The Lonely Shadows: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos (3 page)

“Then there was something more?” Somehow, Calder got the question out, although he felt a little sick inside.

“Those three people who were with my father in the library. I hadn’t recognised the voice at first, but I did recognise the faces. Doctor Talbot and his wife and Colonel Carter. They were all fairly frequent visitors to our house when I was a small boy but they—”

Calder stared at him incredulously, as though unable to believe his ears. He finished the other’s sentence for him in a voice that was not very steady. “All three of them had died before you were ten years old.”

* * * * * * *

An hour later, when the storm had abated a little, and the thunder was beating at the distant horizon, with the full moon striving to break through the scudding clouds overhead, Jeremiah Calder left the old house and walked back a little hurriedly along the overgrown drive towards the gate. He had tried vainly to get Belstead to come with him, to put up at one of the two hotels in the village, had even offered to put him up himself, but the other had steadfastly refused to accompany him. There had been something infinitely pathetic about that old man, old in mind and body, sitting there in front of the dying fire in the library—a room that must have held a host of horrible secrets. But he had been determined too. It had been impossible to tell whether or not the other had been afraid. If not, it could only have been because he was now so used to these things, that his mind no longer thought about them. He accepted them as something he had lived with most of his life and which he would have to go on living with until he died. Then perhaps, thought Calder inwardly, the house might really be empty.

He opened the gate, stepped through and latched it behind him. A few heavy drops of rain patted down on him from the dripping branches of the trees, which overlooked the lonely road leading back to the village. A strange little thought popped unbidden into his mind as he paused for a moment and stared back over his shoulder towards the looming bulk of the house.
Was there just the possibility that when Charles Belstead died, the house would be—not empty, but full?

Back in his room, he made himself some hot coffee, drank it so quickly that it burned his tongue and the back of his throat. After that, he felt a little better. His first thought had been to dismiss entirely what he had heard from Charles Belstead that night. Looking back on it, trying to review everything that the other had said in an objective manner, it made little sense. Most of what he had told him could have stemmed from his strange sense of hatred that appeared to have existed between father and son. But did that explain fully why Charles Belstead had refused to leave the house after he had inherited it?

He checked his watch, saw that it was a little after ten-thirty. Woodbridge might still be up, he thought, and at a moment like this, he felt that he needed some practical medical advice about Belstead.

Woodbridge answered the phone almost immediately, his voice crisp and alert. Evidently he had not yet gone to bed.

“Calder here, Henry,” he said quietly. “I was wondering if I could have a talk with you—tonight. It’s important and I’d like your advice on a problem that has just come up.”

A pause then: “Very well, Jeremiah. If it’s as important as that. I’ll be right over. Give me ten minutes.”

He arrived exactly nine minutes later, stood inside the small hallway, shaking the drops of rain from his heavy coat. Calder closed the door behind him, shutting out the wind and the rain, which had begun again. Taking the other’s coat, he hang it up on the rack, then led the way into the small front room where a fire was burning in the grate. He nodded towards one of the chairs.

“Sorry to drag you out on a night like this, Henry,” he said quietly, “but I’ve just been up to see Charles Belstead.”

“Belstead?” The other looked surprised for a moment then nodded his head slowly, wisely. “I think I’m beginning to understand. You wish to talk about him? Is that it?”

“Yes.” Calder spoke decisively. “I went up there prepared to find him changed in some ways after his housekeeper died a little while ago. But I wasn’t quite prepared for what actually happened there tonight.”

“All right, let’s have it.” The other took the glass that the lawyer offered him and leaned back, resting his arms along the sides of his chair, stretching out his legs to their full length in front of him. “What’s on your mind as far as he’s concerned? If you’re worried about his sanity, I’ll tell you here and now, that you’re not the only one. I’ve been worried myself for a long time, but that’s as far as it’s gone.”

“Has he told you what happened forty-five years ago?”

The doctor paused, biting his lower lip. Then he nodded his head slowly, reluctantly. “Yes, he told me that some time ago. I didn’t believe him then and I’m not so sure that I believe him now.”

“Then how do you explain it? Imagination, and hallucination—or did he just make the whole story up to spite his father?”

“The last hypothesis is as good as any to my mind.” Woodbridge sipped his drink slowly. “Hate can often do strange things. Since his mother died, Charles Belstead lived under the almost complete dominance of his father. Even when he left home and started a life of his own, he was never utterly free of that influence. An evil thing, I feel sure. But it isn’t completely unheard of in medical science.”

“My own opinion,” said Calder, “for what it’s worth, is that we ought to get him away from that house as quickly as possible. I know it won’t be easy. He’s an old man, set in his ways, and for some strange reason he seems to be determined to stay there. I was hoping that you might be able to help there.”

“I agree with everything you say. But what can we do? Short of having the old man certified and removing him forcibly from the house, we can do nothing, and at the moment, I’m very reluctant to take that particular course.”

“Can you suggest anything else?” Calder lifted his brows into a bar-straight line. “I don’t like the idea of leaving him there much longer. The house seemed to possess some strange kind of morbid hold over him and I’m afraid that something may happen if we let this go on too long.”

Woodbridge got heavily to his feet and took a quick turn around the room. Pausing in front of the fire, he stared down at the other from beneath craggy, outjutting brows. “Tell me, Jeremiah,” he said softly. “Did Belstead ask you to go to the house tonight for any particular reason? It wasn’t exactly the kind of night I would have chosen for a purely social call.”

“He talked a lot about various things, seemed to want to get them off his mind. But at the back of it all, I had the idea there was some other reason, although he never mentioned it.”

Woodbridge coughed uneasily, then turned and warmed his hands at the fire for a long moment without speaking. He seemed to be debating some point within himself. Calder waited patiently for the other to speak, knowing that he had something further to say. Pulling his pipe from his pocket, the doctor began to fill it with quick motions of his fingers, thrusting the unruly strands of tobacco into the bowl. Then he struck a match and inhaled deeply, flicking the spent match into the fire.

“How long is it since you last went into that house, Jeremiah? Before tonight, I mean?”

The other thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Almost a year, I think. Why?”

“Before I answer that let me ask you one other question. Did you notice anything different there tonight—either with Belstead himself, or in the house?”

“I’m not sure what you mean. He seemed to have aged a lot since I last saw him, but I put it down to the strain of living alone, having to fend for himself. As to the house, there was dust everywhere, as if it had been utterly neglected since the housekeeper died. But neither of these things struck me as odd at the time.”

“And that’s
all
you noticed?” The other’s tone was strangely insistent.

“I—” He paused abruptly. How to explain to a practical, scientific man like the doctor, what he had seen looking at him, through the door in the library?

“Go on. You did see something else, didn’t you?”

“But how do you know that? Unless you too—”

Woodbridge gave a quick, jerky nod of his head, drew deeply on the pipe, pressing the tobacco deeper into the bowl. “I called on Belstead less than a month ago. He asked me to go up and see him, thought there might be something wrong with his heart. I was there one afternoon. As soon as I saw him, I knew there was something wrong, but my examination told me it was nothing physical. Taking his age into account, his heart was in perfect shape. I tried to talk things out of him, but he was quite reticent and as soon as I suggested that he ought to pack up and leave the place, make the most of what life he still had left him, he almost bit my head off. It wasn’t until I was leaving that I noticed the three people down by the lake. It was a clear, sunny afternoon, no question of bad light and shadows giving false impressions.” He paused, sucked on his pipe for a moment, then went on: “You know that small boating house there is down by the lake. They were in there. I passed within twenty yards of them and I noticed them quite clearly. Time and again, I’ve been told that Belstead lived there alone, so it struck me as even more peculiar to notice anyone there at all.”

“Could you recognise any of them?” asked the other. In spite of the tight grip that he had on himself, Calder’s tone was not quite steady.

“Only from the pictures I’ve seen,” went on Woodbridge slowly. “One was old Doctor Talbot whose practice I took over when I first came here. His wife was with him and Colonel Carter.”

“Good God!” Stunned, shaking, Calder sat absolutely still, a sudden coldness on his face. He had almost known what was coming, but in spite of that, he found himself staring incredulously at the other, as if by staring, he could make it all sound completely impossible, make the other take back his words and say that he had been only joking. But it was not a joke, he told himself. His legal mind tried desperately to find some perfectly logical explanation for all that had happened. Those tales that the villagers whispered among themselves about what happened up at the Manor—just how much truth was in them, and how much had been exaggerated and fabricated?

“Now—you saw someone there, at the house tonight, who had no right to be there, didn’t you? Was it one of those three?”

“No. It wasn’t.” He twisted a little uneasily in his chair, then said with a grave quietness: “It was Mister Peters.”

“The old solicitor you used to work for, forty years ago?”

“Yes. I’m quite sure of it. I know that it doesn’t make sense. That all of these people we’re talking about died many years ago. Yet we’ve both seen them up there at the Manor.”

* * * * * * *

“The rural tales are clear about what happens up at that old house,” said Doctor Woodbridge quietly. It was the following day, a morning of clear skies and flooding sunlight which made the horrors of the night before seem unreal and remote, so distant that to Calder’s mind, it was almost as if they had never occurred. Woodbridge smoked for a moment reflectively, then continued: “They might be queerer still if some of the things I’ve heard from a couple of my patients were brought out into the open.”

“What sort of things?” queried Calder uncertainly.

“I haven’t mentioned this before to anyone, partly because it’s so distasteful to recall, and also to protect the wishes of my patients. But I think, from what you told me last night and from my own experience a little while ago, that what I heard is relevant to this matter. Previously, I put all of this down to imagination, to the ramblings of two men who were not quite—rational, shall we say. In one case, I might even have gone further and said he was bordering on madness.”

“I promise to keep a straight face,” said Calder.

“Yes. I rather think that you will after you’ve heard what I have to say. Three years ago I was called out to one of the houses on the outskirts of the village a little after midnight. It sounded urgent so I’m afraid I broke any speed limits there might have been at that time of night and arrived at the house less than fifteen minutes after getting the call. By that time, the patient who was a youth of perhaps nineteen, was in a state of profound shock, bordering on hysteria. I did all I could for him, managed to calm him down and put him under mild sedation and then left, telling his parents to keep him in bed and I would call in to see him early the following morning. Unfortunately, there was an acute appendicitis case next morning and it was almost two in the afternoon before I got out to see him. He seemed to have recovered quite well from his experience and had a good grip on himself. I knew that something must have happened the previous night to shock him and I tried to get it out of him, knowing that if he would only talk about it, I might be able to help him a good deal. At first, he didn’t want to say anything but from what little he did say, I got the impression that he had been up to the old Belstead place, probably poaching, and had either seen or heard something sufficiently frightening to have sent him running for home, shocked out of his wits.”

“What was your opinion about it?” asked Calder. Leaning forward, he filled the other’s glass, then his own. The sunlight, flooding into the windows behind him made everything seem sane and normal, but the other’s words had sent that strange and indefinable chill through him.

“At the time, I didn’t have one.” The other seemed as if he did not quite trust himself to speak. “I knew I had to get to the bottom of it, get the information from him as soon as possible, or there was a definite chance of him going insane. Eventually, I got most of the story from him. Some of it seemed to have gone so far into his subconscious that nothing short of hypnosis could bring it to the surface. That—I left alone. He didn’t expect anyone to believe a word of what he said, least of all a practical man like myself. And when he did tell me, I think I know why.”