The Lonely Shadows: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos (2 page)

Or was he quite alone? That man he had seen looking in at him through the other door—why was it that even the memory of that face, which he had glimpsed only for a brief fraction of a second, sent a little shiver coursing up and down his spine. Certainly there had been nothing malevolent about the figure he had seen—except for the fact that the other seemed to have vanished into thin air, although the probable explanation of that was that he had disappeared into one of the other rooms along the wide corridor. Possibly some friend of Belstead’s who had come upon him suddenly, realised his mistake, and left equally unobtrusively. Still, the thought bothered him more than he cared to admit. He grew aware that the other was speaking slowly, but with an odd intensity in his quavering voice.

“Tell me, Jeremiah. As a lawyer and a friend, do you believe that the dead can come back?”

For a moment, Calder sat upright in his chair, shocked, stunned almost by the other’s question. Perhaps he ought to have expected something like this, he thought quickly, but it had been put so bluntly that for a moment, it had taken him completely by surprise.

“I’m afraid I’m not sure how to answer that question, Charles.” He forced a quick, slightly strained, smile. “To be quite legal, I’d like notice of it.”

“I’m not joking. This is perfectly serious.” He laughed a little shrilly, and his eyes were never still, as though he expected to see something leaping for him out of the shadows around the wide hearth. “I know what you’re thinking. No use in denying it, I can see it written all over your face. You never were very good at hiding your feelings, especially from me. You’re thinking that the solitude here has made me a little mad. But you’re wrong, quite wrong. Actually, what it had done is to make me see things a little more clearly than I ever did before.”

Calder set down his empty glass, hesitated. There came nine mournful, dismal chimes from the clock in the hallway outside. Deep, sepulchral tones which chased each other along the hollow, empty corridor.

“Do I shock you?” went on the other harshly. He leaned back in his chair, the firelight throwing the shrunken flesh of his scrawny neck into shadow. He looked old and wizened, thought Calder tightly, like a man who had slowly, but surely been sucked dry of all the juices, all the strength, that had once been his, in those days before he had come here.

“A little, Charles,” he admitted. A log crackled sharply in the hearth, threw a shower of spitting, red sparks up the chimney. Outside, the storm seemed to have increased in intensity and thunder rumbled and toned like a maddened beast over the house. Calder rose slowly to his feet and stood to one side of the hearth, his hands clasped tightly behind him, keeping a tight grip on himself. He had to get to the bottom of this, he knew that with a sudden certainty. The other had called him here, on a night like this, and at short notice, so that there had to be something in what he said. If not, then it might be best if he were to humour him; at least until he got back to the village and had a confidential chat with Doctor Woodbridge. If there was anything wrong with the other’s mind, it was essential that the doctor should know about it as soon as possible. Perhaps the shock of his housekeeper’s death had affected Belstead a little more than they had realised at the time.

“I thought I might.” The other sucked in his thin lips, sipped his drink slowly, occasionally pausing to glance, bird-like, up at the lawyer. Pointedly, he said: “I asked you to come ahead into the library for a purpose. You possibly know what it was by now.” The bright eyes never left Calder’s face for a single instant.

“I’m afraid that I don’t.”

“No? That’s odd. When I came in here, you looked as though you’d seen a ghost. You hadn’t, had you?”

“Of course not.” Calder felt a little wave of anger wash through him. He bit down the biting retort that threatened to spring to his lips and went on calmly. “It isn’t right that you should stay here any longer, Charles. I’ve been worried about you on and off for the past two years. You aren’t getting any younger, you know and there’s no telling what might happen to you if you persist staying here alone. And you’ve got to remember that it’s the best part of three miles to the nearest house if you should need help of any kind, and you don’t have a telephone here.”

“Why should I need help from anyone?” demanded the other harshly. He put down his glass, paused for a moment then poured himself another drink, moving the bottle towards Calder’s glass, pouring another as the lawyer nodded. “But coming back to the other point I made. You did see someone—or something—when you came in here first, didn’t you?” His eyes were dark and unwinking as they bored into the other’s. “You’re no longer quite as sure of yourself as you were. I can see that from your face.”

Calder sat down again in his chair, gulped down his drink quickly, felt some of the warmth come back into his body, driving out the nameless chill which had settled over him like a shroud. He took out a cigarette, one of the few luxuries in which he allowed himself to indulge, and lit it with fingers that trembled a little, even though he tried his hardest to keep them still.

Blowing smoke into the air, he sat back, then finished his drink completely before saying: “How long have you lived here by yourself, Charles? Forty years isn’t it, almost exactly to the day. As I recall, it was mid-summer when you first came, and virtually every one of the servants had left by the following December. I wonder why they did leave like that.” He eyed the other obliquely. “Could it have been because of that temper of yours—or was there some other reason?”

“You’re still intent on trying to prove that I’m insane, aren’t you?” The thin, bloodless lips were pursed into a tight line. “I’m not sure why you’re doing it. Either you think that will make things easier for you, or you’re getting to be frightened yourself and you’re deliberately trying to convince yourself. But you saw something and you’re still wondering whether or not it was your imagination.”

“I may have seen something,” admitted the other reluctantly. “But I’m not prepared to believe that it was anything out of the normal. I must confess that I had thought you were alone in this house. Everyone in the village thought that too. But if you aren’t, well that’s your affair entirely. Perhaps you’d like to talk about it.”
Better humour the other
, he thought grimly. Evidently there was something on his mind and if he talked about it, it might help him.

Outside, the thunder rolled and roared savagely, beating like some huge fist against the heavens. An occasional flash of lightning lit the grotesque limbs of the trees beyond the windows as the branches swayed and tossed in some weird devil-dance. With an effort, Calder tore his gaze away and concentrated on what Belstead was saying. The other smiled thinly at him, frowning a little.

“The funny thing is that I never really understood why my father hated me so much. It was almost as if he were insanely jealous of everything I did. I left home when I was eighteen, determined I had to get out on my own, otherwise his will would have dominated mine entirely. He was that kind of man. You may remember him too, even though it was over forty years ago.”

“I do recall that he was determined to have his own way in everything he did,” acknowledged Calder quietly. “But knowing his personality, I hardly think things could have turned out otherwise. He was an extremely strong-willed man. More so than almost anyone I’ve ever met. But I never knew that he hated you.”

“You think that I’m exaggerating somewhat.” Belstead shook his head. “I assure you that I’m not. If anything, I’m understating the position. I was the only child. My mother died when I was seven. I don’t remember much about her. My only impressions of her are of a tall, pale woman who did her best to fall in with my father’s wishes; someone who seemed content to stay in the background, the perfect foil to his own personality. You know, I think that in this world, it can only be the cruel and ruthless people who are ever successful.” He smiled again, weakly. “Perhaps success is the reward for cruelty, who knows? But he was successful. No matter what he did, no matter what he turned his hand to, it was highly successful. He was a very rich man when he died. I’d been in London for a good many years then, only coming back here to see him when I had to. Oh, I know what the people in the village used to say about me behind my back. There goes an ungrateful son who takes everything his father gives and yet gives nothing in return, who squanders every penny of his allowance, a very generous allowance, and yet comes home to see his father only once in two years.” He broke off and ran a finger down the side of his long nose reflectively. “I sometimes wonder what those people would have said if they had only known the truth. They saw only the side of him that he wanted them to see. They didn’t often come into contact with him, as I did before I left home. To them, he was the rich and powerful man who donated huge sums of money for hospitals and schools, who gave money prizes to the pupils, helped them with grants. But that was only money that he was giving away, and he had more than enough of that to spare. He never missed any of it. Perhaps he even thought that the more he gave away, the less there would be for me when he finally died.”

“Aren’t you being a little harsh in your judgement? After all, it’s been more than forty years—”

“You think that’s long enough for hate to die?” blazed the other fiercely. “Real hate, I mean! No, I remember these things only too clearly and as I said before, being here alone in this house for so long has made me see things a lot more clearly than I ever did before.”

“What sort of things?” There was a change in the atmosphere of the room. A change that Calder could feel, but that was extremely hard for him to define.

“I remember coming home once—I think I must have been almost twenty at the time. I caught an earlier train than I usually did and no one was expecting me when I arrived. I’d walked from the station across the fields, because it was such a beautiful afternoon, coming in over the wall at the back and through the gardens. I came over the lawn and through those windows there—at least, I meant to come in that way—but I didn’t.”

“Why on earth not?” Calder felt a strange tightening of the muscles of his chest and he knew that his breathing was a little harsh on the back of his throat. He ought not to be listening to talk such as this, he told himself fiercely. The other had evidently become obsessed by something that had happened all those long years ago, something with probably quite a simple explanation, but his mind had caught hold of it, twisted it, warped it into something far removed from the actual proof, until now he could not get it out of his mind, and it had taken over control of him almost entirely. This was how hate could distort anyone’s outlook, if one allowed it to take a tight hold.

Belstead paused for a long moment, then leaned forward holding out his skinny hands to the blaze as though for warmth. There was a curious expression on his wizened features and his eyes seemed brighter than usual, with something lurking in their depths that Calder had never seen before and which made him feel a little afraid.

“I can remember it all so clearly as if it were yesterday and not almost forty-five years ago. I knew there was someone in the library before I reached the windows, because I heard the mutter of voices as I crossed the lawn. But I thought it was just father and the housekeeper having one of their never-ending arguments. She was a domineering woman too and they clashed far too often for my liking. But as I got closer, I realised that it wasn’t the housekeeper, although I could hear my father’s voice quite plainly. It was a man’s voice I heard talking to him, but one that, at the moment, I didn’t recognise, although it was familiar. For some reason that I can’t explain, I felt scared. That voice was one I had heard before, though why it should have frightened me like that I didn’t know as I stood out there on the lawn, behind the bushes, hidden from them, wondering whether or not I ought to cough and make my presence known. You might think that was making a mountain out of a molehill, but I’ve already explained that my father hated me, he had a really violent temper when he was roused. So I crept forward quite slowly, without making a sound, and peered into the windows. I could see the whole of this room quite clearly. As I said, it was a fine, sunny afternoon, and the sunlight came directly into the library at that time of the day.”

“Go on,” prompted Calder quietly. “If you want to get this off your chest, it will do you good to talk to me. After all, what is a friend for?” The words were more reassuring than the tone of the voice.

“My father was there, standing in the middle of the room. There were three other people with him, not one as I thought. They were standing around the room, watching him. He was—” the other broke off a moment as though finding it difficult to continue, then he swallowed jerkily and went on: “He was standing inside some strange markings that had been drawn on the floor, where the big carpet had been rolled back out of the way.”

“Strange markings?” echoed Calder. “What sort of markings were they? Do you know?”

“I didn’t then. But I do now.” The other spoke with a dark significance. “He had drawn a circle inside a five-sided figure and there were small metal cups, they looked like silver, at each point of the pentagon. In the sunlight, I could see that there was some kind of clear liquid in them.”

The shiver inside Calder’s body grew a little, became more insistent. “Are you absolutely certain about this?” he asked hoarsely. “You didn’t imagine it all?”

“Imagine it? Jeremiah, you don’t imagine things like that. I’d never seen anything like it before and if it had been nothing more than that, it would have stuck in my mind. I assure you.”