Imagination, yes. And yet Scott was not quite sure. There was ‘something in the air’, a feeling of impending — strangeness — hard to define.
“Come on, son,” he said, shaking off his mood. “Let’s go.”
He took the boy’s hand. “Let’s see if we can find your dad. He’s probably rushing about right now wondering what’s become of you.” He shook his head in feigned defeat and said: “I don’t know — ten o’clock at night, just going off duty — and you have to walk in on me!”
“Ten o’clock — already?” The boy looked up into Scott’s face with eyes wider and more frightened than ever. “Then we only have half an hour!”
“Eh?” the policeman frowned again as they passed out into the London street (or was it ‘Mondon’, Scott wondered with a mental grin). “Half an hour? What happens at half past ten, son? Do you turn into a pumpkin or something?” His humour was lost on his small charge.
“I mean the lights!” the boy answered, in what Scott took to be exasperation. “That’s when the lights go out. At half past ten they put the lights out.”
“They do?” the sergeant had given up trying to penetrate the boy’s fertile but decidedly warped imagination. “Why’s that, I wonder?” (Let the kid ramble on; it was better than tears at any rate.)
“Don’t you know anything?” the youngster seemed half astonished, half-unbelieving, almost as if he thought Scott was pulling his leg.
“No,” the sergeant returned, “I’m just a stupid copper! But come on — where did you give your father the slip? You said you passed Woolworths getting to the police station. Well, Woolworths is down this way, near the tube.” He looked at the boy sharply in mistaken understanding. “You didn’t get lost on the tube, did you? Lots of kids do when it’s busy.”
“The Tube?” Scott sensed that the youngster spoke the words in capitals — and yet it was only a whisper. He had to hold on tight as the boy strained away from him in something akin to horror. “No one goes down in The Tube any more, except—” He shuddered.
“Yes?” Scott pressed, interested in this particular part of the boy’s fantasy despite himself and the need, now, to have done with what would normally be a routine job. “Except who?”
“Not who,” the boy told him, clutching his hand tighter. “Not who, but—”
“But?” again, patiently, Scott prompted him.
“Not who but what!”
“Well, go on,” said the sergeant, sighing, leading the way down the quiet, half-deserted street towards Woolworths. “What, er, goes down in the tube?”
“Why, Tubers, of course!” Again there was astonishment in the youngster’s voice, amazement at Scott’s obvious deficiency in general knowledge. “Aren’t you Mondoners thick!” It was a statement of fact, not a question.
“Right,” said Scott, not bothering to pursue the matter further, seeing the pointlessness of questioning an idiot. “We’ve passed Woolworths — now where?”
“Over there, I think, down that street. Yes! — that’s where I lost my father — down there!”
“Come on,” Scott said, leading the boy across the road, empty now of all but the occasional car, down into the entrance of the indicated street. In fact it was little more than an alley, dirty and unlighted. “What on earth were you doing down here in the first place?”
“We weren’t down here,” the youngster answered with a logic that made the sergeant’s head spin. “We were in a bright street, with lots of lights. Then I felt a funny buzzing feeling, and … and then I was here! I got frightened and ran.”
At that moment, their footsteps echoing hollowly on the cobbles of the alley, the sergeant felt a weird vibration that began in his feet and travelled up his body to his head, causing a burst of bright, painfully bilious stars to flash across his vision — and simultaneous with this peculiar sensation the two turned a corner to emerge with startling abruptness into a much brighter side street.
“That was the buzzing I told you about,” the boy stated unnecessarily.
Scott was not listening. He was looking behind him for the broken electric cable he felt sure must be lying there just inside the alley (the sensation must surely have been caused by a mild electric shock), but he couldn’t see one. Nor could he see anything else that might have explained that tingling, nerve-rasping sensation he had known. For that matter, where was the entrance (or exit) from which he and the boy had just this second emerged?
Where was the alley?
“Dad!” the kid yelled, suddenly tugging himself free to go racing off down the street.
Scott stood and watched, his head starting to throb and the streetlights flaring garishly before his eyes. At the boy’s cry a lone man had turned, started to run, and now Scott saw him sweep the lad up in his arms and wildly hug him, intense and obvious relief showing in his face.
The policeman forgot the problem of the vanishing alley and walked up to them, hands behind his back in the approved fashion, smiling benignly. “Cute lad you’ve got there, sir — but I should curb his imagination if I were you. Why, he’s been telling me a story fit to—”
Then the benign smile slid from his face. “Here!” he cried, his jaw dropping in astonishment.
But despite his exclamation, Scott was nevertheless left standing on his own. For without a word of thanks both man and boy had made off down the street, hands linked, running as if the devil himself was after them!
“Here!” the policeman called again, louder. “Hold on a bit—”
For a moment the pair stopped and turned, then the man glanced at his watch (reminding Scott curiously of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland) before picking up the boy again and holding him close. “Get off the street!” he yelled back at Scott as he once more started to run. “Get off the streets, man.” His white face glanced back and up at the streetlights as he ran, and Scott saw absolute fear shining in his eyes. “It’ll soon be half past ten!”
The policeman was still in the same position, his jaw hanging slack, some seconds later when the figure of the unknown man, again hugging the boy to him, vanished round a distant corner. Then he shrugged his shoulders and tried to pull himself together, setting his helmet more firmly on his aching head.
“Well I’ll be—” he grinned nervously through the throb of his headache. “Snarker’s son, indeed!”
Alone, now, Scott’s feeling of impending — something — returned, and he noticed suddenly just how deserted the street was. He had never known London so quiet before. Why, there wasn’t a single soul in sight!
And a funny thing, but here he was, only a stone’s throw from his station, where he’d worked for the last fifteen years of his life, and yet — damned if he could recognise the street! Well, he knew he’d brought the boy down a dark, cobbled alley from the right, and so …
He took the first street on the right, walking quickly down it until he hit another street he knew somewhat better—
—Or did he?
Yes, yes, of course he did. The street was deserted now, quite empty, but just over there was good old …
Good old Wolwords!
Lights blazed and burst into multicoloured sparks before Scott’s bilious eyes. His mind spun wildly. He grabbed hold of a lamppost to steady himself and tried to think the thing out properly.
It must be a new building, that place — yes, that had to be the answer. He’d been doing a lot of desk-duties lately, after all. It was quite possible, what with new techniques and the speed of modern building, that the store had been put up in just a few weeks.
The place didn’t look any too new, though …
Scott’s condition rapidly grew worse — understandably in the circumstances, he believed — but there was a tube station, nearby. He decided to take a train home. He usually walked the mile or so to his flat, the exercise did him good; but tonight he would take a train, give himself a rest.
He went dizzily down one flight of steps, barely noticing the absence of posters and the unke
mpt, dirty condition of the underground. Then, as he turned a corner, he came face to face with a strange legend, dripping in red paint on the tiled wall:
ROT THE TUBERS!
Deep creases furrowed the sergeant’s forehead as he walked on, his footsteps ringing hollowly in the grimy, empty corridors, but his headache just wouldn’t let him think clearly.
Tubers, indeed! What the hell — Tubers … ?
Down another flight of steps he went, to the deserted ticket booths, where he paused to stare in disbelief at the naked walls of the place and the dirt- and refuse-littered floor. For the first time he really saw the condition of the place. What had happened here? Where was everyone?
From beyond the turnstiles he heard the rumble of a distant train and the spell lifted a little. He hurried forward then, past the empty booths and through the unguarded turnstiles, dizzily down one more flight of concrete steps, under an arch and out on to an empty platform. Not even a drunk or a tramp shared the place with him. The neons flared hideously, and he put out a hand against the naked wall for support.
Again, through the blinding flashes of light in his head, he noticed the absence of posters: the employment agencies, the pretty girls in lingerie, the film and play adverts, spectacular films and avant-garde productions — where in hell were they all?
Then, as for the first time he truly felt upon his spine the chill fingers of a slithering horror, there came the rumble and blast of air that announced the imminent arrival of a train — and he smelled the rushing reek of that which most certainly was not a train!
Even as he staggered to and fro on the unkempt platform, reeling under the fetid blast that engulfed him, the Tuber rushed from out its black hole — a Thing of crimson viscosity and rhythmically flickering cilia.
Sergeant Scott gave a wild shriek as a rushing feeler swept him from the platform and into the soft, hurtling plasticity of the thing — another shriek as he was whisked away into the deep tunnel and down into the bowels of the earth. And seconds later the minute hand of the clock above the empty, shuddering platform clicked down into the vertical position.
Ten-thirty — and all over Mondon, indeed throughout the length and breadth of Eenland, the lights went out.
Rising With Surtsey
This one goes a long way back. It was written in December ’67, revised in ’68, and got a further (slight) revision when editor James Turner wanted to use it in an updated, excellent Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, 1990. Love craft’s influence is very strong here, but since this was only my tenth story ever, from my very first year of writing, that’s hardly surprising. I think it was also my most ambitious story to date: a homage, most certainly, to Lovecraft, but also to August Derleth of Arkham House, without whose dedication HPL might have languished in the crumbling pages of ancient copies of Weird Tales forever. Wherefore, what would the story be without its purple prose?
One last thing:
Unlike Gustaf Johansen’s narrative concerning R’lyeh’s upheaval from the sea floor, the details of Surtsey’s rising are very well documented…
It appears that with the discovery of a live coelacanth — a fish thought to have been extinct for over seventy millions of years — we may have to revise our established ideas of the geological life spans of certain aquatic animals …
—LINKAGE’S
WONDERS OF THE DEEP
Surname: Haughtree
Christian Names: Phillip
Date of Birth: 2 Dec 1927
Age (years): 35
Place of Birth: Old Beldry, Yorks
Address: Not applicable
Occupation: Author
WHO STATES: (Let here follow the body of the statement)
I have asked to be cautioned in the usual manner but have been told that in view of my alleged condition it is not necessary … The implication is obvious, and because of it I find myself obliged to begin my story in the following way: I must clearly impart to the reader — before advising any unacquainted perusal of this statement — that I was never a fanatical believer in the supernatural. Nor was I ever given to hallucinations or visions, and I have never suffered from my nerves or been persecuted by any of the mental illnesses. There is no record to support any evidence of madness in any of my ancestors — and Dr. Stewart was quite wrong to declare me insane.
It is necessary that I make these points before permitting the reading of this, for a merely casual perusal would soon bring any conventionally minded reader to the incorrect conclusion that I am either an abominable liar or completely out of my mind, and I have little wish to reinforce Dr. Stewart’s opinions…
Yet I admit that shortly after midnight on the 15th November 1963 the body of my brother did die by my hand; but at the same time I must clearly state that I am not a murderer. It is my intention in the body of this statement — which will of necessity be long, for I insist I must tell the whole story — to prove conclusively my innocence. For, indeed, I am guilty of no heinous crime, and that act of mine which terminated life in the body of my brother was nothing but the reflex action of a man who had recognized a hideous threat to the sanity of the whole world. Wherefore, and in the light of the allegation of madness levelled against me, I must now attempt to tell this tale in the most detailed fashion; I must avoid any sort of garbled sequence and form my sentences and paragraphs with meticulous care, refraining from even thinking on the end of it until that horror is reached …
Where best to start?
If I may quote Sir Amery Wendy-Smith:
There are fabulous legends of Star-Born creatures who inhabited this Earth many millions of years before Man appeared and who were still here, in certain black places, when he eventually evolved. They are, I am sure, to an extent here even now.
It may be remembered that those words were spoken by the eminent antiquary and archeologist before he set out upon his last, ill-fated trip into the interior of Africa. Sir Amery was hinting, I know, at the same breed of hell-spawned horror which first began to make itself apparent to me at that ghastly time eighteen months ago; and I take this into account when I remember the way in which he returned, alone and raving, from that dark continent to civilization.
At that time my brother Julian was just the opposite of myself, insofar as he was a firm believer in dark mysteries. He read omnivorously of fearsome books uncaring whether they were factual — as Frazer’s Golden Bough and Miss Murray’s Witch-Cult — or fanciful — like his collection of old, nigh-priceless volumes of Weird Tales and similar popular magazines. Many friends, I imagine, will conclude that his original derangement was due to this unhealthy appetite for the monstrous and the abnormal. I am not of such an opinion, of course, though I admit that at one time I was.
Of Julian: he had always been a strong person physically, but had never shown much strength of character. As a boy he had had the size to easily take on any bully — but never the determination. This was also where he failed as a writer, for while his plots were good he was unable to make his characters live. Being without personality himself, it was as though he was only able to reflect his own weaknesses into his work. I worked in partnership with him, filling in plots and building life around his more or less clay figures. Up until the time of which I write, we had made a good living and had saved a reasonable sum. This was just as well, for during the period of Julian’s illness, when I hardly wrote a word, I might well have found myself hard put to support both my brother and myself. Fortunately, though sadly, he was later taken completely off my hands; but that was after the onset of his trouble …
It was in May 1962 that Julian suffered his actual breakdown, but the start of it all can be traced back to the 2nd of February of that year — Candlemas — a date which I know will have special meaning to anyone with even the slightest schooling in the occult. It was on that night that he dreamed his dream of titanic basalt towers — dripping with slime and ocean ooze and fringed with great sea-mats — their weirdly proportioned bases buried in grey-green m
uck and their non-Euclidean-angled parapets fading into the watery distances of that unquiet submarine realm.
At the time we were engaged upon a novel of eighteenth-century romance, and I remember we had retired late. Still later I was awakened by Julian’s screams, and he roused me fully to listen to an hysterical tale of nightmare. He babbled of what he had seen lurking behind those monolithic, slimy ramparts, and I remember remarking — after he had calmed himself somewhat — what a strange fellow he was, to be a writer of romances and at the same time a reader and dreamer of horrors. But Julian was not so easily chided, and such was his fear and loathing of the dream that he refused to lie down again that night but spent the remaining hours of darkness sitting at his typewriter in the study with every light in the house ablaze.
One would think that a nightmare of such horrible intensity might have persuaded Julian to stop gorging himself with his nightly feasts of at least two hours of gruesome reading. Yet, if anything, it had the opposite effect — but now his studies were all channelled in one certain direction. He began to take a morbid interest in anything to do with oceanic horror, collecting and avidly reading such works as the German Unter-Zee Kulten, Gaston le Fe’s Dwellers in the Depths, Gantley’s Hydrophinnae, and the evil Cthaat Aquadingen by an unknown author. But it was his collection of fictional books, which in the main claimed his interest. From these he culled most of his knowledge of the Cthulhu Mythos — which he fervently declared was not myth at all — and often expressed a desire to see an original copy of the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, as his own copy of Feery’s Notes was practically useless, merely hinting at what Julian alleged Alhazred had explained in detail.
In the following three months our work went badly. We failed to make a deadline on a certain story and, but for the fact that our publisher was a personal friend, might have suffered a considerable loss financially. It was all due to the fact that Julian no longer had the urge to write. He was too taken up with his reading to work and could no longer even be approached to talk over story plots. Not only this, but that fiendish dream of his kept returning with ever increasing frequency and vividness. Every night he suffered those same silt-submerged visions of obscene terrors the like of which could only be glimpsed in such dark tomes as were his chosen reading. But did he really suffer? I found myself unable to make up my mind. For as the weeks passed, my brother seemed to become all the more uneasy and restless by day, whilst eagerly embracing the darkening skies of evening and the bed in which he sweated out the horrors of hideous dream and nightmare …