The Last Revelation Of Gla'aki (3 page)

"I've some reading to do first."

"Of course," she said as though he'd reconfirmed her notion of the typical librarian. He was heading for the stairs when she murmured "Dream well."

"I don't really go in for it."

"We all do, Leonard." She touched her forehead, and the patch of brow as well as her fingertip grew momentarily pale. "If you don't," she said, "you'll never know what's in there."

That was the kind of observation Sandra had least patience for, he thought as he climbed the stairs. She hadn't even let him finish telling her what he knew about Deepfall Water, although it wasn't a great deal. He'd found none of it worth mentioning in the essay that had ended up online.

Had a cult ever really made its home beside the unfrequented lake? In the 1960s the notion had been revived after Thomas Cartwright, a minor artist specialising in fantastic and occult themes, moved into one of the lakeside houses and died as the result of some kind of attack. A police investigation had proved inconclusive, and a family who were supposed to have abandoned the house before Cartwright took it over had never been tracked down. If the houses had at some stage been served by a private graveyard, no identifiable trace was found, though some tales suggested that the stone tombs had been pulverised beyond recognition.
We Pass from View,
an occult book by local author Roland Franklyn, even claimed that they'd been destroyed by the police.

Fairman had thought this unsuitable for mentioning in
Book Hunter Monthly,
and Sandra hadn't wanted to hear any more. She would have liked his other anecdotes even less—schoolboy stupidity, he imagined she would call them. They dated from his days at Brichester High, a quarter of a century after the Cartwright business. The lake had become a place you dared your friends to visit after dark, and he'd assumed his fellow pupils had borrowed the idea from films, though the originator of the challenge had lived on the edge of Brichester nearest the lake. Those who ventured there brought back increasingly extreme stories: the lake had begun to throb like an enormous heart, or a procession of figures as stiff as bones had been glimpsed among the trees on the far side of the water, or a globular growth on a stalk in the middle of the lake had turned so as to keep a party of teenagers in sight, and they'd realised it was an eye. How could any of this have been visible at night? At the time Fairman hadn't been surprised that the adventurers had ended up with nightmares, but once the headmaster learned of the visits to the lake he'd forbidden them. Apparently his fierceness was daunting enough, since the lake reverted to the status of a rumour. Since then, so far as Fairman knew, it had been visited mostly by the kind of people who tried to plumb the depths of Loch Ness, and they'd found just as little evidence of anything unnatural.

He didn't think he would ever tell Sandra that he'd visited Deepfall Water. He'd hoped to bring his essay more to life, but perhaps he also meant to prove that he wasn't quite the bookish introverted fellow his schoolmates had thought him. He could see no reason to go at night, and even on a February afternoon the place had seemed unnecessarily dark, no doubt because of the trees that stooped close to the unpaved track from the main road as well as surrounding the lake. They overshadowed the row of three-storey houses that huddled alongside a cobblestone pavement at the edge of the water. All six roofs had caved in, and some of the floors were so rotten that they'd collapsed under the weight of debris. Great leaves of blackened wallpaper drooped off the walls of a house in the middle of the terrace, and Fairman had wondered if this was the one most recently occupied, nearly half a century ago. None of the windows contained even a fragment of glass, and he suspected his old schoolmates might have been at least partly responsible. The buildings seemed to gape at the expanse of water like masks lined up to demonstrate they had no identity of their own. He'd found the thought oddly disturbing as he went to the edge of the lake.

The murky water stretched perhaps half a mile to the trees where some of his schoolfellows had claimed to see a procession that shouldn't have been walking. He doubted you could see that even with a flashlight, given how close together the trees grew. The depths of the lake were even harder to distinguish. It was fringed by large ferns, but he'd made out just a few inches of the stalks beneath the surface, which was so nearly opaque that he might have imagined the mud was being stirred up by some activity in the lake. In fact the water had been absolutely stagnant, and he'd peered harder into it as though he was compelled to find some reason to have visited Deepfall Water. He'd had the odd impression that around it all the trees were craning to imitate him, enclosing the lake with an iris of darkness that was capable of shrinking the sky overhead. That must have been an effect of his concentration, along with the idea that his scrutiny could waken some presence in the depths; in fact, a sluggish ripple had begun to spread from the middle of the lake, followed by another and another. They'd advanced so slowly that their lethargy had seemed to take hold of him; he could have fancied that the waves of his brain had been reduced to the pace of the hypnotic ripples. The thought had jerked him back to consciousness, not least of the unnaturally premature dark. As the ripples grew audible he'd turned his back and retreated to his car. He'd heard water splashing the edge of the pavement by the time he'd succeeded in starting the engine. Of course the ripples must have been caused by a wind, since all the trees around the lake had bent towards the water.

Besides these impressions, he'd seemed to take something else home. Like Sandra, for whom it was a reason to be proud of her rationality and control, he didn't dream or at least never remembered having done so, but for some nights after visiting Deepfall Water he'd been troubled by wakeful thoughts. Whenever he drifted close to sleep he'd found himself thinking of the investigators who had tried to search the lake. The notion of sounding it had brought to mind a disconcertingly vivid image of a vast shape burrowing deeper into the bed of the lake, raising a cloud of mud so thick that it blotted out the denizen. No doubt this betrayed how preoccupied he was with the impossibly rare book, but he'd been assailed by the vision several times a night, until he'd begun almost to dread attempting to sleep. If dreaming was like that, it wasn't for him.

By the time he'd completed his essay the vision had left him, which surely proved they were related. He didn't mention it to Sandra, and he supposed he should be grateful that they'd been living apart. Perhaps this might change soon, along with her view of his find here in Gulshaw. Surely no librarian could be unaffected by the sight of one of the rarest books in the world.

He locked the door of his room and hurried to the safe. When he typed his birthday digits he was assailed by a panicky notion that the safe wouldn't open, as though the book might be too precious to release. But the black door edged open, and he reached into the dimness to cradle the box in his hands, laying it on the bed to lift the book out of its papery nest. The leather covers felt unexpectedly chill, as he thought a reptile's hide might feel. He sat on the solitary chair and opened the book as carefully as he might have handled an infant. "How many secrets hath the world..."

Was he exhausted after the long drive from Brichester to the northern coastal town? Perhaps not only tiredness was affecting his concentration. Whatever the incantatory prose might be meant to achieve, he wouldn't call it lucid. To what extent had Percy Smallbeam rewritten the material? Certainly the style read like a single author's. Fairman felt as though he wasn't so much interpreting the text as waiting for it to take shape in his brain, an experience that seemed unnecessarily similar to dreaming, and he turned the stiff pages in search of some reference his mind could fasten on. What was Gla'aki meant to be, for instance? Perhaps that was made clear in an earlier volume, but around the middle of this one he found a reference to Brichester.

The theory appeared to be that certain areas of the world were foci of alien or occult forces—the book made no distinction. Whether this was a result of magical practices performed there over many centuries, or whether the sites had initially attracted the practices, was left unclear. Massachusetts around the town of Arkham was such a place, and other American locations included the Sesqua Valley and the Castle Rock area of Maine. In Britain the Yorkshire moors near Marske were mentioned, along with Caerleon and Liverpool, where the chronic overcrowding of the slums at the time the book was published "allowed the ancient denizens to flourish unremarked save by those who had carnal recourse to them." As for Brichester, the book suggested that the surrounding Severn Valley area was a node of occult activity and the lair of creatures far older than humanity. Supposedly some of the latter had survived beneath the village of Clotton, a name no longer on the map, "where they ape the voice of the blind waters that pour into the abyss beneath the earth." Other legends spoke of Temphill, where an attempt to render an ancient site Christian had merely given sustenance to the forgotten things that were drawn to a subterranean vault, and Goatswood, in Roman times a place of worship of an inhuman entity the Romans called the Magna Mater. In the forest that gave Goodmanswood its name you might encounter a man composed of insects that would swarm into your brain. And here at last was a reference to Gla'aki, although spelled in Percy Smallbeam's way. "So steeped in arcane power was the valley that it acted as a beacon to which Glaaki guided His stone cocoon across the gulfs of space."

Fairman hadn't realised that the area around his home town had given rise to so many myths. Perhaps they were simply delusions of the cult that had written the original text, or Percy Smallbeam might have elaborated on them; who was to know? Nevertheless Fairman had an odd elusive sense that he'd already been aware of some of them. It felt as he imagined trying to recall a dream would feel, and he was gazing into his own bemused eyes in the mirror when his phone rang. He might almost have been jerking awake as he saw the number was unidentified. "Hello?"

"Leonard Fairman? I believe you want me."

"I might if I knew who you were."

"It's Dennis Stoddart, Leonard. You left me a message."

"Dr Stoddart." Fairman couldn't quite bring himself to match the familiarity, and hoped this conveyed that he didn't welcome it either. "Thanks for calling back. Mr Lunt said—"

"I'll bet he said a lot and at least half of it worth hearing. That's our Frank and it's how we all like him." The doctor cut a chortle short and said "But if he told you where to find your sacred item, that's the truth."

While Farman might have demurred about the sacred-ness, especially if Sandra had been there, he said "When could I—"

"As soon as you like in the morning. Sleep sound," the doctor said—it could almost have been medical advice— and rang off.

No doubt Mrs Berry would be able to direct Fairman to the surgery. The front cover of the book he'd placed on the dressing-table had begun to twitch upwards as though it and its reflection were beckoning to him. He no longer felt sufficiently awake to concentrate, and returned the book to its carton, which he locked in the safe. Slinging a towel over his arm, he ventured into the corridor.

He might have preferred the hotel to be somewhat less quiet. He'd been inhibited in public toilets ever since his childhood. He flushed the shared toilet before using it and hoped that his uncontrollably intermittent pouring would be drowned out by or at least indistinguishable from the filling of the cistern. He waited for that to finish so that he could pull the chain, the handle of which wore a mauve sheath that matched the shaggy cover of the lid and the curtains at the dinky window. At last he was free to dodge next door to the bathroom.

Apparently the previous user had left the light on beyond the frosted glass that was additionally obscured by condensation. Fairman pushed the door open and recoiled so hastily that he lost his grasp on the handle. "Sorry," he gasped.

"My fault." It was a woman's voice, though until she spoke he wasn't sure it would be. "Forgot to bolt," she said. "Just getting in shape for the night."

"You carry on. Don't hurry for me. I can do without the bathroom."

He still couldn't see her except as a blurred shape under the steam on the mirror. The bathroom had an oddly stagnant smell; perhaps she had lingered too long in the bath. Fairman was retreating when the door shut, though the imprecisely outlined figure in the mirror hadn't seemed to move. No doubt she'd used her foot to close the door, though it must have been quite a stretch. Presumably the door was still unbolted, a thought that hastened him back to his room. He washed his face and brushed his teeth at the sink, above which a small mirror showed him his back above the dressing-table. He could do with keeping himself in better shape; perhaps he ought to use a gym, as Sandra did.

Outside the window the streetlamps blanched the promenade and blackened the graffiti in the shelter. The pale glare illuminated just a narrow strip of the beach, so that he couldn't be sure whether there were jellyfish in the receding sea. He unlatched the sash and pushed it up, which didn't help him to distinguish the indistinct restless shapes from the movements of the waves. As he leaned over the sill a wind brought him the smell of the sea—at least, the smell of Gulshaw beach. It hadn't previously occurred to him that the place didn't smell as the seaside should; he was reminded of the stagnant smell he'd noticed in the bathroom. Although he believed it was healthier to sleep with the bedroom window open, he dragged the sash all the way down.

The stagnant odour seemed to linger in the dark. It held him back from sleep, and so did thoughts of the book. The reference to a stone cocoon kept catching at his mind, and he found himself visualising an enormous stone oval suspended in outer space, an object that resembled a monstrous egg or an island torn loose from its world to wander among the stars. As it plummeted towards a familiar planet he had a sense that it was being held together from within and reinforced against the friction that would have consumed a lesser meteor. What kind of entity could exert so much control over matter? The vision troubled him like the one he'd experienced after visiting Deepfall Water, and made him feel as he had while reading the book—that he was reaching for memories he hadn't known were his. He was glad the image of the cocoon went no further, and eventually it let him sleep.