * *
THE ROOMS ON THE FIRST FLOOR WERE AS GRAND AND appealing as those on the ground floor. There was a small landing, and then two bedrooms, one of which had an opulent en-suite bathroom.
“The house feels quite narrow,” I said to the estate agent.
“The lower floors are indeed narrow,” the estate agent said. “Originally, the house was narrow and tall. So, as you’ve seen, there were only a couple of rooms on each floor. It gives these floors a nice, cosy feel, but, if you like to have space around you, then the upper floors should be more to your taste.” He grinned. “This property really offers the best of both worlds,” he said.
I started to wonder if his shirt really was cream-coloured, or just grimy. The ridge of the collar was dark, as if greasy. The colour of the rest of it seemed a bit patchy.
“What’s upstairs?” Neil asked.
“Well, really, the rooms are for the owners of the property to use as they see fit,” the estate agent said. “What’s upstairs is pure potential!”
* * *
THE LAYOUT OF THE SECOND FLOOR MATCHED THAT of the first, except what was an en-suite bathroom on the first floor was just a separate bathroom on the second. The staircase spiralled up through the landing, up towards the converted attic rooms. We didn’t say much as we looked around this floor; I was thinking about studies, nurseries, playrooms, libraries.
“The attic is where we start to see the beginning of the expansion of the property,” the estate agent said, wiping a handkerchief across his damp forehead. “Shall we ascend?”
I wasn’t sure what he could mean by start to see the beginning of at this stage, but I did not vocalise my query. I was sure that we would see soon eno
ugh.
And see soon enough we did. Too soon. And too much.
* * *
THE ATTIC WAS A SHOCK. THE STAIRS ENDED IN A TINY room with a ceiling that was lower than the other ceilings in this house, but still relatively high when compared with most ceilings. The walls had been painted pink, messily, as if by an impatient child. The stairs were situated right in the middle of the room, which was disorientating, given that on the first three floors they had always been at the back left of the central space. One door led off to the right. “This way,” the estate agent said, gesturing towards the door.
All the rooms in the attic were interconnected, with multiple doors, and they were all different shapes too, with awkward corners and inexplicable dog-legs. We flicked the light switches as we went, but the floor still felt gloomy.
“A family that used to live here bought up the attics of the adjacent houses,” the estate agent explained, “and converted the whole lot into this warren. Good for parties, or games of hide and seek, or even just for storage.”
“Why are there no skylights?” I asked. “Don’t attics usually have skylights?”
“Well,” the estate agent said, “when they converted this attic into this network of rooms, they built another attic—a replacement attic—on top.”
“Makes sense,” Neil said, nodding.
“What were these rooms for?” I asked.
“What were they for?” the estate agent repeated, grinning again. “Why, what a strange question. I’m not sure that they were for anything in particular. A kind of folly, if you will. It would be a dreary world indeed if things were only created to perform particular functions, would it not?”
“I suppose it would,” I said, looking around.
“Shall we go upstairs?” the estate agent asked.
“Yes,” Neil said. “Come on, Cheri. How exciting is this house?”
“It is quite exciting,” I said.
“This way,” the estate agent said, and he led us through a doorway into a room that I thought we’d already been into, but we hadn’t. This room was full of old, dusty, wooden furniture, piled floor to ceiling. Broken chairs, warped picture frames, ornate little coffee tables, leather footstools leaking their innards down the side of the heap.