New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (15 page)

This is no good, he told himself: I'll be of no damn use to her unless I can control myself! To her he said, 'Potent stuff, your local wine.'

'Only a few more steps,' she whispered.

She moved closer and again there came the sound of sliding silk, of garments falling. He put his arm around her, felt the flesh of her body against the back of his hand. The weight of the bottle slowly pulled down his arm. Smooth firm buttocks - totally unlike Julia's, which sagged a little - did not flinch at the passing of fingers made impotent by the bettie they held.

'God!' he whispered, throat choked with lust. 'I wish I could hold on to you for the rest of my life...'

She laughed, her voice hoarse as his own, and stepped away, pulling him after her. 'But that's your second wish,' she said.

Second wish ... Second wish? He stumbled and almost fell, was caught and held upright, felt fingers busy at his jacket, the buttons of his shirt. Not at all cold, he shivered, and deep inside a tiny voice began to shout at him, growing louder by the moment, shrieking terrifying messages into his inner ear.His second wish!

Naked he stood, suddenly alert, the alcohol turning to water in his system, the unbelievable looming real and immense and immediate as his four sound senses compensated for voluntary blindness.

'There,' she said. 'And now you may remove your blindfold!'

Ah, but her perfume no longer masked the charnel musk beneath; her girl's voice was gone, replaced by the dried-up whisper of centuries-shrivelled lips; the hand he held was -

Harry leapt high and wide, trying to shake off the thing that held his hand in a leathery grip, shrieking his denial in a black vault that echoed his cries like lunatic laughter. He leapt and cavorted, coming into momentary contact with the wall, tracing with his burning, supersensitive flesh the tentacled monstrosity that gloated there in bas-relief, feeling its dread embrace!

And bounding from the wall he tripped and sprawled, clawing at the casket which, in his mind's eye, he saw where he had last seen it at the foot of her couch. Except that now the lid lay open!

Something at once furry and slimy-damp arched against his naked leg - and again he leapt frenziedly in darkness, gibbering now as his mind teetered over vertiginous chasms.

Finally, dislodged by his threshing about, his blindfold - the red mask and black silk handkerchief he no longer dared remove of his own accord - slipped from his face ... And then his strength became as that of ten men, became such that nothing natural or supernatural could ever have held him there in that nighted cave beneath black ruins.

Herr Ludovic Debrec heard the roaring of the car's engine long before the beam of its headlights swept down the black deserted road outside the inn. The vehicle rocked wildly and its tyres howled as it turned an impossibly tight corner to slam to a halt in the inn's tiny courtyard.

Debrec was tired, cleaning up after the day's work, preparing for the morning ahead. His handful of guests were all abed, all except the English Herr. This must be him now, but why the tearing rush?

Peering through his kitchen window, Debrec recognized the car - then his weary eyes widened and he gasped out loud. But what in the name of all that... ? The Herr was naked!

The Hungarian landlord had the door open wide for Harry almost before he could begin hammering upon it - was bowled to one side as the frantic, gasping, bulge-eyed figure rushed in and up the stairs - but he had seen enough, and he crossed himself as Harry disappeared into the inn's upper darkness.

'Mein Gott!' he croaked, crossing himself again, and yet again. 'The Herr has been in that place!'

Despite her pills, Julia had not slept well. Now, emerging from unremembered, uneasy dreams, temples throbbing in the grip of a terrific headache, she pondered the problem of her awakening. A glance at the luminous dial of her wristwatch told her that the time was ten after two in the morning.

Now what had startled her awake? The slamming of a door somewhere? Someone sobbing?

Someone crying out to her for help? She seemed to remember all of these things.

She patted the bed beside her with a lethargic gesture. Harry was not there. She briefly considered this, also the fact that his side of the bed seemed undisturbed. Then something moved palely in the darkness at the foot of the bed.

Julia sucked in air, reached out and quickly snapped on the bedside lamp. Harry lay naked, silently writhing on the floor, face down, his hands beneath him.

'Harry!' she cried, getting out of bed and going to him. With a bit of a struggle she turned him on to his side, and he immediately rolled over on his back.

She gave a little shriek and jerked instinctively away from him, revulsion twisting her features. His eyes were screwed shut now, lips straining back from teeth in unendurable agony. His hands held something to his straining chest, something black and crumbly.

Even as Julia watched, horrified, his eyes wrenched open, his face went slack, he stopped breathing.

Then his hands fell away from his chest. In one of them the disintegrating black thing seemed burned into the flesh of his palm and fingers. It was unmistakably a small mummified hand!

She began to back away from him across the floor, and as she did so something came from behind, moving sinuously as it brushed against her. She saw it and scuttled even faster, her mouth working silently as she came up against the wall of the room.

The - creature - went to Harry, took the shrivelled hand from him, turned away, and then, as if on an afterthought, turned back. It arched against him for a moment, then quickly sank sharp teeth into the flesh of his leg, the short feelers about its mouth writhing greedily as it did so. In the next instant the thing was gone, but Julia did not see where it went.

Unable to tear her eyes away she saw Harry's leg where he had been bitten turn black, withering visibly. She saw the blackness spreading like a devouring fire over his whole body, melting it into dully glittering lumps.

Then, ignoring the insistent knocking now sounding at the door, she drew breath into starved lungs, drew breath until she thought she must surely burst - and finally expelled it all in one vast eternal scream...

Dark Awakening by FRANK BELKNAP LONG

It was just the right place for an encounter with an enchantress. There was a long stretch of shining beach, with a sand dune towering up behind it, and in the near distance a high white steeple and the sun-gilded roofs of a small New England village from which I had just departed for a dip in the sea.

It was vacation time, always a good time to be a guest at an inn that you like straight off, if only because not a single jarring note accompanies your arrival with a worn and battered suitcase and an eye for oak panelling that dates back a century or more.

The village seemed sleepy and unchanged, always a splendid thing in midsummer when you've had your fill of city noises and smoke and bustle and the intolerable encroachments of the 'do this' and

'do that' brigade.

I'd seen her at breakfast time, with her two small children, a boy and a girl, taking up all of her attention until I sat down at a table a short distance away and stared steadily at her for a moment. I couldn't help it. She would have drawn all eyes in a parade of glamorous models. A widow. I wondered.

A divorcee? Or banish the thought - a happily married woman whose thoughts never strayed?

It was impossible to know, of course. But when she looked up and saw me she nodded slightly and smiled, and for a moment nothing seemed to matter but the fear that she was so very beautiful my stare would reveal my inmost thoughts.

New arrivals at small village inns are often greeted with a smile and a nod by the kindly disposed, solely to put them at their ease and make them feel that they are the opposite of outsiders. I wasn't deceived on that score. But still -

Meeting her now, between the dune and the sea, with her children still on opposite sides of her, I was unprepared for more than another smile and nod. I had emerged from around the dune, coming into view so abruptly that she might well have looked merely startled, and it made the explicit nature of her greeting seem astonishing indeed.

She raised her arm and waved to me, and called out: 'Oh, hello! I didn't expect to see anyone from the inn here so early. You can be of great help to me.'

'In what way?' I asked, trying to keep from looking as flustered as I felt and crossing to her side in several not-too-hurried strides.

'I cut my hand rather badly just now on a razorsharp shell,' she said. 'But I'm not in the least worried.

It's just that - it was terribly stupid of me, and I haven't a handkerchief. If you have one -'

'Of course,' I said. 'We'll get it bound up in short order. But you'd better let me look at it first.'

Her hand was velvety soft in my clasp, and so beautifu. 1 that for a moment I hardly noticed the cut on her palm. It was bleeding a little but not profusely, even though it wasn't exactly a scratch. It took me only a moment to wrap a handkerchief twice around the middle of her hand and knot it securely just below her wrist.

That should take care of it,' I said. 'For now. If you're not returning to the inn soon you can take the bandage off when the bleeding stops and douse it in seawater. There's no better antiseptic. A rusty nail and a seashell are worlds apart, antiseptically speaking.'

'You've been most helpful,' she said, seeming not to care that I was taking my time in releasing her hand. 'I'm more grateful than I can say.'

The children were fidgeting about with their toes turned in, looking reproachfully from their mother to me and back again. There is nothing children resent more than to be totally ignored when an introduction can be achieved in a matter of seconds. The gulf that yawns between a child and an adult can be spanned to an incredible extent at times with no more than a gesture, and most children are wise enough to know when they are being cheated of an enriching experience for no reason at all.

It seemed suddenly to occur to her that she had failed even to introduce herself, and she made amends quickly in a threefold way. 'I'm Helen Rathbourne,' she said. 'When my husband died I didn't think I'd ever find myself at the inn again. I felt that coming here would bring back - well, too many things. But I do love this place. Everything about it is irresistibly enchanting. The children adore it too.'

She patted her son on the shoulder and took a strand of her daughter's windblown hair and twined it about her finger. 'John is eight and Susan is six,' she said. 'John is a young explorer. When he goes adventuring every land is a far land, no matter how near it may be geographically.'

She smiled. 'He prefers simple weapons. A bow and a sheaf of arrows suit him quite well. He has slain some incredible beasts just through the accuracy of his aim.'

'I don't doubt that for a moment,' I said. 'Hello, John.'

He had seemed a little on the shy side, but there was no trace of shyness in the prideful way he held himself when we shook hands. It was as if, in some hidden recess of his mind, he believed every word his mother had just said about him.

'Susan's quite different,' she went on, her eyes crinkling in a wholly enchanting way. 'Most of her adventuring is done on "wings of bright imagining,~ as some poet must have phrased it sometime in the past, perhaps far back in the Victorian age. I'm not good at making such lines up.'

'I'm sure you're mistaken,' I told her. 'I read a great deal of poetry, both traditional and avant-garde, and I can't recall ever having encountered that particular line .'

'"Stumbled over would be better,' she said.

'It's a little grandiose,' I conceded. 'But when you say it, it doesn't sound that way at all. I know exactly what you have in mind. Susan likes to dream away the hours sitting by a window ledge, with potted geraniums obscuring just a little of the view - a seascape or rolling hills with a snow-capped mountain looming in the distance.'

Thank you,' she said. 'I can shoot down a compliment like that faster than you might suspect, as a rule, armed with just one of John's arrows. But when you say it-'

We both laughed.

'Susan's not a tomboy,' she added thoughtfully. 'But she won't take any guff from John or any of his friends. You should have seen how fast she was running along the beach just now, outdistancing him in a few seconds. They are both children to be proud of, don't you think?'

'Indeed I do,' I assured her. 'I sensed that straight off. It doesn't really need to be pointed up in any way.'

Thank you again,' she said. 'I must confess that, on rare occasions, I have a few doubts. But it's amazing how quickly children can make an adult change his mind about them when forgiveness becomes of paramount importance -'

I should have known that if what she had said about her son's exploring urge was true - and I had no reason to doubt it - it would have been impossible to keep him still for more than a moment or two.

But I was not prepared for the harm he did to our conversation just as it was reaching a most rewarding stage by turning about and dashing off so abruptly that concern for his safety drove every other thought from her mind.

'John, come back here!' she called. 'Right this minute!'

She had followed him out across the beach, almost running, before I saw what had alarmed her. He had not merely bypassed the surf line and headed for a section of the beach strewn with the wreckage of a recent storm. He had climbed up on rotting boards of a washed-ashore, storm-shattered breakwater and was staring down at a side channel of swirling dark water which almost bisected the beach at precisely that point. Just below where he stood on one of the boards, precariously perched, the water had widened out into a pool that was unrippled by the wind and had a deep, black, extremely ominous look. It had been made more hazardous by the way the wreckage extended out over it here and there, with edges so jagged a pitchfork would have seemed far less menacing.

I caught up with her before she could quite accomplish what her son had achieved with close to miraculous speed. There is no accounting for the swift way a small boy can travel from place to place when some wildly impulsive notion takes firm root in his mind.