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

The transmitter, however, now seemed to be working independent of his will. Now it tracked back six hundred yards or so up the road, to a junction with a wider street at the right. Taylor realized that something important was to follow. It moved up the branching street, and he saw that the buildings ended a few yards further on; from there a rougher path stretched to the edge of a pit, much larger than the first. The transmitter moved forward, stopping at the edge of the buildings. He willed it to go closer, but it remained in that position. When he persisted, a loud noise made him start; it was only part of the transmission — not like a voice, it resembled glass surfaces vibrating together, but forming definite patterns. Perhaps it was a voice, but its message was meaningless — what did xada-hgla soron signify? Whatever it meant, the phrase was repeated seven times, then the image disappeared.

BafHed, he rose. He had been unable to glean any further information from the discs. The larger pit was further, but it would contain more mineral; and the buildings did not crowd so close to it, hence the danger of interruption was less likely. He decided to head for it.

When he reached the junction, he hesitated briefly, then remembering the squat black towers which had encircled the nearer mine, he turned off to the right. His shoes clanked on the black pavement and crunched on the rocks of the continuing path. The beam of the torch trembled on the crumbling rim, and then he stood on the edge of the pit. He looked down.

At first he saw nothing. Dust-motes rising from below tinted the beam a translucent green, but it showed nothing except a wavering disc of black rock on the opposite wall. The disc grew and dimmed as it descended, but dim as it was it finally outlined the ledge outcropping from the rock, and what stood upon it.

There is nothing horrible about a group of tall deserted pyramids, even when those pyramids are constructed of a pale green material which glitters and seems to move in the half-light. Something else caused Taylor to stare in fascination; the way the emerald cones were drinking in the light from his torch, while the bulb dimmed visibly. He peered downward, awaiting something which he felt must come.

The torch-bulb flickered and went out, leaving him in total darkness.

In the blackness he unscrewed the end of the torch and let the dead battery clatter far down the rock surface. Drawing the last battery from his pocket, he fumbled blindly with the pieces of metal, squinting into the darkness, and saw the torch in his hands. It was faintly limned by the glow from beneath, growing clearer as he watched. He could see the distant side of the pit now, and, noting the grating metallic sound which had begun below him, he looked down into the green light.

Something was climbing toward him up the rock face; something which slithered up from the rock ledge, glowing greenly. It was vast and covered with green surfaces which ground together, but it had a shape — and that was what made Taylor flee from the miles-deep pit, clattering down the ebon pavements, not switching on the torch until he collided with a black spire beyond the widening radius of the green light, not stopping until he reached the frustum-shaped building he remembered and the tower near it. He threw himself up the outer steps recklessly, crawled on all fours and swung from the catwalks, and reached the last roof.

He glanced across the tower roofs once, then heaved open the trapdoor and plunged down the unlit steps, through the searing barrier across the passage and clattered down into the blinding daylight, half-fell down the Devil’s Steps and reached the car. Somewhere what he had glimpsed at the last was still moving — that green-radiating shape which heaved and pulsed above the steeples, toppling them and putting forth glowing arms to engulf fleeing dwarved forms…

When passers-by telephoned the Brichester police after hearing unusual sounds from a house on South Abbey Avenue, few of the documents in that house had not been destroyed by Taylor. The police called in the Mercy Hill doctors, who could only take him to the hospital. He became violent when they refused to explore the Devil’s Steps, but when they tried to reassure him with promises of exploration he protested so demonstratively that he was removed to the Camside Home for the Mentally Disturbed. There he could only lie repeating feverishly:

"You fools, why don’t you stop them going up the Steps? They’ll be dragged into space — lungs burst — blue faces… And suppose It didn’t destroy the city entirely — suppose It was intelligent? If It knew about the towers into other parts of space, It might find its way through onto the Steps— It’s coming down the stairs through the barrier now— It’ll push through the forest and into the town. Outside the window! It’s rising above the houses! ”

Edward Taylor’s case yet stirs controversy among doctors, and is a subject for exaggerated speculation in Sunday newspaper features. Of course the writers of the latter do not know all the facts; if they did their tone would certainly be different, but the doctors felt it unwise to reveal all that had happened to Taylor.

That is why the X-ray photographs taken of Taylor’s body are carefully restricted to a hospital file. At first glance they would seem normal, and the layman might not notice any abnormality even upon close examination. It takes a doctor to see that the lungs, although they function perfectly, do not resemble in any respect the lungs of a human being.

As a close acquaintance of Stanley Brooke's rather than a friend, Ernest Bond probably noticed his oddities the more readily.

These oddities became apparent soon after Brooke learned that he was dying of cancer. First he sent out to the libraries for medical books and journals, in an obvious attempt to find some cure the doctors had overlooked. Then, when he found no solace in orthodox medicine, he began to search volumes of faith-healing, and Bond realised how desperate he was becoming. It was not until the final phase that Bond began to worry; but he was disturbed by Brooke's quest through ancient grimoires for some answer. He watched Brooke slide gradually into depression, and knew of nothing he could do to help.

He was all the more surprised, therefore, when he arrived at Brooke's house one afternoon in response to a call, and found the owner sitting up in bed smiling.

Brooke placed a bookmark in the yellowed volume he had been reading, and put it down beside him. 'Sit down, Bond, sit down,' he grinned. 'I'm afraid I didn't ask you round just for your company — there's some business we have to discuss, but I told you that on the 'phone.'

'Yes — well, what can I do for you?'

'I want to dictate a will,' Brooke told him.

Bond wondered if the man's condition had brought on amnesia. 'But you've already made one.'

He had indeed made a will, and at his death five people would receive an appreciable legacy. His three sisters and his brother would come into a few thousand pounds each — while Emily, one of the sisters, and his niece Pamela, who had insisted on being his housekeeper for some years, would also come into possession of the large house. Strangely, Brooke was notoriously mean, and remarked that the vultures could pick up what they liked once he was dead, but he could not afford to be generous while alive.

'I know I've already made one,' he said impatiently. 'My mind hasn't gone yet, you know. I want to make a new one. The people next door are going to act as witnesses — they're probably downstairs now. It's completely different from the old one — you see, I've found out something—'