Ramsey Campbell - The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

That chase must have resembled a nightmare — the slippery cobbles of the watersoaked street flashing beneath their feet, the antique buildings reeling and toppling on either side, and the flopping colossus always fleeing before them. And so the infamous building on Riverside Alley was passed, and the nightmarish procession burst out on the bank of the river.

The third member of the party had been staring fixedly at the point at which they emerged, and so saw them immediately. He let in the clutch of the lorry in whose cab he sat, and watched in the rearview mirror while the two manoeuvred the thing into the right position. Perhaps it sensed their purpose; at any rate, there was a hideous period when the being made rushes in every direction. But finally the man in the truck saw that it was in the correct position. They could not aim for the head-organ of the being, for the flesh of the head was strangely opaque, as if the opacity could be controlled at will; but a bullet in the body paralysed it, as Chesterton had deduced it would. Then the lorry-driver moved a control in the cab, and the crucial act was performed.

Upon the paralysed body of the river-creature poured a stream of fast-hardening concrete. There was a slight convulsive movement below the surface, suppressed as Chesterton recommenced the incantation. Then he snatched an iron bar which had been thoughtfully provided, and as quickly as possible carved a replica of that all-imprisoning seal below the bridge upon the semi-solid concrete surface.

Afterwards, Chesterton put forward enough money to have the building firm erect a twenty-foot tower over the spot, carved with replicas of the seal on each side — one never knew what agencies might later attempt to resurrect what they had buried. When the Clotton inhabitants began to trickle back, a chance remark by one of the two builders that more than one being could have escaped caused them to tear down the buildings in the riverside quarter, with Chesterton's approval and aid. They found nothing living, although Phipps' homestead yielded enough objects to drive one of the searchers insane and turn many of the others into hopeless drunkards. It was not so much the laboratory, for the objects in there were largely meaningless to most of the seekers — although there was a large and detailed photograph on the wall, presumably the original of that sketch Chesterton had acquired. But the cellar was much worse. The noises which came from beyond that door in the cellar wall were bad enough, and so were the things which could be seen through the reinforced-glass partition in it; some of the men were extremely disturbed by the steps beyond it, going down into pitch-black waters of terrifying depth. But the man who went mad always swore that a huge black head rose out of the ebon water just at the limit of vision, and was followed by a blackly shining tentacle which beckoned him down to unimaginable sights.

As time passed, the remaining section of Clotton was repopulated, and those who know anything about the period of terror nowadays tend to treat it as an unpleasant occurrence in the past, better not discussed.

Perhaps it ought not to be so treated. Not so long ago two men were fishing in the Ton for salmon, when they came upon something half-submerged in the water. They dragged it out, and almost immediately afterwards poured kerosene on it and set fire to it. One of them soon after became sufficiently drunk to speak of what they found; but those who heard him have never referred to what they heard.

There is more concrete evidence to support this theory. I myself was in Clotton not so long ago, and discovered a pit on a patch of waste ground on what used to be Canning Road, near the river. It must have been overlooked by the searchers, for surely they would have spoken of the roughly-cut steps, each carrying a carven five-pointed sign, which led down into abysmal darkness. God knows how far down they go; I clambered down a little way, but was stopped by a sound which echoed down there in the blackness. It must have been made by water — and I did not want to be trapped by water; but just then it seemed to resemble inhuman voices croaking far away in chorus, like frogs worshipping some swamp-buried monster.

So it is that Clotton people should be wary still near the river and the enigmatic tower, and watch for anything which may crawl out of that opening into some subterranean land of star-born abominations. Otherwise — who knows how soon the earth may return through forgotten cycles to a time when cities were built on the surface by things other than man, and horrors from beyond space walked unrestrained?

Perhaps it would be better if I enjoyed myself as best as possible in the next few hours, but somehow I feel bound to write down some explanation for my friends, even if they will not believe it. After all, I am not really depressed — it is only because I must not be alive after sunset that I will slit my wrists then. Already, certainly, my reader will feel incredulity, but it is quite true that my continued existence might be a danger to the whole human race. But no more — I will tell my story from the beginning.

When drinking I tend to be boastful and intolerant, so that when I stayed in the hotel in the middle of Brichester I resolved to keep a check on myself; to stay away from the bar, if possible. But one of the residents — a middle-aged teacher who read extensively — had heard of Ronald Shea, and quite liked some of my fantasy stories. So it was that he led me into the bar, with promises that he would tell me all the Severn Valley legends which might form plots for future stories. The first few tales served to get me slightly intoxicated, and then he suddenly started on one which did not sound like the usual witch-story. By the end I was forced to admit that it was at least original.

'In the woods towards Goatswood,' my informant began, 'the trees get very thick towards the centre. Of course not too many people go down there — there are too many stories about Goatswood itself to attract outsiders — but there's a clearing in the middle of the forest. It's supposed to have been cleared by the Romans for a temple to some god of theirs, I think the Magna Mater, but I wouldn't know about that. Anyway, sometime in the 1600s what must have been a meteor fell in the clearing one night. There were quite a few peculiar happenings earlier that night — arcs of light across the sky, and the moon turned red, according to books I've seen. The fall of this meteorite was heard for miles around, but nobody went to investigate; there were attempts to get together a search-party in Brichester and Camside, but that petered out.

'Not long after, people began to go there — but not normal people. The local coven made it their meeting-place; on ritual nights they'd consummate the Black Mass there and make blood sacrifices, and before long the country people began to say that the witches didn't even worship Satan any more; they worshipped the meteorite. Of course, the local clergymen said the thing was probably sent from Hell anyway. Nobody could really say they'd seen these rites in the clearing, but a lot of them still said that something came out of the meteor in answer to the witches' prayers.

'Then someone went down to the clearing, long after Matthew Hopkins had found the coven and had them executed. It was a young man who visited the clearing in daylight on a bet. He didn't come back before dark, and the others began to get worried. He didn't return until after daylight the next morning, and by that time he was completely incoherent — ran screaming into Brichester, and they couldn't get anything out of him.'

'That's where it ends, I suppose,' I interrupted. 'Somebody sees a nameless horror and can never tell anyone what he saw.'