The Compleat Crow (18 page)

“13th. That’s it, then. Tonight we’ll have it out in the open. I mean, what good’s a bloody psychiatrist who insists I’m perfectly well when I know I’m ill? That mirror’s behind it all! ‘Face your problems,’ the fool said, ‘and if you do they cease to bother you.’ That’s what I’ll do, then, tonight.

“13th. Night. There, I’ve sat myself down and it’s eleven already. I’ll wait ’til the stroke of midnight and then I’ll take the cover off the glass and we’ll see what we’ll see. God! That a man like me should twitch like this! Who’d believe that only a few months ago I was steady as a rock? And all for a bloody mirror. I’ll just have a smoke and a glass. That’s better. Twenty minutes to go; good—soon be over now—p’raps tonight I’ll get a bit of sleep for a change! The way the place goes suddenly quiet, as though the whole house were
waiting
for something to happen. I’m damned glad I sent Johnson home. It’d be no good to let him see me looking like this. What a God-awful state to get oneself into! Five minutes to go. I’m tempted to take the cover off the mirror right now! There—midnight! Now we’ll have it!”

And that was all there was!

I read it through again, slowly, wondering what there was in it which so
alarmed
me. And what a coincidence, I thought, reading that last line for the second time; for even as I did so the distant clock, muffled somewhere by the city’s mists, chimed out the hour of twelve.

I thank God, now, that he sent that far-off chime to my ears. I am sure it could only have been an act of Providence which caused me to glance round upon hearing it. For that still glass—that mirror which is quiet as the crystal pool of Yith-Shesh all the hours of day—
was still no longer!

A
thing
, a bubbling blasphemous shape from lunacy’s most hellish nightmare, was squeezing its flabby pulp out through the frame of the mirror into my room—
and it wore a face where no face ever should have been.

I do not recall moving—opening my desk drawer and snatching out that which lay within—yet it seems I must have done so. I remember only the deafening blasts of sound from the bucking, silver-plated revolver in my clammy hand; and above the rattle of sudden thunder, the whine of flying fragments and the shivering of glass as the hell-forged bronze frame buckled and leapt from the wall.

I remember, too, picking up the strangely
twisted
silver bullets from my Boukhara rug. And then I must have fainted.

The next morning I dropped the shattered fragments of the mirror’s glass overboard from the rail of the Thames Ferry and I melted down the frame to a solid blob and buried it deep in my garden. I burned the diary and scattered its ashes to the wind. Finally, I saw my doctor and had him prescribe a sleeping-draft for me. I knew I was going to need it.

I have said the thing had a face.

Indeed, atop the glistening, bubbling mass of that hell-dweller’s bulk there
was
a face. A
composite
face of which the two halves did not agree!
For one of them was the immaculately cruel visage of an ancient Queen of Egypt; and the other was easily recognizable—from photographs I had seen in the newspapers—as the now anguished and lunatic features of a certain lately vanished explorer!

*
The one and only “solo” appearance of Henri-Laurent de Marigny.
[back]

It was the contents of a letter from Chandler Davies, the weird-artist, commenting upon the negative effect which my short story
Yegg-ha’s Realm
had had on him, which determined me to invite him round to Blowne House. Not that I grieved to any great extent over Mr. Davies’ adverse comments—you can never please everyone—but I definitely disagreed with his expounded argument. He had had it that Mythological-Fantasy was ‘out;’ that the Cthulhu Mythos’ fabled lands and creatures and Cimmeria’s scintillating citadels and dark demons should have been allowed to die a sad but certain death along with their respective originators, and that constant culling from those tales—the brain children of my own, not to mention many another author’s, literary progenitors—was weakening the impact of the original works. Nor, apparently, had my story—admittedly a Lovecraftian piece; set during the time of Rome’s rule over England and involving the worship of an “outside God”—irritated him in this respect alone. What seemed to have annoyed Mr. Davies especially was the fact that I had portrayed “so thoroughly unbelievable a God” as existing in such a well-known period of England’s history that even an average student of our country’s antiquities could hardly miss the obvious impossibility of my tale.

I was pleased that Mr. Davies had written directly to me and not to the letters section of
Grotesque
, in which magazine my tale had originally appeared, for then I would have been forced to take retaliatory measures which would undoubtedly have caused great tidal-waves of unwanted activity on many a scientific beach. Obviously the artist was not aware that all my stories have at least a tenuous basis in established fact, some more definitely than others, and that I have never chronicled anything which I believe could not possibly have happened or which has not, in some way or other, directly involved myself.

Anyway, Mr. Davies accepted my invitation and braved the curious aura of foreboding which surrounds Blowne House to visit me one Sunday afternoon some weeks ago. It was the first time he had ever set foot inside my abode and I noted with satisfaction the way in which his eyes roved enviously over the contents of my amply stocked book-shelves.

Briefly fingering the spine of an original copy of Geoffrey’s
People of the Monolith
, he remarked upon my extreme good fortune at owning so many scarce volumes and read off some of their titles as he scanned them. His short monologue included Feery’s
Original Notes on the Necronomicon
, the abhorrent
Cthaat Aquadingen
, a literally priceless
Cultes des Goules
and many other similarly
outré
works including such anthropological source books as
The Golden Bough
and Miss Murray’s
Witch Cult
. I made a point of bringing to his attention the fact that I also owned a translated copy of Lollius Urbicus’ little known
Frontier Garrison
, circa AD 138, and took the book down from its shelf before pouring my guest a welcoming brandy.

“I take it that book contains the item of supporting evidence which you mentioned in your letter, Mr. Crow? That being the case I think it’s only fair to warn you from the beginning that I can’t put much stock in anything Urbicus says; though I’ll admit that his description of the temple to Mithras at Barrburgh was pretty accurate.”

Appreciating the way in which my obviously erudite critic was shaping up, I countered his exploratory thrust by smiling and telling him: “No, the book merely contains a few additional fragments of interest in connection with my actual
evidence
—which is of an entirely different nature.”

“I don’t want you to get me wrong, Mr. Crow,” he answered, taking out a cigarette and settling himself more comfortably in his chair in preparation for the more strenuous battle to come, “as an entertainment your story was very good—excellent—and any casual reader of such tales must surely have experienced a definite shudder at some of the ‘shock’ paragraphs which you so successfully employed; but to have set the thing in a period of which we’re so historically and archaeologically ‘sure’—the same period, I note, in which Old Urbicus scribbled his notes for that book of yours—was a mistake the story could well have done without. You see, I’m a collector—a
gourmet
of such tales, you could say—and while I don’t wish to be offensive I must admit that blunders like yours irk me considerably…” He sipped at his brandy.

While Mr. Davies had been speaking, I had carefully opened
Frontier Garrison
to a previously marked page and as soon as he was done I turned the book around and slid it over the table separating us so that he could read the selected paragraph. Smiling, he did so, though I thought his smile was just a trifle too sarcastic; and sure enough, when he was through, he closed the book with a flourish which indicated complete rejection.

“I have also read Plato on
Atlantis
and Borellus on, er,
revivication
?—No, Mr. Crow, Lollius Urbicus’ account of the death of Yegg-ha at the swords of a centuria of fear-frenzied Roman soldiers doesn’t impress me at all. I’m sorry.”

“I rather fancy your dismissal of Plato and Borellus as a bit too perfunctory, Mr. Davies! I can only suspect that your appraisal of their works, to say nothing of the work of Lollius Urbicus, is undertaken with the same attitude of mind with which the Inquisition viewed the work of Galileo Galilei; and, of course, if Sayce hadn’t unearthed their remains all over Asia Minor and Northern Syria you’d probably still be denying that the Hittites ever existed!” I smiled.

“Touché!”
he said. “But now you’re talking, Mr. Crow!
Remains
, you said. Now, that’s it
exactly
! After all, remains are proof! But tell me please—what remains are there to show that that abominable invention of Urbicus’ ever existed?”

“You think he created Yegg-ha himself then?” I asked. “You believe that the featureless, ten-foot-tall monstrosity he mentioned in his notes was purely a figment of his own imagination?”

“Oh, no. I wouldn’t be so presumptuous. Urbicus probably got the idea from local legends or fairy tales. Later, rather than write off the ignominious loss of a half-centuria of soldiers to a barbarian attack, he attributed their annihilation to this giant, faceless God…”

“Hmmm—clever,” I answered, “but how about the communal grave recently unearthed at Briddock Fort—with forty-eight fantastically mutilated Roman skeletons haphazardly piled one upon the other, some still encased in their armour, as if buried in great haste?”

That shook him a bit. “I’d forgotten that,” he admitted. “But for God’s sake, man—there must have been thousands of small skirmishes which never got chronicled! You see, that’s the whole point, Mr. Crow; you talk about these things in exactly the same way in which you wrote about them in that damned story of yours—as though you believe in them conclusively! As though you actually believe that a great, murderous, lunatic thing was called up from hell by the barbarians to do battle with the Romans! As though you have definite proof—which you haven’t. No, you shouldn’t have done your story as an historical document at all. God only knows how many poor, deluded little lore-swallowers you’ll have galloping all over Briddock and Housesteads, awesomely trembling at the thought that they’re perhaps treading the same ground upon which the Romans did fearsome battle with the hideous Yegg-ha!”

While he sat there fuming I poured more brandy into his glass and grinned at him. “Well, I’ve obviously made a literary enemy! I’m sorry about that because it was my intention to ask you to illustrate my next book. But anyway, tell me—have you ever seen that horrible, ten-foot chunk of granite statuary in the Roman Antiquities section of the British Museum?”

“Yes, I have; from Limestone Bank, I believe. A stubby-winged thing much similar to the God in your story, with defaced features and…” He checked himself. “Just what are you getting at?”

“Try to think, Mr. Davies—didn’t you find it funny that the
features
of that statue were so cleverly, so
smoothly
, er, defaced? Why! If one looks at it at all closely it almost appears as though
it wasn’t intended to have any features…
”

He choked over his brandy. I reached for his glass and filled it again as he sputtered and coughed, dabbing at his lips with a handkerchief, getting himself under control.

“There you go again! Of all the prepos—”

“I’ve been unfair, Mr. Davies.” I shut him off. “I’ve kept you in suspense too long and you’re losing your patience. Drink your brandy…”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Drink your brandy,” I repeated. “You’ll need it.” I opened my writing cabinet and took out an object cowled unconventionally in a tea-cosy. I balanced it upon the table. Then I pointed to the book in front of my bewildered visitor and said: “Page thirty-four, second paragraph…” As Mr. Davies fumblingly, suspiciously found the page and paragraph I stroked my item of supporting evidence beneath its tea-cosy cover.

Eventually he looked up from the book. “It relates to a walk Urbicus took over the countryside shortly after his men allegedly disposed of your monster. Six of his best men went with him. So what?”

“He was looking for a place to bury something, and needed those men to carry it,” I explained. “He wanted it hidden so that the barbarians wouldn’t be able to use whatever powers of, er—what was that word you used?—
revivication
they might have possessed upon it.”

Mr. Davies opened his mouth to stutter a denial but I cut him off. “You see, I’ve examined the whole length of Hadrian’s Wall in that area, between Housesteads and Briddock, and eventually I found the right spot. I’m quite a little archaeologist, you know, but even if I hadn’t been, Urbicus’ description,”—I nodded at the book which he had put down,—“as with his description of the temple at Barrburgh, fitted the spot exactly. Surprisingly enough, the countryside hasn’t changed all that much in eighteen centuries; all I had to do was look for the place where
I
would have put the body if I’d been Urbicus. It took me five weeks but I did eventually find it.”

“What on Earth are you talking—”

I lifted the tea-cosy and passed the football-sized item it concealed over the table for Mr. Davies’ incredulous inspection.

I made him promise to keep it to himself; I cannot say I fancy the idea of crowds of boffins disturbing my privacy, and I certainly would never part with that item of supporting evidence. Not only that but he promised to illustrate my next book.

There are many
outré
items in Blowne House; a weird, four-handed clock which ticks all out of rhyme, the
Cthaat Aquadingen
with its nameless binding, a crystal-ball which is so disturbing to look upon that I have to keep it locked away—and many others equally as strange as these. But I am particularly proud of my paperweight—though I will admit it does seem peculiar to put such an odd item to such a use. You see, it’s a rather large,
socketless
skull…

With wire hooks screwed into them the wings make excellent coat-hangers.