Dreamlands (11 page)

It was a harrowing journey back to the
Y, but though some of the denizens of that
unspeakable Other Place
could see through the veil, they were as yet harmless to me.  By the time I
made it to my room, the horrors had receded to a place just out of sight, but
the exact location of the border between delusion and reality eluded me.  I
considered that rather than rocking manically on the edge of a cot, I might be
lying in a coma at St. Mary’s, my broken mind convulsing as it caved in on
itself.  Apprehending that the hoarse droning I heard was my own voice,
speaking these thoughts aloud, I shut my mouth with a click.

Despite
Longbottom’s admonitions, I had opened the parcel from Marsh Street.  The tome
inside appeared neither old nor valuable.  Between two untitled boards, a rent
binding held what I estimated to be half the original contents.  The book had at
one point been submerged in water, and the handwritten scrawl within was
illegible.  Yet it must be the book I had been instructed to find, else it
would not have been hidden, so carefully guarded, and sought out by the unseen
entity with which I had parleyed.

One
last piece of misfortune:  outside the YMCA I had chanced upon the pharmacologist
I had befriended when last in Arkham.

With
anything but tranquility, I held the little brown bottle up to the light.  This
enemy, at any rate, was undeniably real.  I resisted opening the bottle, but did
not release it.  I paced, trying to breathe the ember of resistance to life, and
mumbled again the defiance I had spoken to the black entity.  I must discover
the purpose of the book, must return to my home, else all was madness.  Gripping
the warped wooden frame of the window, I looked out on the street.  By forcing
myself to be motionless, I compelled the room to do the same.

In
the windowpane’s reflection the door to the hall was open.  A man stood there, long,
lean and stubbled, Jacob Roth's unforgettable sneer chiseled into his features. 
I spun about, flinging the medicine bottle across the room.  It smashed on the
closed door, and I rocked as if I myself had been struck.  But I had been alone
the entire time.

That
night I spent fleeing a parade of terrors across a cheap mattress, these ones spawned,
mercifully, from my own imagination.  I rose at the start of business hours and
crossed town to the Hyde Street strip of specialty book sellers.

The
shopkeeper at the first place, accustomed as he was to dealing with eccentrics,
made no comment on my haggard appearance, and after examining the book had
little to say about it either.  It was hand-inked with no listed author or date
of publication, though these might have been lost among its missing pages, and composed
in multiple languages, none of them English.  The only fact to which he would
definitely attest was that it was a journal, or book of stories.

At
the next bookstore the owner, a Mr. Cadogan, was apparently in the middle of a
run of bad luck.  He thought upon receiving the paper shambles I was making sport
of his trade, and came close to striking me.

The
morning wore on like an iron file on a blade as I moved from one shop to the
next, all tiny, ill-lit premises housing scrawny, ill-tempered men.  The final
closet-sized storefront was, fittingly, at the dead end of a lane.  The business
consisted of a single shelf, displaying a dozen weighty, leather bound works, all
beyond the customer’s reach.  The female proprietor, the first woman I had met
in the trade, was a frail and grandmotherly personage.  She was patiently propped
on one elbow, as if very used to waiting.

“Welcome,”
she called, her face wrinkling into a well-worn smile.  “Come in, please.”

I placed
my forlorn bundle on the counter, swallowing dryly.  “I came across this book in
an abandoned property here in town.  I’ve been to several places, but no one
can tell me a thing about it.”

She
spent several minutes studying the ruined heap.

“Precisely
what it is, I cannot say.”  With a jeweler’s loupe, she more closely examined
one of the mostly intact pages.  “Parts have been written in Latin, parts in
Greek– some I cannot identify.”  She retired her magnifying glass and with an
effort straightened herself.  “You think it may be of value?”

“Well,
you see,” I coughed, “I was directed to pick up a book at an apartment on Marsh
Street, but now that I've done so I don't know what to make of it.”

“Marsh
Street?” she said.  “Not a neighbourhood known for its love of literature.”

I
attempted a laugh and, suddenly dizzy, leaned against the counter. 

“Do
you have some reason to believe it is valuable?” she asked.

I
could not forget Longbottom’s warning, nor its awful confirmation, that my
enemies had agents in Arkham, but I must trust someone or give up entirely.

“Yes,
I believed it would be of value to me personally.  I was told–”  How ludicrous
it sounded!  “I was told it would help me return to the Dreamlands.”

Her
eyes widened slightly at this bizarre assertion.  “And this person who advised you
to pick up a book on Marsh Street, you have no way of getting in touch with
him?”

I
shook my head morosely.  There was an uncomfortable silence until she said,
with finality, “Lowry.”

“Beg
your pardon?”

“Marcus
Lowry should want to see this.  He’s a collector of occult works, and the
foremost authority in these parts.  He doesn’t have a storefront however, so
you wouldn’t come across him wandering the streets” –she glanced down at my woebegone
shoes– “which I presume has been your approach so far.” 

“Will
this Lowry take an appointment with me?”

“Not
a chance.  He’s notoriously unsociable.  But he can be found almost any time at
the Sparrow Club on College Street.”

“But
Sparrow’s is an exclusive club,” I said.  “I can’t just walk in uninvited.”

“Can't
you?”  She gaped at me in mock surprise.  “Forgive me, but I thought this was a
matter of importance.”

* * *

I
entered the Sparrow Club by way of the kitchen where, as I expected, my
appearance provoked no interest whatsoever, and found my way to the members'
lounge.  Sparrow's was an oasis of English gentility in the provincial
backwater of Arkham, a place of hardwood paneling, teak furniture, and polished
brass fixtures untroubled by the fingerprints and smudges of the working
class.  The air itself, a tang of tobacco smoke and aged scotch, bespoke luxury.
 I would have looked a beggar there on my best day. 

In
fact the steward, spying a common vagrant in the middle of his establishment, was
already gesturing at me from the labyrinth of scroll-edged tables and
slumberous leather chairs.  He tried to intercept me, but could move no more
quickly than the stiff-legged jog of the professional servant would allow.

Marcus
Lowry stood out from his fellows like a rotten tooth.  A week unshaven, collar
loose and jacket unbuttoned, he sat in a dour reverie, like a man brooding on
mortality.  A column of smoke, straight as a ruler and almost as solid, rose
from a foul Turkish cigarette smouldering unnoticed in a dish at his
fingertips.  I sat at his table, pulling my chair directly into his line of
view.  Lowry did not choose to shift his gaze elsewhere.  At this tacit
recognition of my presence, the steward cautiously withdrew.

“Mr.
Lowry,” I said, “my name is Sloan.”   Safe in the special sanctuary of wealth,
I allowed myself to exhale.

After
staring for a beat longer, he said, “You’re no Sparrow’s man, obviously.”

“No,
sir.”

“Good. 
I hate this bloody place,” he pronounced, loudly.  “Look at them:  back in
England, they would be riding to hounds or bawling out the butler, while here
in
New
England, so-called, they pass their days scrutinizing ledgers and
complaining about the Income Tax.”

I
assumed we would be shushed by the club’s vigilant chief servant, but other
than the occasional rustle of a turned page or cleared throat, there was not a
sound.  Smoke rose unabated from the neglected cigarette.

“Well?”
he said. 

“Mr.
Lowry, I was told you’re an authority on occult works.”  I proffered my wrecked
volume.  “I have taken this to every bookseller in town, but its provenance is
still a mystery.”

I pushed
the book towards him until it bumped his wrist.  When he flipped the cover open
his expression, cultivated to convey an ineffable boredom, briefly flickered. 
Though he wished to hide it, what he had seen shocked him.

“I’m
afraid I cannot pay you–” I began.

“No!”
he said with a wild look, as if the mention of money caused him physical pain. 
Snapping his fingers at the server, he ordered two glasses of ridiculously expensive
port wine.  I sipped mine and felt my belly fill with a friendly warmth, while Lowry
gripped the edge of the table as if to brace himself.

"I
have no love of books, Sloan, yet I have made it my career to collect and study
this particular genre, the occult, as you said."

"All
right," I said, since it seemed he was waiting for a reply.

“How
do you suppose I came to choose this profession?”

I leaned
forward to reply that I had no idea.

In
a voice tired and hoarse, he related the following story.

* * *

I had
been exploring a warren of passages in the Snake Den Caverns.  The formations
near the surface are perfectly natural but, contrarily, the deeper one goes the
more one finds signs of worked stone, masonry.  The hidden chamber I discovered
on the lowest level was the culmination of two years spent chasing rumours,
interrogating criminals and madmen, and in the scrutiny of certain
black-letters which, if a man were not careful, would blast his sanity to
flotsam. 

I
found it alongside a broken alembic and several less recognizable items, tied
in a parcel of half-rotten leather.  Here was a grimoire said to contain
immense and portentous secrets, things Man
was not meant to know
.  A
particular warning had come up repeatedly in my research, never to touch its
surface with one’s bare hands.  Mindful of this, I shifted its wrapping enough
to see that, though it shared the general shape and proportions of a book, it looked
like a rudely cut piece of glass.

As
I lifted my treasure from the rubble I felt another's presence in the
low-ceilinged space, and turned to find I was not alone.  He had a foreign
cast, golden skin and the almond shaped eyes of the old Ægyptians.  His
tailored suit spoke of wealth, his features of royalty.  Seeing the reflection
of his pant cuffs in the shine on his shoes, my first thought was,
How could
he have followed me down here, yet look ready to receive his bank manager?
 
His gaze upon me was intent but not hostile, and he addressed me in perfectly
unaccented English.

“You
have proved yourself a true servant of the Black Throne," he said.  "What
boon do you ask?”

What
words could have inflicted worse terror?  My legs went watery with fear, and if
it were not for the wall at my back I should have fallen to my knees.  I tried
to stammer a reply.  Nothing sensible emerged, but what rang out in my mind was
that I wanted no boon of his master.

He
was not angry.  I wonder if an emotion so banal, so human, as anger was even
possible for such as him.  The electric torch, my only light, dangled point
down in my hand, but something else illuminated his eyes.  Those orbs swelled
in my sight until I could see lights there streaming like pinwheels.  Each
coruscating point was a thousand thousand stars, a galaxy.  I looked upon the
unutterable vastness of the cosmos, and more–  I sensed something of that which
watches from the black gulf beyond the stars.

When
he spoke once more, his eyes were merely eyes, and the spell was broken.

“As
you wish,” he said.  “I go now where you cannot follow”.  Instead of turning
away, he stepped backwards where what had been an alcove now opened into a passageway. 
Despite my rattled nerves, I could not mistake something awkward about his
gait, as if his form was a puppet manipulated by invisible strings.  When the darkness
swallowed him, I did follow, a decision I would come to dearly regret.

After
thirty or forty paces, the passage opened onto the side of a perfect
cylindrical shaft.  A glaucous ambient light revealed just enough that I wished
for no light at all.

The
man was floating in space, ten paces away and a short distance below, facing
the precipitous ledge where I stood.  The colours of his finery were still
there, but the clothes themselves were merging together, melting into his
skin.  He looked up at me from a head that was being swiftly absorbed into the
shoulders.  Then his body pivoted and I saw that he –it– depended like a growth
from the end of an enormous grey tentacle rising from somewhere below.

* * *

Lowry
downed his five dollar glass of port in one gulp.  His throat continued to convulse
for several seconds afterwards.

“But
that can’t be the end of the story," I said.  "What happened to the
book?”

“The
book,” he said dully, as if struggling to recall the subject at hand.  “Several
days were lost to me, blacked out, but when I came to on a hillside near town, almost
dead from exposure, the artefact was gone.  I was a tool, you see, for that horrific
entity.  By moving the book from its resting place I had reintroduced it to the
world, something they needed a human agent to do.  Shortly thereafter I decided
I would do anything to keep it from my new enemies.

“That
was nine years ago this past November, and ever since they and I have been
engaged in an infernal chess game.  Until today the absence of the key piece,
the book in the apartment on Marsh Street, represented a stalemate.”

He
looked significantly at the heap of torn parchment on the table between us, which
could hardly appear less like a dangerous otherworldly artefact.

"Since
we were at an impasse,” he continued, “they let me be, waiting for me to make a
mistake which they could use to their advantage."

“But
who do you mean by
they
?” I asked, exasperated.  “What is the Black Throne?”

He
replied, simply,
“Azathoth.”

The
air itself seemed to gulp down the three syllables as they were spoken.  For an
instant the fathomless black cowls of my dream loomed on all sides, for Lowry
had spoken the unrememberable word which concluded my recurring nightmare.  I took
a quick drink of port while the ceiling and floor returned to their proper
orientation, then glanced about to see if anyone around us had sensed the peculiar
effect of that name, but no one had stirred.  I suspected they could not hear
it.  The object on the table was now a block of polished glass with beveled
edges, about the size of a large bible.  Lowry swathed it in its wrapping.

"It's
your treasure now," he said, "may it bring you luck.  Kindly remove
it from my sight."

“What
of you?” I asked.

“I
shall go where
He
cannot follow.”  Marcus Lowry's expression was so full
of his fate when he said this, I could hear the rope creak with his weight.  Remembering
the port glass clenched in one hand, he fumbled it back to the table where it
tipped over, rolled off the edge, and shattered.