The Lonely Shadows: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos Read online

  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JOHN GLASBY

  The Lonely Shadows: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos

  The Mystery of the Crater: A Science Fiction Novel

  THE LONELY SHADOWS

  TALES OF HORROR AND

  THE CTHULHU MYTHOS

  JOHN GLASBY

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 1954, 1962, 2005 by John Glasby

  Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidebooks.com

  DEDICATION

  For Edmund

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  These stories were previously published as follows, and are reprinted by permission of the author’s Estate and his agent, Cosmos Literary Agency:

  “The Lonely Shadows” was first published in Supernatural Stories #63. Copyright © 1962 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby

  “The Seventh Image” was first published in Out of This World #1. Copyright © 1954 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby

  “Shirley’s Ghost: was first published in Don’t Turn Out the Light. Copyright 2005 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby

  “Undersea Quest” was first published in Weird Shadows Over Innsmouth (as “The Quest for Y’ha-Nthlei”). Copyright © 2005 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby.

  “Innsmouth Bane” was first published in H.P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror No. 2, Copyright © 2005 by John Glasby; Copyright © 2012 by the Estate of John Glasby

  THE LONELY SHADOWS

  The house stood well back from the road, only partly hidden by the bare arms of the leafless trees, thrust up against the scudding clouds; gaunt, gnarled branches which rattled eerily in the chill wind. Its lines were still good in spite of its age, tall and elegant in places; and there was still an air of importance and pride in the paintless fluted columns on either side of the door. Three tall chimneys hugged the gables on one side, but all were chipped and ragged about the edges and in one of them, birds had built their nest some years before. Dilapidated and unmistakably old, it stood, or rather seemed to hunch itself forward in an attitude of waiting beyond the unkempt lawns and straggling bushes which lined the gravel, weed-covered drive.

  Jeremiah Calder stood for a long moment with his right hand on the gate, wondering for an instant—as he always did whenever he came here—why he felt so strangely hesitant about going in. Even from the roadway, from where he stood, it was possible to feel the air of desolation about this particular house. Or was it just desolation? There seemed an air of malignant waiting about the place now, which he had never noticed or felt before. He became conscious of the watchfulness of the house, acutely aware of the shuttered windows on the lower floor, green paint flaking from the wood, and the upstairs windows, open like eyes in a skull, staring sightlessly along the drive in his direction. Watching and considering what he intended to do now, he thought inwardly, then pulled himself together angrily, shrugging his shoulders quickly and pulling up the collar of his heavy coat around his neck.

  God! He thought angrily, he was getting to be almost as jumpy and as imaginative as that foolish young clerk of his. He had known better than to send him down here on this particular occasion, having decided that it was essential he should come himself. This was quite clearly a matter that would have to be handled with the utmost tact and diplomacy.

  Gripping the handle of his briefcase tightly he walked as quickly along the drive as his sixty-three years would allow and hammered on the front door, the heavy brass knocker sending hollow echoes chasing themselves through the house. He smiled wryly to himself, remembering the day when he had first visited Belstead House. Even though that had been more than forty years ago, he could recall it as clearly as if it had been the previous summer.

  It had been a hot July afternoon with the sky a cloudless mirror of blue-white, the sun throwing few shadows and the shimmering heat lying in a thick blanket over everything. That had been the day when Charles Henry Belstead arrived from London to claim his inheritance, the house and the grounds, which he had been left by his austere-faced father and quite a sizeable fortune to go with it. Old Mr. Peters, his predecessor, dead these twenty-seven years, had been the family solicitor in those days and he had been a very junior clerk in the office.

  As he had been shown into the house on that hot summer day, he had felt self-conscious, the centre of attraction and a little unsure of what was expected of him; and the sight of the polished coffin at the back of the room had almost completely unnerved him from the start of the proceedings. Somehow, he had managed to get through the reading of the will and all other necessary details without making himself appear unduly foolish but all the time, every single second, he had been acutely aware of the long, polished box with the shining brass handles immediately at his back, had almost seemed to feel eyes boring malignantly into his skull.

  It had all been his imagination, of course, nothing more and once out of the house he had soon got over it. But there was one thing he had never been able to get out of his mind, something concerning Charles Belstead. Before his arrival at Belstead House, it had been doubtful if he had visited the place, or his father, half a dozen times in twice as many years. From what Calder had heard, the other had been leading a rather riotous life in London. When his father had died, leaving him one of the richest men in that part of the country, everyone had expected him to sell the old house and go back to London, to pick up the threads of his old way of living again. But to the immense surprise of everyone in the village, he had simply shut himself up in the house and remained there as a recluse all these years. Not once had he left the grounds, and indeed, he had seldom been seen outside the house itself.

  There had been an old housekeeper, the only one of the servants to remain after his father had died, but she too, had died almost seven years before and since her death, Charles Belstead had lived entirely alone, shunned by those around him. He neither sought, nor wanted friends.

  Calder’s thoughts snapped back to the present and he hammered on the door with the knocker again. Once more, echoes rumbled mournfully through the house, but this time, he heard the shuffling footsteps coming closer and a moment later, the door creaked open.

  Overhead, a cloud-veil crept across the face of the moon and darkness seemed to crouch like a living thing around the house.

  “Yes, who is it?” The thin, reedy voice sent a faint shiver along Calder’s spine. He pushed himself forward a few inches, saw the narrow, pinched face that stared out at him through the crack in the doorway.

  “Jeremiah Calder,” he said quietly. “You asked me to call and see you. In fact you were most insistent that I should come tonight.”

  “Ah yes, so I did.” The other seemed to have difficulty in remembering, but he opened the door further and stood on one side as Calder went inside. A draft of cold air swirled briefly about him and the little shiver came back from his body as he realised that the coldness had come from inside the house, not from outside. He glanced about him, noticing that nothing had changed since that day when he had first entered this house. Dust lay everywhere. The thick, heavy drapes on the walls were ragged and frayed at the edges. From the walls themselves, their faces in the long, gilt-framed pictures, stared down through a thickness of paint that had faded appreciably over the years. The feel of death was here, growing stronger every time he came.

  “If this is something important,” he said slowly, keeping his voice calm and even, though with an effort, “it would really have be
en best for us to have talked at my office. There are a lot of details that—”

  “We’ll have no argument,” snapped the other quickly. “We’ll talk in the library. If you’ll just go along, I’ll join you in a minute. You know the way.”

  Rebuffed, Calder watched the other hobble into one of the rooms and close the door behind him. Shrugging his shoulders, he made his way along the wide corridor, which led almost the whole of the way through the house, into the library at the back. A sudden, brief flash of lightning lit the window set in one wall and a few moments later, there was a fierce rumble of thunder in the near distance, shaking the heavens. He was going to get wet walking back to the village, he reflected wearily. Sighing, he twisted the handle of the library door and went inside. There were candles burning on the piano set on a raised portion of the floor, in front of the wide, French windows and the small fire burning in the hearth.

  For a moment, he waited in motionless silence, feeling that something was about to happen, but not knowing, or even able to guess, what it might be. There came a brilliant flash of lightning which illuminated the garden outside the French windows, showed up for one brief moment the dripping arms of the tree which swayed just outside, the bushes whipped to a sudden frenzy at the strong wind that had sprung up. Then a sudden movement caught his eye, attracted his attention from the scene outside.

  There was a second door in the library, leading out towards the kitchens at the eastern side of the old house. It had been tightly closed when he had first walked into the room. Now, it was open and he saw the tall figure that stood there, looking in at him with an expression of curiosity on the shadowed face. He started forward, a little hesitant. Belstead had not mentioned that there was anyone else staying at the house with him and he felt surprise more than any other emotion.

  Even as he went forward, the other backed away into the passage where the shadows were thick and huge.

  “Don’t go,” said Jeremiah Calder quickly. “I’m sorry if I startled you, but I—” He reached the door and jerked it wide, going out into the corridor. There was a single candle placed on a table at the far end of the passage throwing long, flickering shadows along the walls. But the passage itself was empty and he knew that it would have been impossible for the other to have moved so quickly along it, certainly without making a sound. Puzzled, he went back into the room. There had been something oddly familiar about the face he had seen, but he was unable to place it. His memory was not quite as good as it used to be, he reflected inwardly. Perhaps he had imagined it all, but somehow, he didn’t think so. That face which had peered into the room at him—there seemed to be something malignant about it. Almost as if the other had known that he was there—alone.

  Belstead came into the room a moment later. He motioned Jeremiah to a chair, then lowered himself into the other. He seemed even older than Calder remembered him from the last time they had met, less than two months before. His eyes were sunk deep into his head and even as Calder watched, he noticed that they kept flicking from one corner of the room to the other, then across to the windows that opened out on to the lawn.

  Belstead had brought in a bottle of wine and two glasses that he had set on the small table between them. Even the top of the table, Calder noticed, was covered with a thin film of grey dust and there were strands of cobweb on the neck of the bottle. He sipped the red wine slowly, then nodded appreciatively.

  “Good,” he said quietly. “But that was one thing about your father, Charles. He always kept an excellent cellar here.”

  “He kept a lot of other things besides,” said the other in a strange voice. He sat hunched forward in the chair, eyes moving continually. He lifted his head slightly and shot Calder a sharp glance. “You think that it’s strange I should have stayed here all of these years, don’t you? Oh, it’s no use lying to me, Jeremiah, we have known each other too long for that. I know too, what the people in the village say about me. A lot of inquisitive busybodies, nothing else. They think I’m insane to stay here when I could have been out enjoying myself, with a world cruise every year, house in London.”

  “Then why don’t you leave? Surely there’s nothing to stop you now. You’re living here all alone, especially after your housekeeper died. Is there any reason why you should have to remain here?” Calder eyed the other narrowly over the rim of his glass. Inwardly, he tried to recall if there had been anything in the old man’s will when he had left everything to his son, forbidding him to leave the house. But he could remember nothing. It was almost, he reflected idly, as though the other were afraid to go out. A man who shunned the sunlight and lived here, shut away from the outside world, all alone.

  Or was he quite alone? That man he had seen looking in at him through the other door—why was it that even the memory of that face, which he had glimpsed only for a brief fraction of a second, sent a little shiver coursing up and down his spine. Certainly there had been nothing malevolent about the figure he had seen—except for the fact that the other seemed to have vanished into thin air, although the probable explanation of that was that he had disappeared into one of the other rooms along the wide corridor. Possibly some friend of Belstead’s who had come upon him suddenly, realised his mistake, and left equally unobtrusively. Still, the thought bothered him more than he cared to admit. He grew aware that the other was speaking slowly, but with an odd intensity in his quavering voice.

  “Tell me, Jeremiah. As a lawyer and a friend, do you believe that the dead can come back?”

  For a moment, Calder sat upright in his chair, shocked, stunned almost by the other’s question. Perhaps he ought to have expected something like this, he thought quickly, but it had been put so bluntly that for a moment, it had taken him completely by surprise.

  “I’m afraid I’m not sure how to answer that question, Charles.” He forced a quick, slightly strained, smile. “To be quite legal, I’d like notice of it.”

  “I’m not joking. This is perfectly serious.” He laughed a little shrilly, and his eyes were never still, as though he expected to see something leaping for him out of the shadows around the wide hearth. “I know what you’re thinking. No use in denying it, I can see it written all over your face. You never were very good at hiding your feelings, especially from me. You’re thinking that the solitude here has made me a little mad. But you’re wrong, quite wrong. Actually, what it had done is to make me see things a little more clearly than I ever did before.”

  Calder set down his empty glass, hesitated. There came nine mournful, dismal chimes from the clock in the hallway outside. Deep, sepulchral tones which chased each other along the hollow, empty corridor.

  “Do I shock you?” went on the other harshly. He leaned back in his chair, the firelight throwing the shrunken flesh of his scrawny neck into shadow. He looked old and wizened, thought Calder tightly, like a man who had slowly, but surely been sucked dry of all the juices, all the strength, that had once been his, in those days before he had come here.

  “A little, Charles,” he admitted. A log crackled sharply in the hearth, threw a shower of spitting, red sparks up the chimney. Outside, the storm seemed to have increased in intensity and thunder rumbled and toned like a maddened beast over the house. Calder rose slowly to his feet and stood to one side of the hearth, his hands clasped tightly behind him, keeping a tight grip on himself. He had to get to the bottom of this, he knew that with a sudden certainty. The other had called him here, on a night like this, and at short notice, so that there had to be something in what he said. If not, then it might be best if he were to humour him; at least until he got back to the village and had a confidential chat with Doctor Woodbridge. If there was anything wrong with the other’s mind, it was essential that the doctor should know about it as soon as possible. Perhaps the shock of his housekeeper’s death had affected Belstead a little more than they had realised at the time.

  “I thought I might.” The other sucked in his thin lips, sipped his drink slowly, occasionally pausing to glance, bir
d-like, up at the lawyer. Pointedly, he said: “I asked you to come ahead into the library for a purpose. You possibly know what it was by now.” The bright eyes never left Calder’s face for a single instant.

  “I’m afraid that I don’t.”

  “No? That’s odd. When I came in here, you looked as though you’d seen a ghost. You hadn’t, had you?”

  “Of course not.” Calder felt a little wave of anger wash through him. He bit down the biting retort that threatened to spring to his lips and went on calmly. “It isn’t right that you should stay here any longer, Charles. I’ve been worried about you on and off for the past two years. You aren’t getting any younger, you know and there’s no telling what might happen to you if you persist staying here alone. And you’ve got to remember that it’s the best part of three miles to the nearest house if you should need help of any kind, and you don’t have a telephone here.”

  “Why should I need help from anyone?” demanded the other harshly. He put down his glass, paused for a moment then poured himself another drink, moving the bottle towards Calder’s glass, pouring another as the lawyer nodded. “But coming back to the other point I made. You did see someone—or something—when you came in here first, didn’t you?” His eyes were dark and unwinking as they bored into the other’s. “You’re no longer quite as sure of yourself as you were. I can see that from your face.”

  Calder sat down again in his chair, gulped down his drink quickly, felt some of the warmth come back into his body, driving out the nameless chill which had settled over him like a shroud. He took out a cigarette, one of the few luxuries in which he allowed himself to indulge, and lit it with fingers that trembled a little, even though he tried his hardest to keep them still.

  Blowing smoke into the air, he sat back, then finished his drink completely before saying: “How long have you lived here by yourself, Charles? Forty years isn’t it, almost exactly to the day. As I recall, it was mid-summer when you first came, and virtually every one of the servants had left by the following December. I wonder why they did leave like that.” He eyed the other obliquely. “Could it have been because of that temper of yours—or was there some other reason?”