Robert Price: Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos

I waited no longer. I knew he meant what he said. With trembling hand I raised the revolver and shot him in the temple. My last conscious effort was a mad scramble down the twisting stair. I stumbled and fell into a pit of darkness.

Hours later I awoke and groped my way through the house, staggered out into the moonlight. My mind was blank; I could remember very little. The terrible events were a chaotic jumble of horror. As I ran I kept looking over my shoulder, staring at the peak of the dark gable near my friend’s upstairs room.

I have confessed, and I suppose the judge and jury will hang me. I really can’t blame them. They would never understand why I killed him. And now I too must pay with my life for meddling in those forbidden realms of nightmare.

All of Baldwyn’s manuscripts were burned — including the copy of Yergler’s evil book — by a special court order. It seems the neighbors heard the screams and the savage music.

And now another terror haunts me. Often in my dreams I see a nebulous cloud of utter blackness dropping from the nighted sky to engulf me. And in the center of that nimbus I see a face, a hideous distortion of something that once was human and sane — the face of my friend; pitted and burned, even as the grisly face of Yergler’s must have been.

Miss Emily Rhodes had been in London a little more than a year when she decided to give up her apartment and rent a house. The apartment was really quite comfortable but, as Miss Rhodes put it, she was tired of having her paints and easel next to her teacups. Accordingly she turned to the advertisements in the Times.

In April she found what she was looking for. The advertisement read:

TO LET: On Haney Lane. Near Knightsbridge Station. 2 storeys, 12 rooms, including cnsrvtry and aq. Completely furnished. Longeway and Longeway, agents.

She read the advertisement a second time. The conservatory she could turn into a studio and sounded ideal, but what in the world was an aq? The two letters meant nothing to her.

Miss Rhodes was thirty-two. A tall angular woman with black hair and metal grey eyes, she had never married for the simple reason that her painting had occupied too much of her time.

The next day she called at the offices of the agents and was ushered in to see Talbot Longeway, senior partner of the firm, a thin, cadaverous-looking individual with a completely bald pate.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Longeway, “the house on Haney Lane. A very nice bit of property. And furnished, y’know! Would you care to see it?” “First,” replied Miss Rhodes, “would you mind telling me what is an aq?

The agent coughed. “I’m afraid that was more or less of a joke on the part of my son who is the junior member of this firm.”

“But what does it mean?”

Talbot Longeway stirred uncomfortably. “The fact is ‘aq’ refers to an aquarium which the former owner had constructed in the library and which has never been removed. It needn’t concern you at all,” he added hastily. “As a matter of fact it’s a rather attractive piece even though, I will admit, excessively large.”

It didn’t concern Miss Rhodes. She told the agent she would like to see the property, whereupon Mr. Longeway called a cab and the two of them drove to the Haney Lane address. Miss Rhodes went through the house with a critical eye. She made certain minor objections — a suspected leak in the roof over the bedroom ceiling, a weakened spoke in the balustrade, a sticky sash weight in one of the dormer windows — all of which the agent agreed to repair. After a little haggling over price, she signed a lease.

The following day Miss Rhodes oversaw the transportation of her paints, canvasses and personal possessions to her new home. Then she dispatched a letter to Edith Halbin, her old friend in Bristol. She had acquired a house, she wrote, and needed someone to occupy it with her. Now there was nothing in the way of Edith’s long-contemplated move to London.

On the twelfth of April Edith Halbin, a gaunt, prematurely grey woman, arrived, together with two portmanteaux, three trunks, a Siamese cat named Kuching, and four kittens.

Miss Rhodes greeted her warmly and proceeded to show her the house. “Of course, it’s much more space than we need,” she said gayly, “but I like breathing room and… Whatever is the matter?”

Just over the threshold of the library, Edith had stopped and stood staring into the center of the room. “What’s that?” she asked.

Miss Rhodes frowned slightly and led the way forward like an unwilling museum guard asked to describe an unpleasant picture. The aquarium was mounted on a low platform and measured nearly ten feet in length, three in width. At first glance, it resembled a sarcophagus of antiquity with ornamental stonework at each corner and eight legs that looked like enormous claws. The glass tank occupying the midsection of this structure was filled to the three-quarters mark with roily water into which Edith Halbin peered now with troubled eyes.

“Do you mean to say fish live in that?” she asked.

Miss Rhodes shook her head. “No, there are no fish. Whoever had this aquarium installed was a conchologist. He wanted to duplicate as closely as possible the natural conditions the specimens are found in.”

“What’s a conchologist?”

“A collector of shells. It’s quite a study, you know. I would have put in fresh water but the valve seems to be stuck.”

Edith Halbin took a step closer. An overpowering smell of putrefaction and stagnant water rose up out of the aquarium and crawled into her nostrils. With one hand she reached for the heavy cover.

“That’s stuck too,” said Miss Rhodes. “I shall have to have a man out to fix the thing.”

In most respects, the house proved to be all that Miss Rhodes had hoped for. The conservatory jutted off from the rear and offered both good lighting and seclusion for her work. The bedrooms were large and airy.

Only the library was a disappointment. The furniture there was heavy and cumbersome and the entire room had an atmosphere of gloom and depression. The door, too, a heavy oak affair, persisted in squeaking no matter how much oil was applied to the hinges; it was equipped with a latch that had a trick of locking of its own accord.

A week after they had taken up their joint residence, the two women had their first visitor. Answering the door, they found themselves confronted by a middle-aged man with a bristly moustache, greyish temples, and pale eyes behind huge bone-rimmed spectacles.

“I believe this is yours,” he said without preamble, handing across a very wet and bedraggled cat.

“Kuching! Wherever have you been?” cried Edith Halbin.

“She was on my roof and couldn’t get down,” explained the man. “I’m your neighbor — Lucius Bates.”

While Edith took charge of the Siamese, Miss Rhodes thanked their visitor and asked him in to tea. She led the way to the library which seemed the most masculine room of the house.

“I see you’ve still got the aquarium,” Lucius Bates said some time later. “If I were you, I’d have that thing taken out of here.”

Miss Rhodes began to pour the tea.

“It takes up too much room and it’s an ugly piece at best,” he continued. “And personally I don’t care too much for its contents.” “You mean the shells?”

Bates nodded. “They were collected, you know, by Horatio Lear, the former owner of this house. He died a year ago.”

Edith Halbin, who had finished drying the Siamese with a cloth, looked up.

“Is that the Lear who was famous for his deep sea work?”

“Yes, in a diving bell. He explored the Senarbin Deep off the coast of Haiti. He was a conchologist, too, and brought up some rare shells from the ocean floor.”