Read The Feaster From The Stars (Blackwood and Harrington) Online
Authors: Alan K Baker
Tags: #9781907777653
‘Much better, thank you, Thomas,’ she replied, but as she said this, Blackwood noted the fragility of her smile.
‘You need rest. I’ll be on my way.’
‘Very well. What time shall we meet tomorrow?’
‘I’ll call for you at ten.’
In fact, Blackwood would have liked to stay a little longer to make absolutely sure that Sophia had fully recovered, but for him the evening was not yet over: there was something else he had to do before taking to his own bed.
Outside, he hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to Farringdon Street Station.
‘Someone was in Castaigne’s hotel room?’ said Charles Exeter.
The man standing before him nodded. ‘Yes, sir. In the bathroom. We didn’t manage to see who it was.’
‘Why not?’
‘They’d locked themselves in. I picked the lock and was about to open the door, when…’
‘When what?’
The man shrugged helplessly. ‘Something happened. There was a loud flapping and banging against the window. We knew it would attract attention, and we already had what we’d gone there for, so we left without seeing.’
‘Did either of you mention my name while you were there? Take care now! Don’t lie to me.’
The man hesitated, and Exeter shook his head in disgust. ‘You goddamned idiot.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Exeter.’
‘Get out.’
The man didn’t need to be told twice. He turned on his heels and fled the room and the apartment without a backward glance.
Exeter stood up from the ornately-carved armchair and walked across the study to a table by the window, where he poured himself a large brandy and, sipping it contemplatively, looked out across the rooftops of Knightsbridge. Like many powerful, self-made men, he believed himself to be surrounded by fools and incompetents, the evidence being that he was the boss and they were not. The two cretins he had sent to Castaigne’s hotel were a case in point. And yet, he doubted that much damage had been done; whoever had been skulking in the occultist’s bathroom would, ultimately, be powerless against him and the being whose influence he could feel in his mind, even now.
That awareness brought with it the thought that he also was a lackey… but he quickly banished it, for like many lackeys, he believed that he had the potential to become the equal of his superior.
The strange sounds his men had heard were a different matter. They had evidently occurred at precisely the moment when they were about to open the bathroom door, which led Exeter to suspect that whoever had been hiding there had been aided by some supernatural agency.
There was an additional coincidence which gave Exeter pause for thought. That pretty young thing from the Society for Psychical Research had come to see him that very afternoon… and a few hours later, his men had found that someone had beaten them to Castaigne’s hotel room. Was there a connection there?
Coincidence?
he asked himself as he drained the last of his brandy.
Ain’t no such thing, Charlie boy
.
As he undressed and made ready for bed, Exeter felt the familiar apprehension rising in him, as if he were a phobic who was about to be confronted by the object of his terror. He had felt this way ever since the King in Yellow had first made contact with him, shortly after his arrival in England. He knew that the being was manipulating him, bending him to its will in mysterious and subtle ways, and he recalled the waves of unutterable terror which had flooded through him that first time, when he heard its voice echoing through his dreaming mind. He had known immediately that the voice was not part of his dream; it was real and belonged to something that seethed and brooded an unthinkable distance away in the depths of space.
Part of Exeter’s mind recoiled from the influence of the King in Yellow, but there was another part which had grown intoxicated by the vast power of the entity and welcomed it. Of course, Exeter was not sure that the feeling was his own, and sometimes he suspected that it was merely another element of the creature’s control over him: a form of psychic venom which pacified his mind and made it yearn for further contact.
As he lay back in bed and turned out the oil lamp on his bedside table, Exeter’s breath quickened momentarily, and then, just as swiftly, subsided. The muted sounds of the street outside likewise became misted by sleep and then vanished altogether from his awareness. He felt the first stirrings of a dream: disjointed images skittering like water on a hotplate, readying themselves to coalesce into a form of narrative… but the dream he might have had was stillborn, brushed aside by the thing which was now entering his mind.
It was not a voice, but rather a breath of thought from across the Æther, an exhalation that carried with it the sense impressions of words.
I am here
, Exeter’s sleeping mind replied.
I have done as you instructed. I have activated the Servitor.
Yes, just as you said it would. Their energy is contained within it. Soon it will reach a sufficient level to bring the Anti-Prism to life. And then…
How does the Anti-Prism work?
Exeter sensed amusement from the thing in his mind as it replied,
Forgive me.
What will you do when you have come to Earth?
replied the voice of the King in Yellow.
Why should you reward me, when I have no choice but to obey you?
‘So… what are we looking for today?’ Goodman-Brown asked.
Goodman-Brown paled a little at this. ‘I see… well, I shall certainly do my best.’
‘What do you mean, Mr Hoagland?’ asked Sophia, who was following immediately behind him.
‘Hardly a practical suggestion,’ said Blackwood.
‘What else do they say – apart from the business about feeling as if they’re being watched?’
‘Go on, Mr Hoagland,’ said Blackwood.
‘Do you feel you are breaking a confidence?’ asked Sophia.
‘Believe me, Mr Hoagland, I can,’ Sophia said.
‘Carcosa, sir?’ said Hoagland, glancing back at the psychometrist.
‘That’s the name of the world the men have glimpsed in their dreams,’ he replied.
Hoagland raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you mean to say that the place really exists?’
She looked up at Hoagland and Goodman-Brown. ‘Shall we, gentlemen?’
‘Have you had any unusual experiences on the Underground, Mr Hoagland?’ asked Sophia.