illegally) fo r a short time one night and was nearly
caught. Came across reference to the place in collection
o f seventeenth century letters and papers in a divinity
school library. Writer denouncing the family as a brood
o f sorcerers and witches, references to alchemical activities and other less savory rumors—and describes underground stone chambers, megalithic artifacts, etc.
which are put to “foul usage and diabolic pralctise. ”
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Karl Edward Wagner
Just got a quick glimpse but his description was not
exaggerated. And Colin—in creeping through the woods
to get to the site, I came across dozens o f your mysterious “sticks”! Brought a small one back and have it here to show you. Recently constructed and exactly like
your drawings. With luck, I ’ll gain admittance and find
out their significance—undoubtedly they have significance—though these cultists can be stubborn about sharing their secrets. Will explain my interest is scientific, no exposure to ridicule—and see what they say.
Will get a closer look one way or another. And so— I ’m
off! Sincerely, Alexander Stefroi.
Leverett’s bushy brows rose. Allard had intimated certain
dark rituals in which the stick lattices figured. But Allard had
written over thirty years ago, and Leverett assumed the writer
had stumbled onto something similar to the Mann Brook site.
Stefroi was writing about something current.
He rather hoped Stefroi would discover nothing more than
an inane hoax.
The nightmares haunted him still—familiar now, for all
that its scenes and phantasms were visited by him only in
dream. Familiar. The terror that they evoked was undiminished.
Now he was walking through forest—a section of hills that
seemed to be close by. A huge slab of granite had been
dragged aside, and a pit yawned where it had lain. He entered
the pit without hesitation, and the rounded steps that led
downward were known to his tread. A buried stone chamber,
and leading from it stone-lined burrows. He knew which one
to crawl into.
And again the underground room with its sacrificial altar
and its dark spring beneath, and the gathering circle of poorly
glimpsed figures. A knot of them clustered about the stone
table, and as he stepped toward them he saw they pinned a
frantically writhing man.
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It was a stoutly built man, white hair disheveled, flesh
gouged and filthy. Recognition seemed to burst over the contorted features, and he wondered if he should know the man.
But now the lich with the caved-in skull was whispering in
his ear, and he tried not to think of the unclean things that
peered from that cloven brow, and instead took the bronze
knife from the skeletal hand, and raised the knife high, and
because he could not scream and awaken, did with the knife
as the tattered priest had whispered . . .
And when after an interval of unholy madness, he at last
did awaken, the stickiness that covered him was not cold
sweat, nor was it nightmare the half-devoured heart he
clutched in one fist.
9
Leverett somehow found sanity enough to dispose of the
shredded lump of flesh. He stood under the shower all morning, scrubbing his skin raw. He wished he could vomit.
There was a news item on the radio. The crushed body of
noted archaeologist, Dr. Alexander Stefroi, had been discovered beneath a fallen granite slab near Whately. Police speculated the gigantic slab had shifted with the scientist’s excavations at its base. Identification was made through personal effects.
When his hands stopped shaking enough to drive, Leverett
fled to Petersham—teaching Dana Allard’s old stone house
about dark. Allard was slow to answer his frantic knock.
“ Why, good evening, Colin! What a coincidence your
coming here just now! The books are ready. The bindery just
delivered them.”
Leverett brushed past him. “ We’ve got to destroy them!”
he blurted. He’d thought a lot since morning.
“ Destroy them?”
“ There’s something none of us figured on. Those stick
lattices—there’s a cult, some damnable cult. The lattices have
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some significance in their rituals. Stefiroi hinted once they
might be glyphics of some sort, I don’t know. But the cult is
still alive. They killed Scotty . . . they killed Stefroi. They’re
onto me—I don’t know what they intend. They’ll kill you to
stop you from releasing this book!”
Dana’s frown was worried, but Leverett knew he hadn’t
impressed him the right way. ‘‘Colin, this sounds insane. You
really have been overextending yourself, you know. Look,
I ’ll show you the books. They’re in the cellar.”
Leverett let his host lead him downstairs. The cellar was
quite large, flagstoned and dry. A mountain of brown-
wrapped bundles awaited them.
‘‘Put them down here where they wouldn’t knock the floor
out,” Dana explained. ‘‘They start going out to distributors
tomorrow. Here, I ’ll sign your copy.”
Distractedly Leverett opened a copy of Dwellers in the
Earth. He gazed at his lovingly rendered drawings of rotting
creatures and buried stone chambers and stained altars—and
everywhere the enigmatic latticework structures. He shuddered.
‘‘Here.” Dana Allard handed Leverett the book he had
signed. ‘‘And to answer your question, they are elder glyphics.”
But Leverett was staring at the inscription in its unmistakable handwriting: “ For Colin Leverett, Without whom this work could not have seen completion—H. Kenneth Allard.”
Allard was speaking. Leverett saw places where the hastily applied flesh-toned make-up didn’t quite conceal what lay beneath. ‘‘Glyphics symbolic of alien dimensions—
inexplicable to the human mind, but essential fragments of
an evocation so unthinkably vast that the ‘pentagram’ (if
you will) is miles across. Once before we tried—but your
iron weapon destroyed part of Althol’s brain. He erred at
the last instant—almost annihilating us all. Althol had been
formulating the evocation since he fled the advance of iron
four millennia past.
‘‘Then you reappeared, Colin Leverett—you with your ar
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tist’s knowledge and diagrams of Althol’s symbols. And now
a thousand new minds will read the evocation you have returned to us, unite with our minds as we stand in the Hidden Places. And the Great Old Ones will come forth from the
earth, and we, the dead who have steadfastly served them,
shall be masters of the living.”
Leverett turned to run, but now they were creeping forth
from the shadows of the cellar, as massive flagstones slid
back to reveal the tunnels beyond. He began to scream as
Althol came to lead him away, but he could not awaken,
could only follow.
Robert Aickman
Larger Than Oneself
Robert Aickman was the great English master of the
ghost story of the second half of this
century. Editor,
theoretician and writer, he never attained the recognition
or popularity his immense contributions deserved, although he did win a World Fantasy Award in the decade before his death. A significant portion of his fiction remained unpublished in the U.S. at the time of his death.
“ Larger Than Oneself” is an ironic reinterpretation of
the moral tale for our era. Mrs. Iblis spends the weekend
at a convention of people interested in the supernatural,
the metaphysical and the occult, and finds it uniquely
disturbing. One might compare the story of Joyce Carol
O ates’ treatment of similar matter in “ Nightside.”
“ Larger Than Oneself" is an interesting example of the
blend of all three major streams of horror fiction.
Upon the death of his father, Vincent Coner got out of
mine owning, which had always been the family business, and invested heavily in popular journalism with himself as editor in chief. It is hard to believe that in any other place
or time, past or future, his publications would have found
many readers; but as it was, the thing most needed by his
generation seemed to be the recipe he offered: the sweet
things of life (the more obvious of them) smeared and contaminated with envious guilt.
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Larger than Oneself
343
A typical man of his time, Coner throve exceedingly. While
at Cambridge, he edited a symposium of modem philosophy,
which attracted considerable attention; and he soon became
known for his advocacy of a synthesis between the best of
this world and the best of the next. Already he was giving
parties: his thin figure, precociously bald, wove in and out
pouring gin while others talked. Occasionally he would bring
the uproar back to the point as he conceived it. He developed
an exceptional eye for the view which would prevail.
With increasing popular success, easily acquired, Coner’s
main business in life became more and more an almost paranoiac pursuit of self-integration. He read Berdyaev, Mari-tain, and C. S. Lewis, and even the first thirty pages of
Ouspensky. Almost he believed what he read. Kierkegaard
and Leopardi, rebound by a refugee craftsman, always attended his bedside (he had married a nightclub singer named Eileen); and Pascal he constantly rediscovered with new understanding, gorging on the insane root as he passed classconscious photographs for the press. At the time Mrs. Iblis entered his life, he was greatly interested in several of the
newer spiritual movements competing to offer a deadbeat
world metaphysical immunization against its own shadow. He
had decided to ask the different leaders to Bunhill for the
weekend in order that they might have the chance to exchange
views on neutral ground. A symposium for Roundabout might
emerge, a real chance to give a lead.
Mrs. Iblis entered Coner’s life in the usual way through
the front door. While waiting for the bell to be answered,
she was joined on the large white step by two other visitors,
who introduced themselves as David Stillman and Ruth. Ruth
was not Mr. Stillman’s daughter, but Mrs. Iblis was unable
to catch her other name, nor did she ever learn it. Mr. Stillman appeared to be a prosperous businessman. He arrived in a large car, which, when he had alighted, immediately drove
away. He was well preserved and had excellent manners, but
Mrs. Iblis had had little contact with Jews. Ruth was a highly
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Robert Aickman
strung voluble creature, little more than a girl in appearance,
small and thin, with tousled hair, a round face, and restless
hands. She wore red corduroy trousers, a shapeless jumper,
and sandals. Mrs. Iblis had been speaking to Mr. Stillman
when she appeared, presumably from the dense bushes which
closely lined the drive, but carrying a bulging reticule with
two handles. Mrs. Iblis had a suitcase; Mr. Stillman a dressing case of a type which Mrs. Iblis had thought obsolete.
Presumably the din inside the house made it difficult for
the servant to hear the bell, so, at Mr. Stillman’s suggestion,
Mrs. Iblis rang again. Ruth maintained an intermittent flow
of observations about the difficulty of reaching Bunhill (or
indeed anywhere) by train and her own trials with the timetable.
“ I do hope you’ve not been kept waiting.” The door had
been opened by Mrs. Coner, wearing a long tight dress of
blue-bottle green and smoking a cigarette from which the ash
needed removing. ‘‘My husband’s sent all the servants to a
Domestic Science Congress at Littlehampton, and we’re entirely in the hands of the caterers this weekend. Do come in .”
Immediately inside stood a large figure in evening dress,
with drink written all over him.
‘‘Your names, please.” He prepared to tick them off on a
list with an indelible pencil.
‘‘Mrs. Iblis.”
He crawled slowly through the list, stopping at each name
with the pencil. Three raw youths in dinner jackets had seized
the visitors’ luggage and were standing at the ready.
“ Could you spell it?”
“ i - B - L - I - S . ”
He repeated the search, then turned with irritation to Mrs.
Coner.
In the meantime, the masterful figure of Coner had appeared from the crowd within. “ Ruth, my darling. How lovely to see you.” He kissed her mouth violently but dis
Larger than Oneself
345
passionately. “ Did we ask you this weekend, or have you
just dropped from heaven?”
“ Surely you asked me, Vincent.”
‘ ‘It’s wonderful to see you anyhow. Do come and join in
right away. It will be really valuable to have the orthodox
point of view. ’ ’
“ Could I have a sandwich first?”
“ Have everything there is. Haven’t you lunched?”
“ I left London at half past ten.”
“ If we’d known, we’d have sent a car. It only takes half
an hour by road. But come on and eat.” Gripping her round
the waist, he dragged her towards the hubbub.
“ Vincent.” His wife had clutched him by the other sleeve
of his beautifully made gray suit. He stopped.
“ What is it, Eileen?”
“ Why do we have to have that damned list?”
“ I ’ve told you more than once. The people we’ve asked
this weekend have all been carefully picked by me for the
contribution they can make. As I ’ve hardly met any of them
before, we must have a list and keep to it. What’s gone
wrong?”
“ Two people have arrived. They are not on the list. They
both say they were told to arrive at three. I can hardly send
them away.”
“ All the people this weekend were told to arrive for breakfast if they could. Who are they?”
“ Mrs. Iblis and Mr. Stillman. They don’t seem like the
others.” The suspect guests could be seen in the still open
door miserably awaiting their fate.
“ Mavis!” Coner bawled at the top of his voice. “ Forgive
me a moment, Ruth.” With a violent squeeze, he released
her.
A tall, bony, off-blonde, ageless woman strode forward.
Coner succin
ctly outlined the crisis.
“ I ’ll have a look in the invitations book, Mr. Coner. ” She
departed.
Coner addressed his wife. “ I leave it to you, my dear. But
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Robert Aickman
whoever they are, we don’t want them unless they harmonize.
Come on, Ruth.” Resuming his python hold round Ruth’s
narrow waist, he propelled her forward.
Mavis returned with a huge folio volume of the minute
book type. It must have contained five hundred pages. It was
ruled into dates and packed with thousands of names in Mavis’s small clear writing.
Almost at once Mavis had the answer. ‘‘They’re left over
from the lot we asked before Mr. Coner decided on the Forum. Haven’t they had their postponement letters? ’ ’
“ I ’d better let them in. They’ll have to share rooms with
someone. ’ ’
“ Everyone’s doing that this weekend, Mrs. Coner.”
“ Can you take over, Mavis?”
Explaining the situation about the rooms in a few courteous but emotionless words, Mavis was simultaneously scanning the hired butler’s list of guests and their accommodation.
“ So I do hope you don’t mind sharing,” she concluded.
“ This weekend is rather a special occasion.”
Mr. Stillman smiled acquiescence, though he did not look
too happy. Mrs. Iblis said: “ Please do not go to any trouble
about me. ’ ’
“ No trouble at all.” Then Mavis decided. “ Mr. Stillman
can have the Louise Room. I doubt Rabbi Morocco will come
at all now. And perhaps Mrs. Iblis won’t mind sleeping with
Sister Nuper? Our House Sister, you know.”
“ Is part of the house used as a hospital?”
“ Oh no. It’s just in case of sudden or serious illness. And
Sister Nuper advises us on our diet and on questions of personal hygiene as well. You’ll find her a delightful person.
Really, you couldn’t find anyone better to room with.”
The youth who had seized Ruth’s piece of luggage had long
ago departed with it, presumably to her room. Now the other
two youths constituted themselves escorts to Mr. Stillman
and Mrs. Iblis.
“ The lift’s through ’ere.” They held back heavy, dark
brown velvet curtains.
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The Color of Evil - The Dark Descent V1 (1991) Page 42