The Dark Boatman: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos (3 page)

My last call, before meeting Ambrose at the car, was to the main library, where I spent an hour perusing the old records pertaining to Tormouth. Here I came across several references to the Dexter family. These were, in the main, quite ordinary, with but one hint of the bizarre. The documents traced the history of the Dexter family back for almost four centuries. In most cases, records were given of births and marriages in the family,
but there was not a single instance of a death recorded!

I was now beset by the nagging suspicion that if there was any logic behind my discoveries, I could not find it. Those strange instructions given by my uncle, coupled with these oddly disturbing facts, made me wonder if I had done the right thing in coming here and taking up residence in the mansion. Could there possibly be any truth in those spectral tales that had been rife three or four centuries ago? Had there been witches and warlocks in the family who had dabbled in powers more ancient and perhaps more powerful than Christianity?

I found it hard to believe. To the best of my knowledge, such stories were usually put about by superstitious folk, often for the purpose of personal gain or revenge.

When I rejoined Ambrose, I informed him of my findings, remarking how so much of my time and efforts appeared to have been wasted. For his own part, he informed me that he had managed to engage the services of an architect who had promised to come out to the mansion the following day to look over the place and discuss plans with me. He had also purchased sufficient food to last us for at least a couple of weeks.

That afternoon, we located my uncle’s desk in the large room at the rear of the building, which he had obviously used as a study. It was a huge piece of furniture, massively constructed in solid wood with numerous drawers containing sheaths of paper, which I laid aside for the time being, intending to go through them closely in case they should yield more information about the family.

The back of the desk was intricately carved with curious designs and motifs, some of which were of an extremely repellent nature. Ambrose had brought a lamp, since very little daylight succeeded in penetrating the small windows, and he placed this on top of the desk so that we could examine the carvings closely. There was such a confusing intermingling of designs that we had some difficulty determining which arabesque my uncle had referred to in his letter, and it was more by trial and error that I succeeded in finding one which gave slightly as I ran my finger over it.

At first, nothing happened. Then there was a faint click as if some concealed mechanism that had been long unused had suddenly grated into motion. The next moment, a section at the side slid forward, revealing a dark cavity. It was not very large, and I could only get the tips of my fingers inside. Nevertheless, I managed to locate something heavy and metallic which, by dint of careful manoeuvring, I managed to extricate. Holding it up in the lamplight, we saw that it was a large key made out of some yellow metal deeply etched with cryptic symbols, which Ambrose considered to be related to Etruscan. But since no one had yet succeeded in translating this ancient script, it clearly afforded us no information as to their meaning.

There was no accompanying parchment or note of any kind in the drawer, and I closed it reluctantly.

“Do you have any idea which lock this key is supposed to fit?” Ambrose asked, eyeing me curiously across the desk.

I shook my head. “Only what my uncle wrote in his letter: that it must not be used until the proper time unless I call forth Him who comes only at the appointed hour.”

“If I were you, I’d throw it into the sea,” Ambrose said earnestly. “Maybe you’ll say I’m being nothing but an old fool, but in my line of work you get a feel about certain objects, and that’s definitely one of them. There’s something evil about it, something horrible. Don’t ask me what it is, because I can’t tell you. I only know that it’s incredibly old, and whatever purpose it’s been used for, it’s something to be shunned like the plague.”

“Now you’re being every bit as superstitious as the folk in the village,” I admonished him. “There’s bound to be a door somewhere in the house it fits, and I’ll find it. My guess is that whatever is in the room will give us the answer to the mystery about this place.”

My companion did not answer. Now he had made his point, he had transferred his attention to the rows of books on the shelves around the study. An examination of these showed that my uncle had possessed a catholic taste in reading. Curiously, they were not arranged, as in most cases, alphabetically by author or title, but chronologically according to their date of publication. There were several dealing with Einstein’s theories of relativity, Minkowski’s proposals regarding space-time and the block theory of the universe, and Cantor’s mathematics of transinfinite numbers. As we moved further along the shelves we came across much older volumes, and there was a gradual change from science to alchemy and mythology. Most of these were completely unknown to me, but Ambrose recognised some of them, which were written in a wide variety of languages—Greek, Latin, archaic German—while there were others in weird hieroglyphical characters which neither of us could understand.

Evidently my uncle had been keenly interested in the religions of many parts of the world: the cults of the Polynesians, of Easter Island, Tibet, and the early races of both North and South America. Some of the titles gave an indication of their contents;
The Diablerie Daemonalis
, the
Seven Volumes of Ksar, Zegrembi’s Ahrimanes Omnipotae
, the
Book of K’yog
, and several others which were in manuscript form, with faded characters in mediaeval English which had obviously been copied from still earlier works.

We spent more than an hour going through these fabulously old tomes, and our sense of wonderment grew, for clearly they represented one of the most complete records in existence of the folklore and legends of many races stretching back to the very beginnings of the human race—or even beyond, for some seemed to tell of races on Earth which predated the generally accepted period in time when Man was assumed to have evolved from some earlier stock.

Certain of the books contained lists of spells, chants, and incantations supposedly aimed at making contact with demons and spirits and opening the way between our world and other planes of existence coterminous with our own. These, although not uninteresting, we dismissed as being nothing more than the usual claptrap of superstitious charlatans during the Middle Ages. Whether my uncle had actually believed in any of this was unimportant now. Ambrose, however, was keenly interested in them, for he was convinced that there are forces within the universe about which science knows little or nothing, and the idea that there could exist an infinity of other universes which, at certain points, might intersect, and mingle with our own, was by no means ridiculous or unscientific.

By now, the hour was growing late, and we reluctantly abandoned any further reading for the day. It was growing dark outside, and I realised the day had passed too quickly for me to do a number of things I had intended doing. I wanted to examine the overgrown grounds around the house for any sign of a family mausoleum where the remains of my ancestors were buried, for it seemed utterly irrational to suppose that they had merely disappeared without a trace. Common sense told me they had to be interred somewhere close by. Considering their reputation, it was inconceivable they would be buried in the village churchyard.

I had also meant to search for the clock my uncle had mentioned in his letter, but, knowing from past experience the maze of corridors and passages within the house, I had no wish to do this except in broad daylight.

Accordingly, we retired to the large front room, stoked the fire, and prepared a hot meal, the first decent one we had eaten since arriving at the mansion.

I went to my bed early that night, leaving Ambrose reading by the fire.

The wind had got up during the evening, and now it whistled and howled among the branches outside, causing other noises within the house, which made it difficult for me to fall asleep. There was a wooden casement banging incessantly somewhere in one of the upper rooms, and at times I made out a faint rushing sound which seemed to emanate from below. Not in the foundations themselves but deeper than that, far down in the bowels of the cliff. This I put down to the sound of the tide coming in with the wind.

Eventually, I fell asleep, and once more I dreamed of a vast waterfall crashing and thundering into bottomless depths. In my dream I had assumed the role of a passive observer, and for a long time it seemed nothing happened apart from the mighty rush of water, tumbling eternally over the huge curving lip of the precipice. This time, however, details were clearer and sharper than in my previous nightmare.

There was a cloying mist in the foreground, which obscured part of my dreaming vision, and gradually I became aware that something was moving through it towards me. It was impossible to distinguish what the object was, but it was moving slowly and silently towards the bank of the wide river and I knew instinctively it would ground upon the rocks very close to where I stood.

When I woke, jerking upright in the large bed, perspiration dripping from my forehead into my eyes, it was with the sound of the rushing water still ringing in my ears. I was clutching convulsively at the bedclothes, and several frantic seconds passed before I realised that the sound was not a fading echo of my dream. It was real, and came from deep below the foundations of the ancient house. As if in confirmation of its actuality, I distinctly felt the house shaking as if caught in the grip of some monstrous earth tremor.

When the sound and shaking failed to abate, I got up, threw on my dressing gown, and lit the lamp on the bedside table; and, leaving my room quietly in order not to awaken Ambrose, I went to the rear of the house where it overlooked the sea, never stopping to realise that if the cause of the sound and shaking came from far below, there would be no sign of anything out of the ordinary outside.

Somehow, I succeeded in opening one of the windows and, in spite of the chill of the strong wind, I leaned out, peering into the darkness. Indeed, at first, I did see nothing that might account for the peculiar phenomenon. Much of the sound had now ceased and all I could hear was the nearby booming of the surf on the rocks. Directly beneath me, the ivied wall fell sheer to the cliff-top, which then continued in an almost unbroken line for a further three hundred feet to the beach, for the house was built right on the edge.

The sky was now clear, and there was a moon, just past full to the southeast; and in the pale wash of moonlight, I made out the twin pillars of rock far-off in the water, guarding the entrance to the harbour away to my right. The moon threw a glittering radiance upon the water, and as I watched I noticed a strange thing. The long sweep of the waves rolling towards the shore was unbroken in both directions. But between the two columns, the reflection of the moonlight was oddly disturbed, broken and churned as if some seething maelstrom whirled between them.

I thought at first it was some trick of the light, an optical illusion. But the more I stared, the more convinced I became that there was, indeed, something beneath the surface of the ocean which was disturbing it, some powerful submerged current, perhaps, driving along an invisible channel.

How long I stood there, shivering in the cold air, it was impossible to tell. But gradually the swirling transfiguration diminished and the ocean resumed its normal aspect.

Once my initial shock had passed, I returned to my room. It was impossible for me to sleep again. For one thing, I dreaded those weird dreams which now seemed bent on plaguing me each night, and secondly, my brain was filled with too many conflicting facts, too many urgent questions demanding answers, for me to relax. I lay wide awake until, hearing Ambrose leave his room just as dawn was breaking, I got up and joined him in the parlour.

I questioned him seriously as to whether he had heard anything strange during the night, but he had sat reading until after midnight and had then gone to bed, falling into a deep sleep almost at once and had heard nothing.

The arrival of the architect from Penzance pushed the incidents of the night into the background of my mind. He was youngish man of Midland stock, having only moved to Cornwall within the past year, and he was not given to over-imaginative speculations concerning the house he examined; nor had he any leanings towards the occult, and evidently knew very little of the history of the Dexters.

I accompanied him as he went over the house, making brief notes and sketches on a pad as I explained to him exactly what I wanted. It was as we were returning along the long, gloomy upper corridor that a very curious incident occurred. We had paused to look at the rows of family portraits along either side.

“I notice there’s no room left for yours as last of the family,” said the architect, indicating to where my uncle’s picture occupied the position at the very end of the wall.

“Most of these portraits have been here for centuries,” I said. “It seemed unlikely whoever arranged spaces for them could have known how many more would be needed.”

The architect stepped forward and, grasping the bottom of my uncle’s picture, tilted it slightly in order for it to hang level. It was as he did so that something small and round fell onto the thick carpet and rolled away into the shadows. I went forward, stooped, and picked it up holding it tightly in my fingers. It was a large golden coin with Greek inscriptions on either side, and a head which I did not recognise. I slipped it into my pocket and then led the way downstairs.