Haggopian and Other Stories

Despite his few remaining doubts regards the veracity of their story, the occultist nevertheless felt a thrill of unseen energies, weird forces, building in the air. He almost called a halt to the experiment there and then. Later, he wished that he had….

Instead, he nodded his readiness and, at that, Nuttall switched off the light.

In the brightly lit bathroom, huddled fearfully in one corner with his face screwed up in dread expectation, Alan Bart heard Millwright’s high-pitched scream and, seconds later, his sobbing accusations and vicious swearing. He knew then that Ray had “demonstrated”. Weak-kneed, he let himself out of the bathroom and made his way unsteadily back to the occultist’s study.

There he found what he knew he would find: the horror which he himself had experienced twice already. The two men, his friend Nuttall and the still steadily swearing, bulge-eyed occultist, were hastily removing their outer garments. All the while, they were frenziedly wiping at their faces, shaking their arms and hands and kicking their legs in a concerted effort to be rid of the viscous, clear jelly that covered them head to toe in shiny, gluey envelopes. This was the snail-trail, the residue of the Black One—the Filler of Space—He Who Comes in the Dark!—that creature or power of outer dimensions which only the purity of the light might disperse!

• • •

Nuttall sat wrapped in a towel, pale, drawn and shivering beside the warmth of a gas fire whose glowing logs looked so very nearly real. He and the occultist had showered to cleanse themselves of the obnoxious, slimy coverings and now Millwright sat, listening, while Bart explained the most intricate details of what had gone on before.

Bart narrated how he and Nuttall had stumbled across the means of drawing the horror of the jelly-substance through the fabric of alien dimensions to their own world; how they had discovered that light held this creature of darkness, this fly-the-light, at bay; and how thereafter, whenever they found themselves in darkness, the thing that lived and chittered in darkness would return to try to drown them in its exuded essence. At this mention, all eyes flickered towards that thick liquid which even now slimed the floor in stinking, drying puddles, that juice which not one of the three could as yet bring himself to touch or clear away.

“And you actually have a copy of Mad Berkley’s Book?” The shaken occultist asked, the silver tassels of his oriental dressing-gown moving to the shudders of his body.

“Yes, it belonged to Ray’s grandfather,” Bart agreed. “We’ve brought it with us.” He crossed the room to where his coat hung and tremulously removed from a large inner pocket a leather-bound volume in iron clasps. He handed the book to the occultist who opened it, studied its contents for a few moments, then snapped it decisively shut.

“Oh yes, that’s Mad Berkley’s Book all right. And, indeed, it’s in better condition than my own copy. Old Berkley’s believed to have combined all the worst elements of a score of esoteric volumes in this work—the Necronomicon, the Cthaat Aquadingen, the German Unaussprechlichen Kulten—and, by God, I can readily enough believe it now! I myself have never used the book. I knew that a lot of the stuff Old Berkley put down on paper was damnably dangerous, of course, but this! This is a monstrous evil!”

He paused for a moment, his hands shaking terribly; then his eyes hardened as he turned them upon Nuttall by the gas fire. “You bloody fool! You’ve damned me with the same hideous curse! Didn’t you realise that once I had experienced that—thing—that I, too, would be subject to such visitations?”

Nuttall looked up, a shadow of his previous cynical control returning to drawn, haggard features. “I guessed it might be so, yes,” he admitted, then hastily went on; “but don’t you see it had to be this way? How else could I be sure you’d help us? Now that you’re in the same boat, you have to help. If you can…exorcise…this horror, then we’ll all be safe. At least you have an incentive…now!”

“Why, you damned young—” Millwright rose in a fury, but Bart caught at his sleeve.

“What use to fight about it, Mr. Millwright? Don’t you see that there’s no time for that? Sooner or later, unless we find…well…an antidote, one by one, accidentally, we’ll all be caught in the dark. When that happens…then…” Bart’s voice trailed ominously away as he left the sentence unfinished.

“But I don’t know of any ‘antidote’ as you put it,” the occultist rounded on him, his voice harsh.

“Then we’d better start looking for one right away,” Ray Nuttall snapped, the situation finally getting the better of his nerves. “Surely you have some idea of what the thing is? I mean, you’re the expert, after all. Are there no other occultists we can consult?”