Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (79 page)

Her portrait, by the by, hangs in the upstairs gallery. Marcella Boone was a sadly pretty thing, if the artist got her right, and I do know she never married. At times I think that Mrs. Cloris was right, that it
is
a bad house. It has certainly held nothing but gloom for its past inhabitants.

But I have more to say of the redoubtable Mrs. Cloris, for I have had this day a second interview with her. As the most level-headed person from the Corners that I have met thus far, I sought her out this afternoon, after an unpleasant interview which I will relate.

The wood was to have been delivered this morning, and when noon came and passed and no wood with it, I decided to take my daily walk into the town itself. My object was to visit Thompson, the man with whom Cal did business.

It has been a lovely day, full of the crisp snap of bright autumn, and by the time I reached the Thompsons’ homestead [Cal, who remained home to poke further through Uncle Stephen’s library, gave me adequate directions] I felt in the best mood that these last few days have seen, and quite prepared to forgive Thompson’s tardiness with the wood.

The place was a massive tangle of weeds and fallen-down buildings in need of paint; to the left of the barn a huge sow, ready for November butchering, grunted and wallowed in a muddy sty, and in the littered yard between the house and out-buildings a woman in a tattered gingham dress was feeding chickens from her apron. When I hailed her, she turned a pale and vapid face toward me.

The sudden change in expression from utter, doltish emptiness to one of frenzied terror was quite wonderful to behold. I can only think she took me for Stephen himself, for she raised her hand in the prong-fingered sign of the evil eye and screamed. The chickenfeed scattered on the ground and the fowls fluttered away, squawking.

Before I could utter a sound, a huge, hulking figure of a man clad only in long-handled underwear lumbered out of the house with a squirrel-rifle in one hand and a jug in the other. From the red light in his eye and unsteady manner of walking, I judged that this was Thompson the Woodcutter himself.

“A Boone!” he roared. “G— d—n your eyes!” He dropped the jug a-rolling and also made the Sign.

“I’ve come,” I said with as much equanimity as I could muster under the circumstances, “because the wood has not. According to the agreement you struck with my man—”

“G— d—n your man too, say I!” And for the first time I noticed that beneath his bluff and bluster he was deadly afraid. I began seriously to wonder if he mightn’t actually use his rifle against me in his excitement.

I began carefully: “As a gesture of courtesy, you might—”

“G— d—n your courtesy!”

“Very well, then,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I bid you good day until you are more in control of yourself.” And with this I turned away and began down the road to the village.

“Don’tchee come back!” he screamed after me. “Stick wi’ your evil up there! Cursed! Cursed! Cursed!” He pelted a stone at me, which struck my shoulder. I would not give him the satisfaction of dodging.

So I sought out Mrs. Cloris, determined to solve the mystery of Thompson’s enmity, at least. She is a widow [and none of your confounded
matchmaking
, Bones; she is easily fifteen years my senior, and I’ll not see forty again] and lives by herself in a charming little cottage at the ocean’s very doorstep. I found the lady hanging out her wash, and she seemed genuinely pleased to see me. I found this a great relief; it is vexing almost beyond words to be branded pariah for no understandable reason.

“Mr. Boone,” said she, offering a half-curtsey. “If you’ve come about washing, I take none in past September. My rheumatiz pains me so that it’s trouble enough to do my own.”

“I wish laundry
was
the subject of my visit. I’ve come for help, Mrs. Cloris. I must know all you can tell me about Chapelwaite and Jerusalem’s Lot and why the townsfolk regard me with such fear and suspicion!”

“Jerusalem’s Lot! You know about
that
, then.”

“Yes,” I replied, “and visited it with my companion a week ago.”

“God!” She went pale as milk, and tottered. I put out a hand to steady her. Her eyes rolled horribly, and for a moment I was sure she would swoon.

“Mrs. Cloris, I am sorry if I have said anything to—”

“Come inside,” she said. “You must know. Sweet Jesu, the evil days have come again!”

She would not speak more until she had brewed strong tea in her sunshiny kitchen. When it was before us, she looked pensively out at the ocean for a time. Inevitably, her eyes and mine were drawn to the jutting brow of Chapelwaite Head, where the house looked out over the water. The large bay window glittered in the rays of the westering sun like a diamond. The view was beautiful but strangely disturbing. She suddenly turned to me and declared vehemently:

“Mr. Boone, you must leave Chapelwaite immediately!”

I was flabbergasted.

“There has been an evil breath in the air since you took up residence. In the last week—since you set foot in the accursed place—there have been omens and portents. A caul over the face of the moon; flocks of whippoorwills which roost in the cemeteries; an unnatural birth. You
must
leave!”

When I found my tongue, I spoke as gently as I could. “Mrs. Cloris, these things are dreams. You must know that.”

“Is it a dream that Barbara Brown gave birth to a child with no eyes? Or that Clifton Brockett found a flat, pressed trail five feet wide in the woods beyond Chapelwaite
where all had withered and gone white
? And can you, who have visited Jerusalem’s Lot, say with truth that nothing still lives there?”

I could not answer; the scene in that hideous church sprang before my eyes.

She clamped her gnarled hands together in an effort to calm herself. “I know of these things only from my mother and her mother before her. Do you know the history of your family as it applies to Chapelwaite?”

“Vaguely,” I said. “The house has been the home of Philip Boone’s line since the 1780s; his brother Robert, my grandfather, located in Massachusetts after an argument over stolen papers. Of Philip’s side I know little, except that an unhappy shadow fell over it, extending from father to son to grandchildren—Marcella died in a tragic accident and Stephen fell to his death. It was his wish that Chapelwaite become the home of me and mine, and that the family rift thus be mended.”

“Never to be mended,” she whispered. “You know nothing of the original quarrel?”

“Robert Boone was discovered rifling his brother’s desk.”

“Philip Boone was mad,” she said. “A man who trafficked with the
unholy. The thing which Robert Boone
attempted
to remove was a profane Bible writ in the old tongues—Latin, Druidic, others. A hell-book.”

“De Vermis Mysteriis.”

She recoiled as if struck. “You know of it?”

“I have seen it … touched it.” It seemed again she might swoon. A hand went to her mouth as if to stifle an outcry. “Yes; in Jerusalem’s Lot. On the pulpit of a corrupt and desecrated church.”

“Still there; still there, then.” She rocked in her chair. “I had hoped God in His wisdom had cast it into the pit of hell.”

“What relation had Philip Boone to Jerusalem’s Lot?”

“Blood relation,” she said darkly. “The Mark of the Beast was on him, although he walked in the clothes of the Lamb. And on the night of October 31, 1789, Philip Boone disappeared … and the entire populace of that damned village with him.”

She would say little more; in fact, seemed to know little more. She would only reiterate her plea that I leave, giving as reason something about “blood calling to blood” and muttering about “those who
watch
and those who
guard
.” As twilight drew on she seemed to grow more agitated rather than less, and to placate her I promised that her wishes would be taken under strong consideration.

I walked home through lengthening, gloomy shadows, my good mood quite dissipated and my head spinning with questions which still plague me. Cal greeted me with the news that our noises in the walls have grown worse still—as I can attest at this moment. I try to tell myself that I hear only rats, but then I see the terrified, earnest face of Mrs. Cloris.

The moon has risen over the sea, bloated, full, the colour of blood, staining the ocean with a noxious shade. My mind turns to that church again and

(here a line is struck out)

But you shall not see that, Bones. It is too mad. It is time I slept, I think. My thoughts go out to you.

Regards,
CHARLES.

(The following is from the pocket journal of Calvin McCann.)

Oct. 20, ’50

Took the liberty this morning of forcing the lock which binds the book closed; did it before Mr. Boone arose. No help; it is all in cypher. A simple one, I believe. Perhaps I may break it as easily as the lock. A diary, I am certain, the hand oddly like Mr. Boone’s own. Whose book, shelved in the most obscure corner of this library and locked across the pages? It seems old, but how to tell? The corrupting air has largely
been kept from its pages. More later, if time; Mr. Boone set upon looking about the cellar. Am afraid these dreadful goings-on will be too much for his chancy health yet. I must try to persuade him—

But he comes.

Oct. 20, 1850.

BONES,

I can’t write I cant
[sic]
write of this yet I I I

(From the pocket journal of Calvin McCann)

Oct. 20, ’50

As I had feared, his health has broken—

Dear God, our Father Who art in Heaven!

Cannot bear to think of it; yet it is planted, burned on my brain like a tin-type; that horror in the cellar—!

Alone now; half-past eight o’clock; house silent but—

Found him swooned over his writing table; he still sleeps; yet for those few moments how nobly he acquitted himself while I stood paralyzed and shattered!

His skin is waxy, cool. Not the fever again, God be thanks. I daren’t move him or leave him to go to the village. And if I did go, who would return with me to aid him? Who would come to this cursed house?

O, the cellar! The things in the cellar that have haunted our walls!

Oct. 22, 1850.

DEAR BONES,

I am myself again, although weak, after thirty-six hours of unconsciousness. Myself again … what a grim and bitter joke! I shall never be myself again, never. I have come face to face with an insanity and a horror beyond the limits of human expression. And the end is not yet.

If it were not for Cal, I believe I should end my life this minute. He is one island of sanity in all this madness.

You shall know it all.

We had equipped ourselves with candles for our cellar exploration, and they threw a strong glow that was quite adequate—hellishly adequate! Calvin tried to dissuade me, citing my recent illness, saying that the most we should probably find would be some healthy rats to mark for poisoning.

I remained determined, however; Calvin fetched a sign and answered: “Have it as you must, then, Mr. Boone.”

The entrance to the cellar is by means of a trap in the kitchen floor [which Cal assures me he has since stoutly boarded over], and we raised it only with a great deal of straining and lifting.

A foetid, overpowering smell came up out of the darkness, not unlike that which pervaded the deserted town across the Royal River. The candle I held shed its glow on a steeply slanting flight of stairs leading down into darkness. They were in a terrible state of repair—in one place an entire riser was missing, leaving only a black hole—and it was easy enough to see how the unfortunate Marcella might have come to her end there.

“Be careful, Mr. Boone!” Cal said; I told him I had no intention of being anything but, and we made the descent.

The floor was earthen, the walls of stout granite, and hardly wet. The place did not look like a rat haven at all, for there were none of the things rats like to make their nests in, such as old boxes, discarded furniture, piles of paper, and the like. We lifted our candles, gaining a small circle of light, but still able to see little. The floor had a gradual slope which seemed to run beneath the main living-room and the dining-room—i.e., to the west. It was in this direction we walked. All was in utter silence. The stench in the air grew steadily stronger, and the dark about us seemed to press like wool, as if jealous of the light which had temporarily deposed it after so many years of undisputed dominion.

At the far end, the granite walls gave way to a polished wood which seemed totally black and without reflective properties. Here the cellar ended, leaving what seemed to be an alcove off the main chamber. It was positioned at an angle which made inspection impossible without stepping around the corner.

Calvin and I did so.

It was as if a rotten spectre of this dwelling’s sinister past had risen before us. A single chair stood in this alcove, and above it, fastened from a hook in one of the stout overhead beams, was a decayed noose of hemp.

“Then it was here that he hung himself,” Calvin muttered. “God!”

“Yes … with the corpse of his daughter lying at the foot of the stairs behind him.”

Cal began to speak; then I saw his eyes jerked to a spot behind me; then his words became a scream.

How, Bones, can I describe the sight which fell upon our eyes? How can I tell you of the hideous tenants within our walls?

The far wall swung back, and from that darkness a face leered—a face with eyes as ebon as the Styx itself. Its mouth yawned in a toothless, agonized grin; one yellow, rotted hand stretched itself out to us. It made a hideous, mewling sound and took a shambling step forward. The light from my candle fell upon it—

And I saw the livid rope-burn about its neck!

From beyond it something else moved, something I shall dream of
until the day when all dreams cease: a girl with a pallid, mouldering face and a corpse-grin; a girl whose head lolled at a lunatic angle.

They wanted us; I know it. And I know they would have drawn us into that darkness and made us their own, had I not thrown my candle directly at the thing in the partition, and followed it with the chair beneath that noose.