Gothic Lovecraft Read online

  Lear gasped. “We were just with my daughter Regan, and she said nothing of this.”

  “I dare say, my liege, because Regan hopes to wed Edmund when he succeeds to the earldom, and Goneril has similar ambitions. Her husband Albany is beginning to distance himself from her anyway, not only because of her unpleasant aspect, but because of the way she has treated your majesty. Albany is still your ally, the fault of that house being entirely with Goneril.”

  “Faithless wenches,” Lear muttered, “as if any man might keep the contents of his stomach at the sight of them, or the thought of them. The dukes knew not what they married. But you said word had been sent to France, of how things stand?”

  “Rumors are abroad,” Edgar said, “that France’s forces land upon the shore at Dover. Cordelia travels with them.”

  Kent stood up and pointed to the door. “The storm will soon abate, by all indications. I suggest we leave for Dover at once.”

  At the Cornwall castle, Goneril was mightily berating her sister. “You know that forces friendly to our worthless father have landed at Dover, and you know perfectly well that we need your husband to marshal our own forces in the face of this threat, and yet you are still giving those deadly potions to Cornwall. It astonishes me that under your wifely ministrations he has lived this long.” By the end of so protracted a speech, Goneril’s voice was beginning to deteriorate, causing her to pause to regain control of it.

  Regan shrugged, a slippery gesture that would have revolted anyone but her equally unsavory sister. “You know that I aspire to wed Edmund. Would you want me to have two husbands?”

  Goneril waited to get her breath, an increasingly difficult task these days, with those slits on her throat trying to open up. “Oh, I know that you want the new Earl of Gloucester. But as your older sister I reserve that right for myself.”

  Regan shook her head, a motion that was beginning to have a decidedly ichthyic look. “What about your husband?”

  Goneril gave out with something that from a normal throat might have been a scornful laugh. “Albany is leaving me. Like our father in his relations with our mother, he finds it impossible to reconcile his feeling with what I am becoming. Besides, his loyalty to Father makes me sick.”

  “And what makes you suppose,” Regan retorted, “that Edmund will want you instead of me?”

  “Well,” Goneril said, “we shall see. I have sent for him, and we will let him choose for himself. He should be here presently.”

  When Edmund arrived and was shown in, Goneril did not delay in addressing him. “Edmund, Earl of Gloucester. How very good to see you. I have importantmatters to discuss with you.”

  “You mean we have,” Regan said.

  Edmund nodded to Goneril, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Duchess.” He nodded to Regan as well. “Duchess.” He unconsciously made a face, and it would be difficult to know whether the sisters realized that his expression was due to the fishy smell of them, an intolerable reek that he had noticed even before entering the room.

  “Edmund,” Goneril said in her gurgling voice, her watery eyes bulging, “I wish you to be my suitor. My sister Regan, I will mention, is foolish enough to have similar aspirations. Kindly explain to her that your choice for a wife would be myself.”

  Edmund nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He cleared his throat. “I—I think the gravity of this decision would—would be ill served by haste or by facile reaction. I owe it to you, both of you, to ponder the question in solitude.” Bowing to them, he withdrew. When he was out the door, the sisters could hear, from the hall beyond, the sound of a man being violently sick to his stomach.

  “We have more important things with which to concern ourselves,” Regan said. “France’s forces threaten to assist our father, and I will consult Cornwall, though it be on his deathbed, as to how we must proceed against the enemy. I gather we can no longer rely upon Albany.”

  “We have no need of him,” Goneril said, the slits in her throat quivering, becoming more clearly defined. “These matters are all up to us now. But beyond our domination of this melancholy land, we have a greater mission. Think of it, Regan—as soon as we are ready to take to the water, we will bring up more like ourselves, many more, and we shall dance around altar fires and invoke the Words of old, which no human tongue can speak, and sacrifices shall be made, and the Deep Ones shall prevail, and dwell in wonder and glory forever.”

  “Yes,” Regan intoned huskily, clearly enchanted with this vision, her protuberant eyes rolling with emotion.” This has been the promise of my dreams, the longing in my soul. And it will come to pass. Meanwhile we will make certain that our father and his followers do not obstruct us. This is war; but we shall make it brief.”

  Kent, back at his own castle, where the forces from across the water were billeted, was moved to tears at the sight of Lear’s reunion with his faithful daughter Cordelia, now a most attractive queen. Regan’s words about the brevity of the impending war were prophetic. What Cordelia’s husband, the King of France, had anticipated as a mighty struggle, to unsettle the powers opposing Lear and to return him to his rightful place, was promising now to be but a skirmish, what with Cornwall next to death and the Duke of Albany already of a mind to favor Lear and overlook the indiscretion of his having imparted properties to undeserving and ungrateful daughters, whose aberrations made them unfit to exert influence over the land. The scoundrel Edmund would be severely dealt with, and once more things would be as they should be. A few years hence, with the passing of Lear, the Duke of Albany would ascend to the throne. Lear would be remarkably sound of mind to the end, though by no means at his ease.

  For there were still the daughters Goneril and Regan to contend with, who by the time of Lear’s reinstatement were so advanced in their horrendous degeneration that one could barely recognize them. Lear took them in charge, lodging them in his own castle very much against their will, as the mute protest of their hideous eyes attested. When they spoke at all, which was mercifully seldom, it was in voices so contrary to healthy human existence that no one, save possibly themselves, could understand what they said.

  Very little could be done for them. Among the last coherent utterances they made were entreaties to be taken to the coast and allowed to return to the sea. But King Lear was damned if he would accede to this, and had them confined to a far wing of the castle, where no one had to see them except the servants who took them food. Ever more each day, they shunned ordinary comestibles, and lived upon grubs and insects collected and given to them in covered baskets.

  On one memory-haunting occasion, some months after his return to power, Lear, accompanied by his old friend the Earl of Kent, made an exception to his usual rule of avoiding any contact with the daughters and made his slow and faltering way into the far wing where they dwelled. The servants had reported that one of the two dreadful denizens of that wing, they could not be sure which, seemed no longer to be moving about, and they were uncertain as to whether she was still alive, hence Lear’s decision to go. Upon reaching the hall, Lear and Kent found a reeking tumulus of organic matter from which a growing dissolution had removed any suggestion of human form. From atop this mound of corruption the remnants of two rheumy, teratological eyes stared sightlessly out, like the glazed dead eyes of a mackerel. Instinctively, Lear thought that this was what remained of Goneril.

  Worse yet, from down the hall another form shambled forth, its horror being that, looking the way it looked, it still moved at all. This had to be what Lear and Kent had once known as Regan, and as the figure advanced haltingly and gelatinously, dropping purulent gobbets of itself along the way, it made, though there was now only a spongy mass where there had once been a head, a sound that no mortal should ever have to hear, a deranged and mucoid parody of human speech, before the tottering thing fell into putrid liquefaction at Lear’s feet.

  The Earl of Kent would remain a caring companion to Lear for the rest of that aging king’s life, and without the abhor
rent visages of Goneril and Regan to mar his senses, the faithful Kent would enjoy, in his own advancing age, a certain peace of mind—except when he stood in the tower of his own castle at Dover and allowed his gaze to wander to the misty sea beyond his battlements, the timeless and brooding sea whose undulant expanses held secrets on which Kent struggled not to dwell. Somewhere in those lightless ocean depths, the mother of Goneril and Regan cavorted unthinkably with fellow creatures of whom a sane person could form only the vaguest notion. And at times like these, Kent would turn from his tower window and try, albeit without much success, to put the ancient, mystical sea out of his troubled thoughts.

  The Revelation at the Abbey

  Don Webb

  Hiding his true motives was easy in Prague, the city swarmed with alchemists and soothsayers. On a given morning he could breakfast with Dr. John Dee and have dinner with Rabbi Lowe. The emperor was crazed, for magic and magicians of every stripe—mainly charlatans and mountebanks—had filled the streets. Strange fumes of outlandish hues belched from every chimney. Weird music seeped from cracks in ancient mortar at night, parchments with bizarre sigils were traded with a frenzy that might make the doughiest merchant blush. No one paid attention to Dr. Nemo. The occasional Greek speaker nodded knowingly at his name, Dr. Nobody, and one perceptive fellow even asked what Polyphemus he was seeking to deceive. His answer, “I am but an honest alchemist,” made his listener shoot red wine from his nose, he laughed so hard.

  Dr. Nemo had come here because of a rumor, as he had gone everywhere for the last thirty-one years, because of rumors about the Book. He was an old man of fifty-four with a face pockmarked from plague, yellowish skin, and missing two fingers from his right hand (because of a minor infraction of Egyptian law). His hair was dirty silver and sat in tight greasy circles near his scalp. The whites of his eyes had become yolk-yellow, and rather nicely matched his remaining teeth. He would occasionally flinch at sounds other humans did not hear. He often woke from deep sleep screaming. He spoke French, German, Arabic, Polish, Italian, and English well—and he read Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Gothic. He had learned to seem harmless and even parental. He no longer appeared to be driven by a mad quest; but in his heart he thought of nothing but the Book.

  He had been in Cairo. It was rumored that Dhu’l-Nun al-Misiri had found the Book. It was said (according to rumor) to have been the Scroll of Thoth that Prince Setne had stolen and returned to a haunted pyramid. Others said it came from the kingdom of the Stygians who had lived along the Nile before the desert came. Dr. Nemo had been digging by a statue of Dhu’l-Nun when a tall, portly, one-eyed beggar had approached at sundown. He greeted Nemo with his real name, the name of his boyhood in far-off London, and said, “The occult wisdom of the ages is being gathered in Prague. The Book you seek hides there.” Then the beggar faded into smoke and left only a foul stench of his passing. Dr. Nemo wondered if he was a phantom conjured by a rival, a message from such gods or demons as may wish to help (or hinder) him, or even a reflection of the Book itself. Maybe after all these years it longed to be found. Maybe after all these years its yellowed pages longed to be caressed by human eyes. Maybe it simply wanted to laugh at him.

  He had first heard of the Book when he swept shop for a dealer in strange things in London. Visitors to the shop would trace a sign with their left index finger, and the owner would respond with a countersign. They ignored him and spoke of many things. How to bring back the dead from their saltes, where certain rocks could be asked questions which they would answer truthfully at certain seasons, how to speak to mermen, and above all the Book. The nature of the Book seemed an open question. Most thought it to be a scroll or a set of scrolls. Others postulated clay tablets or even a mass of knotted cords. One woman suggested that it might change shape to communicate better with its owner.

  It was not a grimoire.

  On this point every seeker agreed. It was a history text, the true unvarnished history of this and perhaps other worlds. After months of hearing about the Book, he had gathered his courage to ask his master—a short, well-built Jew known for his temper—about the Book. The man scowled at first, and Nemo hardened his limbs expecting a beating. Then the owner laughed.

  “So, my little goy, you have a mind after all. I will tell most of what I know. I think the Book was destroyed years ago, maybe centuries. If a human owned it and studied it thoughtfully, he or even she would rule this haunted world. But the rumor of the Book—that drives men mad.”

  “How could a history book make one powerful?”

  “Let me ask you three questions. Why do you think about the mistakes you’ve made?”

  “So that I won’t repeat them.”

  “So a true book of every mistake a ruler has made would have value, no? Why do people risk vast fortunes for treasure maps?”

  “If the map were true, it could lead to vast unclaimed wealth.”

  “So a book of every lost treasure—even those lost long before the coming of Adam—would be priceless, no? Why do so many of my friends seek the conversations of demons and angels?”

  “They wish to know what lies beyond the world of men.”

  “So a book that gave a true history of such beings, which are very different from what our faiths tell us, would perhaps be the most amazing text of all time?”

  “Truly I would give an eye for such wisdom, a hand, my tongue. But why do you think such a Book ever existed?”

  “Now that I have raised the possibility of such a volume in your mind, will you think of aught else?”

  His master had begun Nemo on the art of reading. First Greek and Latin. His master taught him to bargain and haggle and size up customers. He taught him how to be charming in half a dozen languages. But he would not teach the art of magic.

  “Such things have brought me only sorrow and fear. The gold they bring is fleeting, the knowledge they bring makes you unhappy with the rules of this life and fearful of what awaits in the next.”

  The old Jew had no family and promised Nemo the shop and his gold when he passed on.

  And Nemo, for a season, found love. Mary worked for the baker next door. She was lovely and smelled of fresh bread. She sang and laughed and was very impressed when Nemo could read a poem to her. On the eve of their wedding, she caught a fever. The doctors bled her and gave her stinking poultices, but she still failed. Even the Jew uttered a spell that seemed to slow, but not stop, the fever’s burn. And Nemo was sad for two years. During those years he did not notice that the Jew’s back grew more bent, his hair more gray, his eyes more dim. Then one morning the Jew did not descend the stair into the shop and Nemo went to see after him. In a glance he knew that the slow fire of time had nearly roasted this man who had been his companion and teacher. He began to run off for the doctor, but his friend asked merely to listen.

  “I have had a long life; by my Art it has been much longer than the Most High allowed to men since the Flood. Now I pass into a Darkness wherein certain things wait for me. I am saddened that your wife-to-be died, and I hope that this shop will help you find another. You should burn the books and scrolls I keep in the black box under the gold. They will give you too much pain if you read them, and if you try and sell them you will attract men you do not wish to meet.”

  Within the hour, he had passed. Nemo pulled the black box free and made a fire. He opened the box, but before he threw the accursed volumes away he made the simple mistake of looking at one page. A phrase caught him, and he began to read. The fire died down and he read. The room grew cold and he read by the body of the dead Jew. His stomach rumbled and he read. The sun rose and set and he read.

  Then with a stern voice he read a verse from an ancient scroll, and the body of the Jew rose. He told it to go lie in front of the synagogue so it would be buried. He gathered the gold and prepared to set off to a steamy rice-rich river in China. It was clear to him where the Book must lie. How could the Jew not have figured this out?

  Two years and a horrible shaking fever lat
er, Nemo realized, after careful study, that the Book was in Germany. Then in another year, having called up scholars from the dead to aid his research, he knew that it must be beneath a certain ruined temple near Rome. Then it had to lie in a nameless city in the Arabian desert. And then India, then Poland, then Macbeth’s hillock in Scotland, at the center of Stonehenge.

  And then one day he saw his face reflected in a shiny brass plate in a Baghdad market and saw that he looked older and sicker than the Jew. He saw that he had no friends among living humans. He saw he was not in any way closer. He sat down on the cobblestones of the street. Soldiers of the Caliph carried him away. He was locked up in the madhouse for three days. Then claiming to have regained his senses, he bribed his way free. He continued the quest, but without hope.

  Questing was simply what he knew how to do. It was then the phantoms began coming to him. The first appeared when he had returned to England yet again. He was sitting in a public house when a young lady sat next to him. She had brown hair that verged on blond, and a bit of flour daubed one of her temples. She might have been Mary’s cousin. Her eyes were black as ink, and her faded blue dress rustled like paper. She spoke in a near-whisper. “The Book you need is not on this island. Britannia est insula parva.” The exercise-book Latin had been the first sentence he had learned to read. From Caesar: “Britain is a small island.” He turned to face her, but somehow she suddenly wasn’t there. He stayed in a small inn for days, using various methods of divination to find his next target.

  Prague had twisty streets. It would be a good place for the Book. Its layout suggested a labyrinth, surely the correct sort of library for such a volume. Dr. Nemo no longer concealed his quest if someone happened to ask. He had never encountered any of the Jew’s customers in the last three decades, nor did he possess the mouth-to-ear instruction that opened certain doors. Shortly after arriving in Prague, he had befriended the librarian of Emperor Rudolf II, the great collector of the occult and the eldritch, the esoteric and the forbidden. The tiny man, whose nature suggested more of a magical creature of the forest than of an urban dweller, gave him access to the vast book collection within days. Most of it was rubbish. A few books had certain Hints, and others were written in languages Dr. Nemo did not speak. The latter posed a problem. It was said the Book—parts of the Book at any rate—predated the coming of mankind. This would necessitate the Book being written in tongues known to no men—unless some secret society had preserved the tongues of lizards or demons. Yet it would be enough, thought Dr. Nemo, simply to hold the Book. If he could hold it in his arms, it would be enough. It would be like embracing Helen of Troy. She might not yield to him, but he would have held that which started wars and quests and (he suspected) religions as well.