The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

The Moon-Lens

Sitting in his office in Mercy Hill hospital, Dr James Linwood read the headline again:

PROMINENT BRICHESTER SURGEON TO ADVOCATE EUTHANASIA AT CONVENTION

…Prominent, eh? And on the front page too! But it was the Brichester Weekly News, of course, and anything local had automatic preference.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it showed five past midnight. Out of habit, he changed his desk calendar from April 2 to April 3, 1961. He leaned back in his desk and considered: should he go home to bed or stay to work on his convention speech? He decided on the latter, and switched on the tape-recorder.

At that moment there came a tap on the door — someone else working late, no doubt. He called out 'Good night,' but the shadow on the frosted glass panel did not move. Dr Linwood stood up and opened the door.

A man he had never seen before was standing outside. The doctor felt somehow instinctively repelled; whether by the man's dirty, ridiculously baggy trousers and long raincoat, or by a faint reptilian odour which he caught, he could not say. The other did not speak — and the silence began to unnerve Dr Linwood.

'Visiting time's over, I'm afraid,' he finally said.

'I'm not a visitor,' said the other in an abnormally deep and slow voice.

'Well, if you're a patient, you want the other side of the building.'

'No, I don't,' contradicted the visitor. 'I want to see you, Dr Linwood — you are the Dr Linwood? The one who's in favour of mercy killing?'

'That's correct,' confirmed the doctor, 'but at this time of night—'

'I want you to kill me,' the other said.

The doctor regarded him carefully, and decided he was not joking. 'I'm sorry — I advocate it, I don't carry it out — not yet, anyway. And I must say that you don't look like a euthanasia case.'

'But surely — if you thought somebody really needed it, you might… do it privately so nobody would know? I'd do it myself, but the thought of pain… I thought maybe an overdose of chloroform—'

'I'm sorry,' repeated the doctor more coldly, 'it's impossible at the moment, and anyway I do not intend it to make suicide legal.'

'But I need it,' insisted the man. 'I have a condition which makes living completely unbearable.'

'Maybe if I examined you—' suggested Dr Linwood.

The visitor shrank away from the doctor's hand. 'You mustn't see — it'd be too much… But perhaps I could convince you. If I can just tell you what's happened to me—'

'I don't really have the time—' protested the doctor, but the other had already pushed into the office and sat down before the desk. Well, perhaps he could use this in his speech to stress his aversion to legalised suicide. He sat down and motioned for the man to begin.

'My name is Roy Leakey,' began the other…

On April 1, 1961, Roy Leakey had set out for Exham. He had already visited all of Brichester's antiquarian bookshops; and, hearing that many fruitful second-hand shops existed in Exham, he decided to explore the town. Few people went there, and there was no direct railway line between the two towns, and no bus route whatever. He disliked train journeys, especially when changing trains was necessary, but here this seemed unavoidable. At the station he learned that only one train left for Exham that day, at 11:30; he would have to change at Goatswood at approximately 12:10 and wait perhaps twenty minutes for the connection.

The train left Lower Brichester station five minutes late and rushed to keep to schedule. Leakey jolted uncomfortably in his seat, staring uninterestedly out of the window. He found nothing interesting in the redbrick houses which rocked by below, advertisements painted in crude white letters on their railway-facing walls, nor even the gentle Cotswold hills which surrounded the line once it escaped the dismal cuttings. Soon the grass on the hills gave way to trees; close bare trunks which huddled closer until the entire landscape was wooded. He saw no houses among the trees, and sensed no life in the woods. Once he thought for a second that he saw a strange grey cone far off in the forest; then it was gone, but the sight filled him with an odd disquiet.

This far the line had been almost straight, except for the slight curves round the hills. Then, about half-an-hour out of Brichester, the train slowed to take a more pronounced bend in the track. Leakey's carriage reached the bend. The left-hand side, where he was sitting, was on the inside of the curve; and as he looked out, for the first time he saw Goatswood.

The impression he got from that first glimpse was of furtiveness. The close-set dull-red roofs, the narrow streets, the encircling forests — all seemed somehow furtive. Then his carriage passed the bend, and the train plunged down again through the bleak woods.

Five minutes later, Leakey watched the last carriage dwindle up the line, then looked about the platform.

Nobody else had alighted at Goatswood, and he could see why. The platform consisted of bare slippery boards, the waiting-room windows were dirty and inscribed with obscenities, the hard wooden seats were unpainted; the whole place seemed dead. Out of habit Leakey approached the stationmaster's office to ask when the connecting train would arrive. The man who appeared repelled him at once; he wore a grotesquely voluminous uniform, and his face was revoltingly goat-like — resembling some medieval woodcut of a satyr, Leakey thought.

'Train won't be along fer quarter of an 'our yet,' said the stationmaster, and went back into his office.

Leakey sat on an unpainted seat and stared over the wooden railing at the street a few yards below. Occasionally a passer-by would glance up, but most merely strolled past without seeing him. It struck Leakey that they were preoccupied; with what he could not know, but everybody who went by had an expectant air.

He grew tired of watching after a few minutes, and looked away over the roofs — to where something towered at the centre of town, between the station and a large hill, bare of trees, which rose behind the town. Leakey could not make it out, for the sunlight reflected dazzlingly from it; but it was shaped rather like a flagpole, with a round object atop it.

Still watching, he was vaguely aware of the stationmaster answering his office telephone, listening and then coming towards him.

"Fraid there won't be a train t'Exham t'day,' the man said behind him. 'Tree's fell an' blocked the line.'

Disappointed, Leakey did not look forward to a sojourn in Goatswood. 'What time's the next one back to Brichester, then?'

'Oh, there's only one t'day, an' that went about 'alf an 'our ago.'

Leakey did not recall passing a train on the opposite line, but at that moment he could only think of being stranded. 'But then — what am I going to do?'

'Only one thing y' can do — Stay at an 'otel in town fer the night.'

To give himself time to think, Leakey left the station and went for a meal at the Station Cafe opposite. The meal — sausage, egg and chips, all over-raw — was barely palatable, but he would not have enjoyed a better meal. The faces of the other customers were too grotesque, and he felt under the bulky suits and long dresses might lie the most revolting deformities. More, for the first time he was served by a waiter wearing gloves — and by what he could make out of the hands under them Leakey thought they were deservingly worn.

At the cash desk, he asked for directions to a hotel where he could spend the night.

'We've only one good hotel in town,' the cashier replied. 'That's in Central Place. No, you wouldn't know where that is; well, it's a square with an island in the middle, and a p — Anyway, you go along Blakedon Street—'

Leakey followed the cashier's directions and approached the town centre. He saw offices, department stores, public houses, cinemas, parked cars, all the attributes of any town centre; but he felt something unusual here — perhaps merely a strengthening of that expectancy he had remarked at the station.

Eventually he reached a large square, read the street sign and saw the neon Central Hotel at the other side. But his attention was immediately drawn to the metal pylon, fifty feet high, which rose from the centre of the square. At the top he saw a large convex lens surrounded by an arrangement of mirrors, and all hinged on a pivot attached to the ground by taut ropes.

Leakey stared at the object for so long that he caught someone watching him. He turned to the watcher and remarked: 'I'm curious because I'm from out of town — do you happen to know what that thing is?'

But the other merely peered at him wordlessly until Leakey glanced away in embarrassment; then hurried away. Baffled, Leakey made for the nearby hotel.

Once inside he felt relieved. The reception desk, the large foyer, the wide red-carpeted staircase, all seemed welcoming. He crossed to the reception desk and rang the bell.

'A room for the night?' repeated the middle-aged man who answered it. 'Yes, we do have one or two — I'm afraid they look out on the square, so you may be a bit troubled by noise. Twenty-seven and six bed and breakfast, is that all right?'

'Yes, that's fine,' Leakey replied, signing the book. He followed the manager upstairs.

On the landing, he asked: 'What's that thing in the square outside?'

'What? — oh, that? Just a local relic. You'll probably find out about it tonight.'

He opened a door marked no.7 and ushered Leakey into a thick-carpeted room furnished with a bed, dressing-table, bedside table with a framed photograph in the middle, and two wardrobes. Leakey entered and turned to ask the meaning of his remark, but the manager was already heading for the stairs. Shrugging, he went to the window and watched the crowd below. Strange, he thought — he had brought no luggage, yet the manager had not asked him to pay in advance.

He heard a train whistle, and idly looked towards the pillar of smoke. Then he threw up the window as he realised — the train had just left the station, and was speeding towards Brichesterl

He ran for the door, but in his hurry knocked the table to the floor, and he delayed to right it. His foot crunched on glass. It was the framed photograph, the glass smashed but the picture intact. He picked it up, turned it upright, and recoiled.

The thing in the picture was standing in a doorway. He could not believe it was alive — that pillar of white flesh supported on many-jointed bony legs tipped with great circular pads could never move about, let alone think. It had no arms, merely three spines which dug into the ground. But the head was worst — formed of thick coils of white jelly, covered with grey watery eyes, and at the centre was a huge toothed beak. And the thing that most troubled Leakey was none of these details, but only the idea that he had recently seen the doorway; not open as in the picture, but closed.

He threw open the bedroom door and thudded downstairs. The manager was standing by the reception desk, talking to a younger man behind it.

"There's a picture in my room! Did you put it there?' Leakey demanded.

'Why, no,' answered the manager. 'What sort of picture is this? I'd better have a look.'

He examined the photograph. 'This is peculiar, I must admit, but I didn't put it there. I wonder what it's supposed to be… Well, if it's getting on your nerves, I'll take it away.'

'No — no, don't do that,' Leakey told him. 'I'd like to examine it a bit more closely.'

When the manager had left, Leakey crossed again to the window. Looking out, he had the odd feeling that the crowd below were not passing through the square; more milling about to give that impression, but really awaiting something — and watching covertly. He noticed suddenly that all of them avoided the road opposite his window; a road which he saw was unusually wide and bordered by obviously disused buildings. Raising his gaze, Leakey discovered that the road connected the square to the large bare hill behind the town. There was a trail of faint marks on that road, but he could not make out any shape.

He looked towards the hill again, and saw the railway stretching into the distance. Then he remembered, and turned angrily to leave for the station.

At that moment the door slammed and a key turned in the lock.

Leakey threw his weight against the door, but he could hear at the same time something heavy being shoved against it from the outside. Nobody answered his irate shouts, and he ran for the window. Looking down he saw the wall below was smooth, devoid of handholds, and escape upward was just as difficult. He drew back at the thought of jumping to the street, and wondered frantically how he could escape. What lunatic had imprisoned him, and why? But the people of Goatswood were surely not all lunatics — perhaps he could attract the attention of someone in the street.

'Do you know how Goatswood got its name?' said a voice behind him.

Leakey whirled. Nobody was in the room with him.

'Did you ever hear of the Goat of Mendes?' continued the voice slowly, he realised, from beyond the door. 'Do you know what used to appear at the witches' sabbaths? Do you know about the Land of the Goat in the Pyrenees, or the Great God Pan? What about the Protean God? And the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young?'

Leakey battered the door again, then hurried back to the window. He yelled to the people below, and one looked up. Even at that distance Leakey saw his expressionless face — and the surreptitious movement of his hand. When a crowd began to form directly below the window and stare at him expressionlessly, Leakey threw himself back trembling and glancing wildly round the room.

'The goat's been there all through the ages, you know,' went on the voice. "The black goat which appeared in the circle of the sects in Spain — the Meadow of the Goat where the Basque magicians used to meet — and always the devil appears as a hybrid animal… Why do you think the priests of Jupiter offered a white goat on the Ides? — but you wouldn't know of the cosmic complements… And you've no idea of the basis of the Haitian goat-girl ritual, or what horror lies behind the myth of the Golden Fleece…'

'What's all this you're saying?' screamed Leakey. 'Let me out, will you!' but when no answer came he subsided and collapsed on the bed.

'Oh, you won't understand it all yet — not yet… All I'm trying to tell you is that he is here, very near at this moment — he has been here since before the human race… Maybe he has always been here, or maybe he came from out there, but the Others — those from Glyu'uho — imprisoned him within the star-signs, and only on nights of the moon can his body come out inside their boundary. But he goes forth if you call through the reversed angles, though then he's only partly corporeal — that's what'd appear at the sabbaths.

'They wouldn't tell all that happened at the Black Mass, of course. He came, but not in his real shape — that'd be too much even for the worshippers — but he retained certain portions of his real form. I suppose you've heard how they used to kiss his arse? Well, that wasn't just to be dirty — he's not built like a goat, and from there he puts things forth to draw off blood. But you'll know more about that tonight.

'You may get a bit of a shock tonight when you see us naked, though. We've gone down below his place, to a region I won't describe to you, and to live longer we've had to… to change. You've probably heard about it in a different way, though — the young of the Black Goat? Gof'nn hupadgh Shub-Niggurath? But the dryads and fauns and satyrs are a lot different from the classical descriptions, so don't think you're prepared—'

As suddenly as it had begun, the voice ceased. Leakey stared out of the window; the sun had almost set. He glared at the door, the window, the walls, but could see no avenue of escape. The crowd still waited below; an unintelligible muttering drifted up. Suddenly he felt very tired, and sank back on the bed.

When he awoke, the moon had risen.

It shone whitely on the street below as he craned out the window. The crowd below were passive no longer; they were standing in a stiff semi-circle around that central pylon, staring towards the hill opposite. He raised the window-frame more, and it rattled — but nobody looked up. He could hear a chorused murmur from below, a chant whose words were inaudible, and he began to realise just how serious his position was. Were they all insane? Was he trapped after dark in a town of lunatics? Clutched by sudden terror, he pushed the wardrobe against the door, and reinforced it with the bed.

What had the man who had imprisoned him said—'you'll know more about that tonight'? Surely the whole town couldn't be caught up by this mad belief. A god that came into the town on moonlit nights — and that wasn't all. If he was right, there was a cult of Satanists in this town — and they were supposed to make a sacrifice to Satan on ritual nights. A human sacrifice — was that what they wanted him for?

At a shout from below, Leakey rushed to the window and looked down. A figure in black robes was standing by the pylon with his back to Leakey. He was adjusting the ropes tied to the pivot, and as he did so the lens and mirrors shifted, and a concentrated beam of moonlight moved up the road towards the hill. This must be the lunatic who had imprisoned him — but who..?

Then the figure turned. The man was wearing a robe covered with phallic designs, and round his neck hung a necklace of small pink cylinders — whose identity Leakey sickly suspected — but he was still recognizable as the manager of the Central Hotel.

'He is coming! She is coming!' he shouted in that slow, thick voice. 'Make the way easy!'

Then, to Leakey's horror, the crowd began to chant: 'Astarte — Ashtaroth — Magna Mater… Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Gorgo, Mormo, thousand-faced moon, look favourably on our sacrifices… Ram with a Thousand Ewes, fill us with thy seed that more may come to worship at thy shrine… Gof'n hupadgh Shub Niggurath…'

The disc of concentrated moonlight was now steadily creeping up the hill as the robed priest manipulated the ropes. Suddenly it wavered and stopped, the priest gave an inarticulate cry, and the crowd fell silent. In that silence Leakey heard a faint restless stirring, as of something distant — and vast.

Then the hill burst open.

That was how it seemed to Leakey. Almost at once he realised that a door had opened in it; a door which occupied the whole side of the hill. The little moonlight that shone beyond the gaping hole revealed the beginning of an immense passage. Back in the darkness, something pale and enormous shifted and glistened with reflected light.

Suddenly Leakey turned and ran for the door. He did not want to see what would come forth from that passage. He wanted to escape from this room and into the street, even if the crowd killed him. He struggled to move the bed, but it would not shift. He had only just managed to heave it into position — escape that way was impossible.

At that moment the crowd in the square cried out hysterically. Slowly, reluctantly, Leakey turned to look out of the window.

Something was standing in the doorway of the hill. It was the thing in the photograph; but that photograph had been too small to show all the details, and it had not been alive or moving. The head was worst of all, for those great yellow eyes peered in different directions, and all the coils were twisting and jerking, sometimes transparent so that he could see into the head.

The thing moved out of the doorway, and the three spines moved with a grotesque rowing motion to heave the body forward. The beak opened, and from it a voice issued — sibilant and high-pitched, it spoke to its worshippers who now swayed back and forth in the square to the chant. They were becoming frenzied — here and there one would feverishly strip, but Leakey turned nauseated from these sights.

Suddenly his numb composure broke, and he screamed and battered the door, tore at the immovable bed, and looked vainly around for some weapon. Outside he heard the priest yelling incomprehensibly, and a whistling voice answering him.

The priest yelled: 'Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Goat accepts our sacrifice!'

Leakey knew instinctively what he meant. He risked a glance out of the window — and stared straight into those yellow eyes, far above the rooftops, watching him avidly. It stood swaying at the other side of the square, and was even now moving towards the hotel…

He looked down. The worshippers had approached the being, and directly below was an empty strip of ground. With terrified desperation, Leakey climbed over the sill, hung by his fingers for a moment, and let himself fall.

The creature must have been capable of great speed. Leakey heard a slithering sound; then fell straight on to the squirming coils of the thing's head.

He struggled desperately, but the gelatinous coils dragged him down, and he was enveloped. He was held inside transparent walls which pulsed and gripped him firmly, but not tightly enough to injure him. His hands slipped off the jelly when he clawed at the walls, and when he kicked out the gelatin only gave and returned to position. He could move his head, and straining to look upward he realised that he was imprisoned in a pocket of air, which he did not doubt was intentional. So he was not to die yet — but then what worse thing was to happen to him?

The landscape he glimpsed dimly through the transparent coils was jolting now; the colossus was moving forward, towards the hill. It reached the enormous doorway and passed within. Leakey heard a dull crash of stone, then he was jolted on through half-darkness.

The passage seemed to plunge downward for miles, but at last the creature swayed to a standstill. Leakey sank towards the ground, the prisoning coils oozed away, and hands grabbed him. He was pushed forward towards an immense archway. He glanced round frantically, but had time only to glimpse a gigantic cavern, hexagonal in shape, with droplets of moisture streaming down the walls and gleaming on carvings which stared from the shadows. And the pallid colossus was still swaying after him. Then he was hustled under the archway.

After that he stumbled down an interminable staircase, twilit from some source he could not see. The stairway did not turn from its downward path, but the twilight was too dim to show him the bottom.

'The Romans built this, you know,' said a voice at his ear in a horribly conversational tone. 'They built the lens, too, when they came here and recognised their Magna Mater… But these stairs lead much further down, perhaps to the place he came from originally—'

Leakey had an inkling what sort of place they were approaching when the light began to strengthen and they continued to walk downward though no steps were visible. Terrifying sounds rose from below — bass trumpetings and hollow ululations — but a flickering mist hid the region from above.

Then they were standing on solid ground — at least, it felt like solid ground, but to Leakey it appeared as if they were standing on empty air. The region was no longer hidden, and what he could see was not reassuring. Distances were variable, and he was never sure whether an object was large and far off, or small and close at hand. The more recognizable living bodies were dissociated alarmingly without any noticeable injury, while some others were composed of parts of varying familiarity, together with portions that did not seem to belong at all. A few feet away he noticed an isolated path of glistening metal leading to a distant flight of upward-heading stairs.

'This is where we come to gain immortality,' whispered the priest, 'and now you will become like us—'

They moved back, still encircling him. Above him he heard the monstrosity ululate, and the coils began to descend towards him.

Abruptly Leakey smashed his fist into the priest's throat and leapt for the metal path.

The unnatural properties of the place, for once, aided him. Almost at once he was standing at the foot of the steps, while behind him the pursuers were struggling dissociatedly amid a mass of strangely angled walls which had suddenly appeared. He clattered up the stairs into half-darkness, listening for sounds behind him. A few hundred stairs up, he stumbled over a line of star-shaped bas-reliefs.

A little further up, he heard something huge and ponderous squelching up the stairs after him.

He ran faster, though he was gasping for breath, and his hands were cut from falls. He looked back and whimpered in horror, for a shape was swaying dimly upward not six hundred feet below. He tried to take three steps at a time, slipped — and began to tumble back down the staircase.

He grabbed at the slick stone and managed to check his fall about fifty stairs down. There was no sound from below, but when he turned his head to look, a baffled whistling broke out. The being was swaying back and forth two hundred feet below, as if fighting an invisible opponent. It was, Leakey saw, at the line of bas-reliefs; and he abruptly remembered something the priest had said — about 'star-signs'…

He fled upward again, stopping only five hundred yards up when there was no sign of pursuit. He struggled upward for what seemed — and may have been — hours, and finally reached a high-arched passage which ended, he could see, in the open. He ran down it and emerged in daylight.

Then he looked down at his body.

'And what did you see?' Dr Linwood prompted.

'I'd become like them, you see,' Leakey told him. 'Not altogether, but it was already taking effect — I think I can still die, though. In fact, immortality is the worst thing that could happen to me this way…'

'Well,' the doctor said, 'let me take a look.'

'Are you out of your mind? The only reason I didn't go mad was because my mind must have changed as well!'

'Listen,' Dr Linwood said, 'I've seen a great many horrible things in my time, things that would turn your stomach. I once saw a cyclist whose head had been run over by a lorry and burst open… I'm not easily revolted, and if you don't let me examine you I certainly won't believe your story — you'll admit it's not very credible — and I won't be able to do anything for you.'

Leakey was silent for a long time.

'All right,' he replied at last. 'But first—' And he switched the tape-recorder off.

At 3:17 on April 3, 1961, everybody in Mercy Hill Hospital was startled by a hysterical screaming from the office block. The cries were so shocking that even the patients on the other side of the building were awoken, and all those who heard it were troubled by nightmares long after. Such was the terror in those cries that practically all the nurses ran to find the cause, leaving the wards almost unattended.

When they broke into Dr Linwood's office, he was lying on the floor with his hands over his eyes. He was alone, and there were no signs that he had been attacked. Under sedation he stopped screaming, but said nothing that revealed the cause of his insanity. He seemed to be obsessed with something that had happened in his office, but what he imagined he had seen is not clear. All he could say was that something about the patient he had examined — who, from the tape of the interview, was dangerously obsessed, and has not been caught yet — was 'horribly changed,' and seemed to be connected with the 'Great God Pan,' 'a rebirth in the vagina of Shub-Niggurath,' 'a fluctuation of form,' and something which was 'half a dryad.' The popular opinion is that Dr Linwood had been unbalanced by the strain of his work, together with the stress of preparing his speech for the coming convention, and had been affected by a species of contagious hallucination.

If the testimony of Dr Whitaker, the house surgeon, is to be believed, this hallucination may have had some basis in fact. He had been on his way to consult Dr Linwood over a medical matter when the screams broke out, and thus reached the office before anyone else. As he entered the corridor he saw someone opening the exit door — someone who must have been the patient whom Dr Linwood examined. Dr Whitaker did not see the man's face, but he particularly noticed the hand as the patient opened the door.

'It was black, shiny black,' he told the others, 'covered with lines — shaped like a bird's claw made out of wood. In fact, it didn't look like a human hand at all.'