The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack (40 Modern and Classic Lovecraftian Tales) (31 page)

However, when he realized I meant every word I said, he changed his attitude dramatically. I had the impression he wanted desperately to talk with someone, to get something off his chest. At that moment, his host returned and I thought I had lost my chance. But before I released my grip on his arm Valliecchi muttered the number of an address in Mewson Street.

I let him go then. I had got what I wanted.

It was close on midnight before the meeting broke up. I looked around for Valliecchi but he had obviously left some time earlier. But I had his address so that did not worry me too much. I had no idea where Mewson Street was but I managed to hail a cab outside the club and told the driver to take me there.

It was a longer journey than I had anticipated. We must have been driving for more than half an hour before we finally pulled up. It had begun to rain; a thin drizzling mist that penetrated everything. After the taxi had gone, I looked about me.

The only light visible was a dim street lamp some twenty yards away. The rest of the place was in almost total darkness. Clearly this was not an area of London where many people liked to live. There were long rows of houses on either side of the street in which I found myself but the majority were sadly in need of repair and not a single light showed in any of them.

I was obviously in a main street and there was a very narrow thoroughfare leading off it over to my left and the sign showed that this alley was Mewson Street. For some reason, the driver had dropped me off at the end of the street instead of taking me all the way to where Valliecchi lived.

There was clearly nothing for it but to walk the rest of the way. Nevertheless, it was not without a sense of trepidation that I turned off the main road and entered the dingy alley. It is difficult to believe that such places still exist in London. I soon discovered why the taxi driver had not taken me any further for it was like stepping back into another century. The marks of decay were everywhere; in the huge cobbles of the street, the low roofs of the decrepit houses on either side, the shattered windows of those places which had been abandoned.

Everything was in pitch-blackness and, at first sight all of the ancient dwellings seemed to be empty. It was as if everyone who had once lived there had just packed up their belongings and pulled out. Had it not been for my insatiable curiosity and weird obsession over the paintings I would have turned back in that instant and tried to pick up another taxi to take me home. In the light of what was to happen I only wish to God I had!

There was a low, humped bridge near the end of the alley and I could hear the gurgle of water close by telling me it must have crossed one of the many streams which run into the Thames on the city outskirts. Beyond it, the street was so narrow I doubted if the taxi could have squeezed between the buildings that overhung it on both sides.

Underfoot, the road degenerated into little more than a muddy track, cobbled with large, smooth stones and filled with deep puddles. Now I noticed gleams of yellow light behind tightly-shuttered windows and knew there was life of a kind in the gaunt, dark houses.

The street led upward through the darkness and I found the address Valliecchi had given me at the very end, on top of a hill. The city lights twinkled in the distance but all around me there seemed only darkness and utter silence.

I am not an over-imaginative person by any means. But just standing there I could sense evil all around me. In spite of my burning curiosity, it took a lot of nerve to walk along the dimly-seen path and knock on the large, ornate door.

Valliecchi must have been waiting for me for the door opened almost at once and he ushered me inside. Perhaps there was no electricity laid on to the house for all he seemed to have were long candles. These, and an ancient kerosene lamp, which he held high in his hand as he took me inside.

The hall looked ordinary enough, as did the parlour at the end of it. But when he led me into his studio at the side of the house and what I saw there gave me a shock. There must have been more than a dozen pictures on the walls. And there was another, still unfinished, on an easel in the middle of the room. I thought I had seen the ultimate in horror with those three paintings in my possession.

But these! Dear Lord in Heaven, they were canvasses he would never have dared show outside that room. Even now I can scarcely bring myself to think about them. During my researches for my book I had come across several pictures Clark Ashton Smith had painted of other worlds in space and they are horrifying enough if one gets at the hidden meaning behind them. But they are child’s play compared with those in that studio.

I was aware that Valliecchi was watching me closely as I paused and examined them. He was obviously trying to assess my reactions.

“You know,” he said, “you’re the only person who’s seen these paintings. I’m only allowing you to see them because I think you may understand and because I’m afraid something is going to happen to me very soon and it’s important someone should know the shocking truth.”

He smiled oddly at that.

Then he went on, “Some of you were strangely affected by my playing tonight. I could see it in your faces. Maybe you even wondered who the composer of that music was. Would it surprise you to know it was composed ages before Handel or Mozart or any of the other great composers you care to name?”

There was something about his look at that moment which convinced me I was in the presence of a madman. It is said that the dividing lines between genius and insanity is extremely thin and I was certain of it then. If only I had turned and left that place I would have been spared what was to come. But he suddenly caught my arm and pulled me forward, pointing to the heavy drapes across the window at the far side of the studio.

“I want you to see what I have seen,” he hissed thinly. “See what that music can really do. Yes, my friend, I discovered that to my cost many years ago.”

As he reached the wall he stretched out his free hand and pulled the cord sharply and I braced myself, physically and mentally, for what I might see. I had half imagined it might be some huge wall mural he had done, something even more horrifying than those ranged around the room. But when the curtains swished aside I was simply looking out of a window.

I had felt tensed and nervous ever since going into that house but this was the last straw. The old goat was merely stringing me along, deliberately building up the tension to this anticlimax. It was nothing more than one huge joke to him and he had simply been studying my reactions.

I turned on him furiously and made some harsh remark. But he was not laughing at my discomfiture. He was not even smiling. If anything, he looked more frightened than before. He stopped my outburst with a quick motion of his hand. Then he pointed to a chair and made me sit down.

I could not imagine what was coming next. I saw him hesitate for a moment. Then he walked across the room and picked up his Stradivarius before taking his stance in front of the window. It was then that what had been bugging me ever since Valliecchi had opened those heavy curtains really got to me.

It was dark outside, completely overcast. But the blackness beyond the window was absolute. There was not even a glimmer of the distant city lights that should have been visible from the top of the hill.

And even the faint gleam of yellow candlelight from inside the room was not reflected back from the glass. It was as if a great black oblong had been painted on the wall between the curtains. I started to rise from my chair to examine it more closely but at that moment Valliecchi waved me back, picked up his bow and started to play.

The music was similar to that I had heard earlier. Yet there was a difference. It was out of this world. A cacophonous clashing of discords, a cadence that shrieked harshly in the stillness of the room. But in spite of the lack of harmony, this melody—if one could call it that—was oddly hypnotic. And once again I was acutely aware of those weird echoes coming from somewhere in the far distance.

My gaze had been momentarily fixed on Valliecchi as he stood rigidly at the end of the room. I could make out his face, white and strained, in the candlelight, eyes staring from his head. I was sure he had already forgotten my presence and was aware of nothing but the notes that came sobbing hysterically from his violin.

Then there came a strange vibration, a shuddering in the air, which could almost be seen rather than felt. Abruptly, that window was no longer dark and utterly featureless.

What I saw there was beyond all comprehension and belief. And the crowning horror of it all was that I recognized the scene outside. I knew it intimately from the very first painting I had bought in Chelsea. The plateau was exactly the same with the green sand and those hideous cave mouths looming in the rocky cliff face. And those
things
that lurked within the dark shadows were moving, coming out into the light.

I must have been paralyzed for an instant and for the life of me I could not keep back a loud scream. I still did not know how much was real and how much was due to my fevered fancy.

Just where that place was—
or is
—where it has its terrible presence, I do not know. Nor have I any wish to find out. That it was no dream, no product of my overwrought imagination, I was absolutely certain.

Somehow, I succeeded in getting out of the chair. But when I reached the door I found it locked and it stubbornly resisted all of my frantic efforts to open it. All I could do was crouch down and watch the horrifying scene that unfolded before my unbelieving eyes.

What hellish outer world had spawned those ghastly creatures was beyond my knowledge. It was almost impossible to judge their true size for there were only the cavern mouths with which to make any comparison. Though there was an impression of hugeness about them as they emerged. Their outline was a fiendish travesty of everything sane and familiar. Long and sinuous like gigantic worms, they had heads like the mythological demons with gaping fangs and hooded eyes behind which lay a malign intelligence.

Then, without warning, the tone and tempo of the music changed. Valliecchi had introduced a subtle variation into the underlying theme. Beyond the window, the scene also changed in response to the shrieking violin. Words are a poor medium to describe what I saw but it is important I should put down everything if only to preserve my own sanity.

It was night. In the foreground was a row of broken stone columns outlines against the pale wash of yellow moonlight and on top of one of them squatted something that was vaguely humanoid in shape, but dog-headed, baying at the moon.

And there were others even more indescribable. Animal-headed creatures that walked upright with glaring red eyes and holding objects that squirmed and twisted and dripped blood onto those unhallowed stones. I crouched there, shaking, speechless with horror and loathing. Desperately, I clutched at the wall for support.

All this time, Valliecchi had been twisting and swaying like a man possessed—as indeed he must have been—drawing those weird, fantastic notes from that accursed violin.

Above the whining music, I suddenly heard him shout, “Don’t you see now? Or are you just as blind as all the others who can’t see beyond the ends of their noses? This is what the priests of Ancient Egypt saw when this music was, even then, older than memory. This is the reality behind the gods they painted on their temple walls. These are the real devils and demons out of Sumer and Babylon. These are the gods who walked the Earth before the lands of Mu and Lemuria rose from the waves.”

I scarcely heard him. Because in that instant, with a swift change in the tempo and the high-pitched key of the melody, those mind-shattering creatures were gone. More scenes followed in rapid succession as Valliecchi continued to play. Some I recognized from the paintings on the walls. Others were unknown to me but equally revolting and ghastly.

Then everything was gone. In their place was utter blackness. I could feel the perspiration dripping into my eyes but I could no more wipe it away than I could fly.

Valliecchi was still playing and the music was, if anything, wilder and more hysterical than before. But for an instant I thought it was all finished. That outside the window there was only the night and the drizzling rain. And somewhere in the mist were the lights and houses of London.

Then the full weight of cosmic horror descended upon me. I saw there
was
something there; something blacker than the night. May Heaven take pity on me that I ever saw it! There are those who will say that I am mad, and others will be more sympathetic and maintain I simply imagined it all, that I had become so obsessed with those bizarre paintings that it had affected my mind causing me to believe I saw something which was not really there. But I was there—and I know what I saw! And it is an indisputable fact that Valliecchi’s body was never found.

It was something out of a nightmare. Amorphous. A shape taken from horror that changed continuously. Valliecchi had seen it too. Possibly he knew it of old, knew what it was, because I think he tried to change that hellish melody. But the thing stayed there, coming nearer, a creature of blackness and evil.

It hovered just beyond the glass. Something intelligent that was aware of us. And then… Dear God, how could such a thing be possible? The glass flowed, melted, and a wriggling tendril of inky blackness oozed into the room. I saw it glide forward and curl around Valliecchi’s waist. It plucked him bodily from the floor and drew him, screeching, into that outer darkness.

I did not wait to see any more. I only knew that the room had fallen suddenly silent and I was somehow on my feet and pulling at the door with a mad frenzy that enabled me to break the lock and send me staggering into the parlor and then through the outer door. A moment later, I was outside with the cold, damp mist on my face and clean air in my bursting lungs.

I must have run mindlessly along that ancient cobbled street with only a single backward glance at the house on top of the hill. How I reached home in a half-demented state, I shall never know. I vaguely remember hailing a taxi more than half a mile from Mewson Street and being deposited on my doorstep at two-thirty in the morning by a concerned taxi driver who thought I was either drunk or under the influence of drugs.