New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (21 page)

He moved cautiously, deliberately blocking out the heavy miasma as he splashed the last yard to the shaft. It was enormous; he couldn't quite remember its original purpose though it was primarily to do with inspection. Wainewright had been correct about one thing. There was rust on the casing and the bolts. He touched the cold metal with a tentative forefinger, saw it come away red in the light of the torch.

The inspection-chamber hatch was ajar. Driscoll soon saw why. There was something protruding from it. Something grey and rubbery from which the stench emanated. Driscoll did not like to touch it. Instead, he worked the hatch pivot with his torch. The thing that was jammed in the gap moved as the aperture grew. It looked like an embryonic hand with tiny fingers. Driscoll was startled; his hand slipped on the torch, the metal slid back with a harsh rumble, disturbing in the gloom of the tunnel, and the mass fell with a slopping splash into the water, where it was presumably carried away. Driscoll felt relieved.

The inspection chamber was empty as he had hoped. The door that connected with the Outside was firmly closed and latched. Driscoll bent his head and listened intently. He could hear nothing but the sound of running water. It was absurd really. He did not know what he expected to hear.

But there was another odour; something like a musky perfume that made his head swim. Driscoll knew what had fascinated Wainewright and his friend Deems before him. The heady odour had something in it that reached back deep into his roots. He saw green fields; a blue sky; corn waving in the breeze. This was not something on the vision tube, but an atavistic memory of reality.

Driscoll staggered and reached out a hand to save himself; he saw the message pad then, lying in the bottom of the chamber. He knew before he picked it up that it was Wainewright's. It bore his own name he saw without surprise. It merely repeated in block capitals: FREEDOM! And underneath, in smaller letters: UNTIL WE MEET OUTSIDE. A scribbled W ended the message.

Driscoll stood and an overwhelming sadness enveloped him; a sadness that was dispelled only by the faint wail of the emergency-squad siren. He took the message pad with him as he went splashing back up the tunnel.

Driscoll was suspended, of course. Someone must have seen him before he regained his quarters, or perhaps the cameras had been working before the lights came on. Hort did not ask to see him; there was merely the dreaded green chit with the official stamp slipped beneath his door as he slept.

There would be an official hearing in a week's time.

Driscoll did not wait for the hearing. Something had happened to him. He was hardly conscious of it himself. Nothing seemed to have changed, yet everything had subtly altered. There were no more chess games with Karlson. Nothing was said, but Karlson was never in evidence when Driscoll took his meals. Strangely enough, Krampf, the only person in Central Control who secretly irritated Driscoll, seemed sympathetic at this time of crisis.

Twice Driscoll had met him in the corridors, and it seemed to him that there was a strange secret compassion in his eyes. But he dare not speak to Driscoll; no one dare while he was awaiting the hearing. Similarly, he was no longer welcome in Records, and Driscoll felt he would be under surveillance if he went out. He was no longer trusted; that was the brutal truth. And a person who was no longer trusted here was a nonperson.

He kept his cabin; he could use the restaurant facilities and watch the vision tube. In effect he was limited to eating, sleeping, and passing his time as best he might. No messages came for him; there was no communication from above apart from the green chit; and Hort certainly had no wish to see him. That might prejudice the proceedings.

Driscoll thought about it for three days and three nights; then he made up his mind. It was night as time was measured here, and there would be few people on duty. Driscoll packed a few things; he carried with him a hammer, a wrench, and heavy-duty wire cutters with insulated handles, together with a food supply for three weeks. At the intersection of the first corridor he smashed the camera lens there. He went purposefully down the passages, smashing every installation he could find.

Within a minute the alarm was reverberating along the corridors. Driscoll did not care. He was running strongly now, every sense alert.

He was smashing light fixtures too; he was surprised how easily they broke. No one had ever done this before. It was absurdly easy. At the time he hoped that the tunnel section was not guarded; there could be no turning back now. He found his way with difficulty. He must have fused something at the last light installation he smashed, for all these corridors were plunged into darkness.

The small cone of his torch wavered ahead, steadying on the smooth metal surface of the tunnel walls, the heavy bolts and rivets overhead. Here was the place; there was no one about. Water dripped somewhere' up ahead as Driscoll splashed unhesitatingly through the puddles. The strange nostalgic stench was in his nostrils. He adjusted the pack on his back and set off at a staggering run over the last quarter of a mile. His heart was beating a little more unsteadily than he would have liked. Still there was no siren of the emergency squad.

The shafting was in front of him. Driscoll could almost taste the stench in his nostrils. It was not oppressive. On the contrary. He breathed deeply. It brought back things he had forgotten ever existed. Sunlight; wavering corn; clouds moving across a blue sky;~a woman's smile; a child tottering towards an old woman in a white dress.

He stood before Shaft Number 247, noting its massive strength and immense size. Quite without surprise he saw that the hatch of the inspection chamber was half-open. It slid easily beneath his touch. Dance music was reverberating from somewhere; a girl in a bathing suit plunged into blue water, droplets of spray raining downward; there were flowers and with them the fragrant perfume that had been lost for so many decades.

The girl was smiling again. A grave grey-eyed girl, with tawny-gold hair. Driscoll stepped into the inspection chamber. It was cold and he instinctively shrank at the dampness which settled on his face and clothing. A hurdy-gurdy was playing, and he could smell roast chestnuts. A child bounded past on a scooter, his feet making a click-clacking noise on the setts of the paving. There was the distinctive impact of a cricket ball connecting with a ball on a summer afternoon. Driscoll nodded at the ripple of applause.

He could see the point now. Everything down here was negative. He had to know. He thought of Krampf, Deems, and Wainewright; of Hort and Karlson. He had no real friends; hitherto, the only reality was the tunnels burrowing beneath the earth and the remorselessly efficient humming of the machinery.

It did not seem to be enough. Driscoll set his teeth. Perspiration was streaming down his face as he reached out to the interior hatch of the inspection chamber of Shaft Number 247. A child lifted her head and put her arms round Driscoll's neck. He was smiling as he began to turn the bolts.

Black Man With a Horn by T. E. D. KLEIN

The Black [words obscured by postmark] was fascinating - I must get a snap shot of him.

H. P. LOVECRAFT, rOSTC~,RO TO r. HOFFMANN PRICE, 7/23/1934

There is something inherently comforting about the first-person past tense. It conjures up visions of some deskbound narrator puffing contemplatively upon a pipe amid the safety of his study, lost in tranquil recollection, seasoned but essentially unscathed by whatever experience he's about to relate.

It's a tense that says, 'I am here to tell the tale. I lived through it.'

The description, in my own case, is perfectly accurate - as far as it goes. I am indeed seated in a kind of study: a small den, actually, but lined with bookshelves on one side, below a view of Manhattan painted many years ago, from memory, by my sister. My desk is a folding bridge table that once belonged to her. Before me the electric typewriter, though somewhat precariously supperted, hums soothingly, and from the window behind me comes the familiar drone of the old air conditioner, waging its lonely battle against the tropic night. Beyond it, in the darkness outside, the small night-noises are doubtless just as reassuring; wind in the palm trees, the mindless chant of crickets, the muffled chatter of a neighbour's TV, an occasional car bound for the highway, shifting gears as it speeds past the house...

House, in truth, may be too grand a word; the place is a green stucco bungalow just a single story tall, third in a row of nine set several hundred yards from the highway. Its only distinguishing features are the sundial in the front yard, brought here from my sister's former home, and the jagged little picket fence, now rather overgrown with weeds, which she had erected despite the protests of neighbours.

It's hardly the most romantic of settings, but under normal circumstances it might make an adequate background for meditations in the past tense. 'I'm still here,' the writer says, adjusting to the tone. (I've even stuck the requisite pipe in mouth, stuffed with a plug of latakia.) 'It's over now,'

he says. 'I lived through it.'

A comforting premise, perhapsú Only, in this case, it doesn't happen to be true. Whether the experience is really 'over now' no one can say; and if, as I suspect, the final chapter has yet to be enacted, then the notion of my 'living through it' will seem a pathetic conceit.

Yet ! can't say I find the thought of my own death particularly disturbing. I get so tired, sometimes, of this little room, with its cheap wicker furniture, the dull outdated books, the night pressing in from outside ú.. And of that sundial out there in the yard, with its idiotic message. 'Grow old along with me...'

I have done so, and my life seems hardly to have mattered in the scheme of things. Surely its end cannot matter much either.

Ah, Howard, you would have understood.

That, boy, was what I call a travel-experience! – H.P LOVECRAFT, 3/12/1930

If, while I set it down, this tale acquires an ending, it promises to be an unhappy one. But the beginning is nothing of the kind; you may find it rather humorous, in fact - full of comic pratfalls, wet trouser cuffs, and a dropped vomit-bag.

'I steeled myself to endure it,' the old lady to my right was saying. 'I don't mind telling you I was exceedingly frightened. I held on to the arms of the seat and just gritted my teeth. And then, you know, right after the captain warned us about that turbulence, when the tail lifted and fell, flip-flop, flip-flop, well -' she flashed her dentures at me and patted my wrist, ' - I don't mind telling you, there was simply nothing for it but to heave.'

Where had the old girl picked up such expressions? And was she trying to pick me up as well?

Her hand clamped wetly round my wrist. 'I do hope you'll let me pay for the dry cleaning.'

'Madam,' I said, 'think nothing of it. The suit was already stained.'

'Such a nice man!' She cocked her head coyly at me, still gripping my wrist. Though their whites had long since turned the colour of old piano keys, her eyes were not unattractive. But her breath repelled me. Slipping my paperback into a pocket, I rang for the stewardess.

The earlier mishap had occurred several hours before. In clambering aboard the plane at Heathrow, surrounded by what appeared to be an aboriginal rugby club (all dressed alike, navy blazers with bone buttons), I'd been shoved from behind and had stumbled against a black cardboard hatbox in which some Chinaman was storing his dinner; it was jutting into the aisle near the first-class seats. Something inside sloshed over my ankles - duck sauce, soup perhaps and left a sticky yellow puddle on the floor. I turned in time to see a tall, beefy Caucasian with an Air Malay bag and a beard so thick and black he looked like some heavy from the silent era. His manner was equally suited to the role, for after shouldering me aside (with shoulders broad as my valises), he pushed his way down the crowded passage, head bobbing near the ceiling like a gas balloon, and suddenly disappeared from sight at the rear of the plane. In his wake I caught the smell of treacle, and was instantly reminded of my childhood: birthday hats, Callard and Bowser gift packs, and after-dinner bellyaches.

'So very sorry.' A bloated little Charlie Chan looked fearfully at this departing apparition, then doubled over to scoop his dinner beneath the seat, fiddling with the ribbon.

'Think nothing of it,' I said.

I was feeling kindly towards everyone that day. Flying was still a novelty. My friend Howard, of course (as I'd reminded audiences earlier in the week), used to say he'd 'hate to see a~roplanes come into common commercial use, since they merely add to the goddam useless speeding up of an already overspeeded life.' He had dismissed them as 'devices for the amusement of a gentleman'-

but then, he'd only been up once, in the twenties, and for only as long as $3.50 would bring. What could he have known of whistling engines, the wicked joys of dining at thirty thousand feet, the chance to look out a window and find that the earth is, after all, quite round? All this he had missed; he was dead and therefore to be pitied.

Yet even in de. ath he had triumphed over me...

It gave me something to think about as the stewardess helped me to my feet, clucking in professional concern at the mess on my lap - though more likely she was thinking of the wiping up that awaited her once I'd vacated the seat. 'Why do they make those bags so slippery?' my elderly neighbour asked plaintively. 'And all over this nice man's suit. You really should do something about it.' The plane dropped and settled; she rolled her yellowing eyes. 'It could happen again.'

The stewardess steered me down the aisle towards a restroom at the middle of the plane. To my left a cadaverous young woman wrinkled her nose and smiled at the man next to her. I attempted to disguise my defeat by looking bitter - 'Someone else has done this deed!' - but doubt I succeeded.

The stewardess's arm supporting mine was superfluous but comfortable; I leaned on her more heavily with each step. There are, as I'd long suspected, precious few advantages in being seventy-six and looking it - yet among them is this: though one is excused from the frustration of flirting with a stewardess, one gets to lean on her arm. I turned toward her to say something funny, but paused; her face was blank as a clock's.