The Taint and Other Novellas (8 page)

“The story I told you was the truth, Jason! As for my ‘premonition,’ well, I’ve brought you proof! Look at this—”

There was a pause before the Judge spoke again. Quietly he asked, “But what is this thing, Lucille? Let me get my glass. Hmm—I can see that it depicts—”

“No!”
Her cry, shrill and loud, cut him off. “No, don’t mention
Them,
and please don’t say His name!” The hysterical emphasis she placed on certain words was obvious, but she sounded calmer when, a few seconds later, she continued: “As for what it is—” I heard a metallic clinking, like a coin dropped on the tabletop, “just keep it here in the house. You will see for yourself. It was discovered clenched in Sam’s right hand when they—when they found his poor, broken body.”

“All that was twenty years ago—” the Judge said, then paused again before asking: “Is it gold?”

“Yes, but of unknown manufacture. I’ve shown it to three or four experts over the years, and always the same answer. It is a very ancient thing, but from no known or recognizable culture. Only the fact that it is made of gold saves it from being completely alien! And even the gold is…not quite right. Kirby has one, too.”

“Oh?” I could hear the surprise in the Judge’s voice. “And where did he get it? Why, just looking at this thing under the glass, I should have taken it for granted—even knowing nothing of it—that it’s as rare as it’s old!”

“I believe they are very rare indeed, surviving from an age before all earthly ages. Feel how cold it is. It has a chill like the ocean floor, and if you try to warm it…but try it for yourself. I can tell you now, though, that it will not
stay
warm. And I know what that means….

“Kirby received his in the mail some months ago, in the summer. We were at home in Mérida, in Yucatán. As you know, I settled there after—after—”

“Yes, yes I know. But who would want to send the boy such a thing—and why?”

“I believe it was meant as—as a
reminder,
that’s all—as a means to awaken in him all I have worked to keep dormant. I’ve already told you about…about Kirby, about his strange ways even as a baby. I thought they would leave him as he grew older. I was wrong. That last month before he vanished was the worst. It was after he received the talisman through the mail. Then, three weeks ago, he—he just packed a few things and—” She paused for a moment, I believed to compose herself, for an emotional catch had developed in her voice. I felt strangely moved.

“—As to who sent it to him, that’s something I can’t say. I can only guess, but the package carried the Navissa postmark! That’s why I’m here.”

“The Navissa—” The Judge seemed astounded. “But who would there be here to remember something that happened twenty years ago? And who, in any case, would want to make a gift of such a rare and expensive item to a complete stranger?”

The answer when it came was so low that I had difficulty making it out:

“There must have been
others,
Jason! Those people in Stillwater weren’t the only ones who called Him master. Those worshipers of His—they still exist—they must! I believe it was one of them, carrying out his master’s orders. As for where it came from in the first place, why, where else but—”

“No, Lucille, that’s quite impossible,” the Judge cut her off. “Something I really can’t allow myself to believe. If such things could be—”

“A madness the world could not face?”

“Yes, exactly!”

“Sam used to say the same thing. Nonetheless he sought the horror out, and brought me here with him, and then—”

“Yes, Lucille, I know what you believe happened then, but—”

“No buts, Jason—I want my son back. Help me, if you will, or don’t help me. It makes no difference. I’m determined to find him, and I’ll find him here, somewhere, I know it. If I have to, then I’ll search him out alone, by myself, before it’s too late!” Her voice had risen again, hysterically.

“No, there’s no need for that,” the old man cut in placatingly. “First thing tomorrow I’ll find someone to help you. And we can get the Mounties from Nelson in on the job, too. They have a winter camp at Fir Valley only a few miles out of Navissa. I’ll be able to get them on the telephone first thing in the morning. I’ll need to, for the telephone will probably go out with the first bad snow.”

“And you’ll definitely find someone to help me personally—someone trustworthy?”

“That’s my word. In fact I already know of one young man who might be willing. Of a very good family—and he’s staying with me right now. You can meet him tomorrow—”

At this point I heard the scrape of chairs and pictured the two rising to their feet. Suddenly ashamed of myself to be standing there eavesdropping, I quickly returned to the library and pulled the door shut behind me. After some little time, during which the lady departed, I went again to Judge Andrews’s study, this time tapping at the shut door and entering at his word. I found the old man worriedly pacing the floor.

He stopped pacing as I entered. “Ah, David. Sit down, please, there’s something I would like to ask you.” He seated himself, shuffling awkwardly in his chair. “It’s difficult to know where to begin—”

“Begin with Samuel R. Bridgeman,” I answered. “I’ve had time to read his books now. Frankly, I find myself very interested.”

“But how did you know—?”

Thinking back on my eavesdropping, I blushed a little as I answered, “I’ve just seen Mrs. Bridgeman leaving. I’m guessing that it’s her husband, or perhaps the lady herself, you want to talk to me about.”

He nodded, picking up from his desk a golden medallion some two inches across its face, fingering its bas-relief work before answering. “Yes, you’re right, but—”

“Yes?”

He sighed heavily in answer, then said, “Ah, well, I suppose I’ll have to tell you the whole story, or what I know of it—that’s the least I can do if I’m to expect your help.” He shook his head. “That poor, demented woman!”

“Is she not quite…
right,
then?”

“Nothing like that at all,” he answered hastily, gruffly. “She’s as sane as I am. It’s just that she’s a little, well,
disturbed.”

He then told me the whole of the thing, a story that lasted well into the night. I reproduce here what I can remember of his words. They formed an almost unbroken narrative that I listened to in silence to its end, a narrative that only served to strengthen that resolution of mine to follow this mystery down to a workable conclusion.

“As you are aware,” the Judge began, “I was a friend of Sam Bridgeman’s in our younger days. How this friendship came about is unimportant, but I also knew Lucille before they married, and that is why she now approaches me for help after all these years. It is pure coincidence that I live now in Navissa, so close to where Sam died.

“Even in those early days Sam was a bit of a rebel. Of the orthodox sciences, including anthropology and enthnology, few interested Sam in their accepted forms. Dead and mythological cities, lands with exotic names, and strange gods were ever his passion. I remember how he would sit and dream—of Atlantis and Mu, Ephiroth and Khurdisan, G’harne and lost Leng, R’lyeh and Theem’hdra, forgotten worlds of antique legend and myth—when by rights he should have been studying and working hard toward his future. And yet…that future came to nothing in the end.

“Twenty-six years ago he married Lucille, and because he was fairly well-to-do by then, having inherited a sizable fortune, he was able to escape a working life as we know it to turn his full attention to those ideas and ideals most dear to him. In writing his books, particularly his last book, he alienated himself utterly from colleagues and acknowledged authorities alike in those specific sciences upon which he lavished his ‘imagination.’ That was how they saw his—fantasies?—as the product of a wild imagination set free to wreak havoc among all established orders, scientific and theological included.

“Eventually he became looked upon as a fool, a naïve clown who based his crazed arguments in Blavatsky, in the absurd theories of Scott-Elliot, in the insane epistles of Eibon, and the warped translations of Harold Hadley Copeland, rather than in prosaic but proven historians and scientists….

“When exactly, or why, Sam became interested in the theogony of these northern parts—particularly in certain beliefs of the Indians and half-breeds, and in Eskimo legends of yet more northerly regions—I do not know, but in the end he himself began to
believe
them. He was especially interested in the legend of the snow- or wind-god, Ithaqua, variously called ‘Wind-Walker,’ ‘Death-Walker,’ ‘Strider in the Star-Spaces,’ and others, a being who supposedly walks in the freezing boreal winds and in the turbulent atmospheric currents of far northern lands and adjacent waters.

“As fortune—or misfortune—would have it, his decision to pay this region a visit coincided with problems of an internal nature in some few of the villages around here. There were strange undercurrents at work. Secret semireligious groups had moved into the area, in many cases apparently vagrant, here to witness and worship at a ‘Great Coming!’ Strange, certainly, but can you show me any single region of this Earth of ours that does not have its crackpot organizations, religious or otherwise? Mind you, there has always been a problem with that sort of thing here….

“Well, a number of the members of these so-called esoteric groups were generally somewhat more intelligent than the average Indian, half-breed, or Eskimo; they were mainly New Englanders, from such decadent Massachusetts towns as Arkham, Dunwich, and Innsmouth.

“The Mounties at Nelson saw no threat, however, for this sort of thing was common here; one might almost say that over the years there has been a surfeit of it. On this occasion it was believed that certain occurrences in and about Stillwater and Navissa had drawn these rather polyglot visitors, for five years earlier there had indeed occurred a very large number of peculiar and still unsolved disappearances, to say nothing of a handful of inexplicable deaths at the same time.

“I’ve done a little research myself into just what happened, though I’m still very uncertain, but conjecture aside, hard figures and facts are—surprising?—no, they are downright disturbing!

“For instance, the
entire population
of one town, Stillwater, vanished overnight! You need not take my word for it—research it for yourself. The newspapers were full of it.

“Well, now, add to a background like this a handful of tales concerning giant webbed footprints in the snow, stories of strange altars to forbidden gods in the woods, and a creature that comes on the wings of the winds to accept living sacrifices—and remember, please, that all such appear time and again in the history and legends of these parts—and you’ll agree it’s little wonder that the area has attracted so many weird types over the years.

“Not that I remember Sam Bridgeman as being a ‘weird type,’ you understand; but it was exactly this sort of thing that brought him here when, after five years of quiet, the cycle of hysterical superstition and strange worship was again at its height. That was how things stood when he arrived here, and he brought his wife with him….

“The snow was already deep to the north when they came, but that did nothing at all to deter Sam; he was here to probe the old legends, and he would never be satisfied until he had done just that. He hired a pair of French-Canadian guides, swarthy characters of doubtful backgrounds, to take him and Lucille in search of…of what? Dreams and myths, fairy tales and ghost stories?

“They trekked north, and despite the uncouth looks of the guides, Sam soon decided that his choice of these two men had been a good one; they seemed to know the region quite well. Indeed, they appeared to be somehow, well, cowed out in the snows, different again from when Sam had found them, drunk and fighting in a Navissa bar. But then again, in all truth, he had had little choice but to hire these two, for with the five-year cycle of strangeness at its peak few of Navissa’s regular inhabitants would have ventured far from their homes. And indeed, when Sam asked his guides why they seemed so nervous, they told him it was all to do with ‘the season.’ Not, they explained, the winter season, but that of the strange myth-cycle. Beyond that they would say nothing, which only excited Sam’s curiosity all the more—particularly since he had noticed that their restlessness grew apace the farther north they trekked.

“Then, one calm white night, with the tents pitched and a bright wood fire kindled, one of the guides asked Sam just what it was that he sought in the snow. Sam told him, mentioning the stories of Ithaqua the Snow-Thing, but got no further; for upon hearing the Wind-Walker’s name spoken, the French-Canadian simply refused to listen anymore. Instead, he went off early to his tent where he was soon overheard muttering and arguing in a frightened and urgent voice with his companion. The next morning, when Sam roused himself, he discovered to his horror that he and his wife were alone, that the guides had run off and deserted them! Not only this, but they had taken all the provisions with them. The Bridgemans had only their tent, the clothing they stood in, their sleeping bags, and personal effects. They had not even a box of matches with which to light a fire.

“Still, their case did not appear to be completely hopeless. They had had fair weather so far, and they were only three days and nights out from Navissa. But their trail had been anything but a straight one, so that when they set about making a return journey it was pure guesswork on Sam’s part the correct direction in which to head. He knew something of the stars, however; and when the cold night came down, he was able to say with some certainty that they headed south.

“And yet lonely and vulnerable though they now felt, they had been aware even on the first day that they were not truly alone. On occasion they had crossed strange tracks, freshly made by furtive figures that melted away into the firs or banks of snow whenever Sam called out to them across the wintry wastes. On the second morning, soon after setting out from their camp in the lee of tall pines, they came upon the bodies of their erstwhile guides; they had been horribly tortured and mutilated before dying. In the pockets of one of the bodies Sam found matches, and that night—though by now they knew the pangs of hunger—they at least had the warmth of a fire to comfort them. But ever in the flickering shadows, just outside the field of vision afforded by the leaping flames, there were those furtive figures, silent in the snow, watching and…waiting?