The Taint and Other Novellas (37 page)

I have perused your notes and they seem very thorough. I am well pleased with your work so far. I shall be away most of Monday, but expect to see you before I depart. In the event that you should return early, I leave you a small welcome.

Sleep well.

J. C.

All of which was very curious. The note almost made it seem that Carstairs had known he would return early! But at any rate, the man seemed in a good humor; and it would be boorish of Crow not to thank him for the gift of the bottle. He could at least try, and then perhaps he would not feel so bad about sneaking into the house like a common criminal. The hour was not, after all, unreasonable.

So thinking, Crow took a small glass of wine to fortify himself, then went quietly into the gloomy passages and corridors and made his unlighted way to Carstairs’ study. Seeing a crack of feeble electric light from beneath the occultist’s door and hearing voices, he paused, reconsidered his action and was on the point of retracing his steps when he heard his name mentioned. Now he froze and all his attention concentrated itself upon the conversation being carried on in Carstairs’ study. He could not catch every word, but—

“The date ordained…Candlemas Eve,” Carstairs was saying. “Meanwhile, I…my will on him. He
works
for me—do you understand?—and so was partly…power from the start. My will, aided…wine, will do the rest. Now, I…decided upon it, and will…no argument. I have said it before and now…again: he
is
the one. Garbett, what has he in the way of vices?”

A thick, guttural voice answered—a voice which Crow was almost certain he knew from somewhere—saying: “None at all, that I…discover. Neither women—not as a vice—nor drugs, though…very occasionally likes a cigarette. He…not gamble…no spendthrift, he—”

“Is pure!” Carstairs’ voice again. “But you…worked for the War Department? In…capacity?”

“That is a stone wall, Master…as well try…into…Bank of England! And it…dangerous to press too far.”

“Agreed,” answered Carstairs. “I want as little as possible to link him with us and this place. Afterward, he will seem to return…old haunts, friends, interests. Then the gradual breaking away—and nothing…connect him and me. Except…shall be one!”

“And yet, Master,” said another voice, which again Crow thought he knew, a voice like a windblown reed, “you seem less…completely satisfied…”

After a pause Carstairs’ voice came yet again. “He is not, as yet, a subject…hypnotism. On our first…resisted strongly. But that is not necessarily a bad sign. There is one…need to check. I shall attend to that tomorrow, by letter. It is possible, just possible…lied…birthdate. In which case…time to find another.”

“But…
little
time!” a fourth voice said. “They mass within you, Master, ravenous and eager to migrate—and Candlemas…so close.” This voice was thickly glutinous, as Crow had somehow suspected it would be; but Carstairs’ voice when it came again had risen a note or two. While it still had that sonorous quality, it also seemed to ring—as in a sort of triumph?

“Aye, they mass, the Charnel Horde—for they know it nears their time! Then—that which remains shall be theirs, and they shall have a new host!” His voice came down a fraction, but still rang clear. “If Crow has lied, I shall deal with him. Then—” and his tone took on a sudden, demonic bite, a sort of crazed amusement, “perhaps you would volunteer, Durrell, for the feasting of the worm? Here,
see how taken they are with you!”

At that there came a scuffle of feet and the scraping sound of table and chairs sharply moved. A gurgling, glutinous cry rang out, and Crow had barely sufficient time to draw back into a shallow, arched alcove
before the study door flew open and a frantic figure staggered out into the corridor, almost toppling a small occasional table which stood there. White-faced, with bulging eyes, a man of medium build hurried past Crow and toward the main door of the house. He stumbled as he went and uttered a low moan, then threw something down which plopped on the fretted carpet.

When the house door slammed after him, Crow made his way breathlessly and on tiptoe back to the library. He noted, in passing, that something small and leprous-white crawled on the floor where Durrell had thrown it. And all the while the house rang with Carstairs’ baying laughter…

IV

It might now reasonably be assumed that Titus Crow, without more ado, would swiftly take his leave of The Barrows and Carstairs forever; that he would go home to London or even farther afield, return the month’s wages that Carstairs had paid him in advance, revoke the contract he had signed and so put an end to the…whatever it was that his employer planned for him. And perhaps he would have done just that; but already the wine was working in him, that terribly potent and rapidly addictive wine which, along with Carstairs’ sorcerous will, was binding him to this house of nameless evil.

And even sensing his growing dependence on the stuff, having heard it with his own ears from Carstairs’ own lips, still he found himself reaching with trembling hand for that terrible bottle, and pouring another glass for himself in the suddenly morbid and prisonlike library. All sorts of nightmare visions now raced through Crow’s mind as he sat there atremble—chaotic visions of immemorial madness, damnable conclusions totalled from a mass of vague and fragmentary evidences and suspicions—but even as his thoughts whirled, so he sipped, until his senses became totally confounded and he slipped into sleep slumped at the table, his head cushioned upon his arm.

And once more he seemed to dream….

• • •

This time there were only three of them. They had come silently, creeping in the night, and as they entered so one of them, probably Carstairs, had switched off the library lights. Now, in wan moonlight, they stood about him and the hour was midnight.

“See,” said Carstairs, “my will and the wine combined have sufficed to call him back, as I said they would. He is now bound to The Barrows as by chains. In a way I am disappointed. His will is not what I thought it. Or perhaps I have made the wine too potent.”

“Master,” said the one called Garbett, his voice thickly glutinous as ever, “it may be my eyes in this poor light, but—”

“Yes?”

“I think he is trembling! And why is he not in his bed?”

Crow felt Garbett’s hand, cold and clammy, upon his fevered brow. “See, he trembles!” said the man. “As if in fear of something…”

“Ah!” came the occultist’s voice. “Yes, your powers of observation do you credit, friend Garbett, and you are a worthy member of the coven. Yes, even though the wine holds him fast in its grip, still he trembles. Perhaps he has heard something of which it were better he remained in ignorance. Well, that can be arranged. Now help me with him. To leave him here like this would not be a kindness, and prone upon his bed he will offer less resistance.”

Crow felt himself lifted up by three pairs of hands, steadied and guided across the floor, undressed, put to bed. He could see dimly, could feel faintly, could hear quite sharply. The last thing he heard was Carstairs’ hypnotic voice, telling him to forget…forget. Forget anything he might have overheard this night. For it was all a dream and unimportant, utterly unimportant…

• • •

On Monday morning Crow was awakened by Carstairs’ voice. The weak January sun was up and the hands on his wristwatch stood at 9:00 A.M. “You have slept late, Mr. Crow. Still, no matter…Doubtless you need the rest after a hectic weekend, eh? I am going out and shall not be back before nightfall. Is there anything you wish me to bring back for you? Something to assist you in your work, perhaps?”

“No,” Crow answered, “nothing that I can think of. But thanks anyway.” He blinked sleep from his eyes and felt the first throb of a dull ache developing in the front of his skull. “This is unpardonable—my sleeping to this hour. Not that I slept very well…”

“Ah?” Carstairs tut-tutted. “Well, do not concern yourself—nothing is amiss. I am sure that after breakfast you will feel much better. Now you must excuse me. Until tonight, then.” And he turned and strode from the room.

Crow watched him go and lay for a moment thinking, trying to ignore the fuzziness inside his head. There had been another dream, he was sure, but very little of it was clear, and fine details utterly escaped him. He
remembered coming back to The Barrows early…after that nothing. Finally he got up, and as soon as he saw the half-empty bottle on the table he understood—or believed he understood—what had happened. That damned wine!

Angry with himself, at his own stupidity, he went through the morning’s routine and returned to his work on Carstairs’ books. But now, despite the fact that the sun was up and shining with a wintry brightness, it seemed to Crow that the shadows were that much darker in the house and the gloom that much deeper.

• • •

The following day, with Carstairs again absent, he explored The Barrows from attic to cellar, but not the cellar itself. He did try the door beneath the stairs, however, but found it locked. Upstairs the house had many rooms, all thick with dust and sparsely furnished; with spots of mold on some of the walls and woodworm in much of the furniture. The place seemed as disused and decayed above as it was below, and Crow’s inspection was mainly perfunctory. Outside Carstairs’ study he paused, however, as a strange and shuddery feeling took momentary possession of him.

Suddenly he found himself trembling and breaking out in a cold sweat; and it seemed to him that half-remembered voices echoed sepulchrally and ominously in his mind. The feeling lasted for a moment only, but it left Crow weak and full of a vague nausea. Again angry with himself and not a little worried, he tried the study door and found it to be open. Inside the place was different from the rest of the house.

Here there was no dust or disorder but a comparatively well-kept room of fair size, where table and chairs stood upon an Eastern-style carpet, with a great desk square and squat beneath a wall hung with six oil paintings in matching gilt frames. These paintings attracted Crow’s eyes and he moved forward the better to see them. Proceeding from right to left, the pictures bore small metallic plaques which gave dates but no names.

The first was of a dark, hawk-faced, turbaned man in desert garb, an Arab by his looks. The dates were 1602-68. The second was also of a Middle Eastern type, this time in the rich dress of a sheik or prince, and his dates were 1668-1734. The third was dated 1734-90 and was the picture of a statuesque, high-browed Negro of forceful features and probably Ethiopian descent; while the fourth was of a stern-faced young man in periwig and smallclothes, dated 1790-1839. The fifth was of a bearded, dark-eyed man in a waistcoat and wearing a monocle—a man of unnatural pallor—dated 1839-88; and the sixth—

The sixth was a picture of Carstairs himself, looking almost exactly as he looked now, dated 1888-1946!

Crow stared at the dates again, wondering what they meant and why they were so perfectly consecutive. Could these men have been the previous leaders of Carstairs’ esoteric cult, each with dates which corresponded to the length of his reign? But 1888…yes, it made sense; for that could certainly not be Carstairs’ birth date. Why, he would be only fifty-seven years of age! He looked at least fifteen or twenty years older than that; certainly he gave the impression of advanced age, despite his peculiar vitality. And what of that final date, 1946? Was the man projecting his own death?—or was this to be the year of the next investiture?

Then, sweeping his eyes back across the wall to the first picture, that of the hawk-faced Arab, something suddenly clicked into place in Crow’s mind. It had to do with the date 1602…and in another moment he remembered that this was the date scrawled in reddish ink in the margin of the old atlas. The date of birth of the supposed Antichrist, 1602, in a place once known as Chorazin the Damned!

Still, it made very little sense—or did it? There was a vague fuzziness in Crow’s mind, a void desperately trying to fill itself, like a mental jigsaw puzzle with so many missing pieces that the picture could not come together. Crow knew that somewhere deep inside he had the answers—and yet they refused to surface.

As he left Carstairs’ study he cast one more half-fearful glance at the man’s sardonic picture. A white crawling thing, previously unnoticed, dropped from the ledge of the frame and fell with a plop to the Boukhara rug…

• • •

Left almost entirely on his own now, Crow worked steadily through the rest of Tuesday, through Wednesday and Thursday morning; but after a light lunch on Thursday he decided he needed some fresh air. This coincided with his discovering another worm or maggot in the library, and he made a mental note that sooner or later he must speak to Carstairs about the possibility of a health hazard.

Since the day outside was bright, he let himself out of the house and into the gardens, choosing one of the many overgrown paths rather than the wide, gravelly drive. In a very little while all dullness of the mind was dissipated and he found himself drinking gladly and deeply of the cold air. This was something he must do more often, for all work and no play was beginning to make Titus Crow a very dull boy indeed.

He was not sure whether his employer was at home or away; but upon reaching the main gate by a circuitous route he decided that the latter case must apply. Either that or the man had not yet been down to collect the mail. There were several letters in the box, two of which were holding the metal flap partly open. Beginning to feel the chill, Crow carried the letters with him on a winding route back to the house. Out of sheer, curiosity he scanned them as he went, noting that the address on one of them was all wrong. It was addressed to a Mr. Castaigne, Solicitor, at The Burrows. Alongside the postage stamps the envelope had been faintly franked with the name and crest of Somerset House in London.

Somerset House, the central registry for births and deaths? Now, what business could Carstairs have with—