Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales Read online

  Resolutely directing his gaze at the nearest buttress of the ramparts, he went over in his mind, perhaps for the twentieth time, the series of his sensations from the moment when he had held the lens over the model. Through the glass the tiny castle had appeared to grow and grow in swiftly overlapping rings from its centre, there had been a feeling of suction as though he were being dragged violently towards it, and then a moment - or an hour - of complete blackout from which he had emerged to a realisation of standing in an immense copy of the miniature courtyard looking up at the terrific mass of the Keep. Appalled by its sickening height and crushed by his own proportional sense of smallness, he had nevertheless been impelled to enter the open door and climb endlessly up flight after flight of stone steps till he came out, weak and trembling, on the roof. And then the feverish pacing of its periphery, a prey to wonder, fear, and a horrible giddiness each time he looked down towards the sea. And all the time the grey, unnatural twilight had persisted, tormenting him with the half-knowledge that he was not even on the Earth at all, but in some incredible place utterly divorced from all things human and alive.

  It was healthy, physical hunger that eventually restored his mental balance to something near normality. In whatever nightmare realm he had landed himself, it clearly contained no possible source of food, and he must find his way out before starvation overtook him. The castle was sea-girt, and the interminable causeway that stretched from the shore towards the horizon was the only apparent means of exit. He felt a trifle fortified at the prospect of escape, and eagerly began the long descent of the stairways.

  ‘The glass,’ Mrs. Stebbings repeated defiantly, ‘ain’t here, and I ain’t took it. Them bits in the ’earth might be it - broke - but that don’t tell me where young ’Unt ’as ’opped orf to.’ She tossed her head. ‘And ’im owing me a week’s rent,’ she added with meaning.

  The Police Sergeant turned from his inspection of the broken lock and gave her an expressionless glance. ‘That’s all right,’ he replied, ‘I’m not accusing you of taking it, but it certainly isn’t in this room.

  No doubt Hunt has it with him - that’s to say if there a glass, as this writing states.

  ‘Now, Mrs. S.,’ he went on pacifically, ‘please see if your other lodger is in the house. We shall want him to confirm your account of breaking into this room - not that we doubt your word,’ he added hastily, ‘just as a matter of form.’ As the landlady’s footsteps died away on the rickety stairs he turned to the Constable who accompanied him.

  ‘Another mare’s nest, I fancy.’ he remarked. ‘Lodger owes week’s rent and can’t pay, so leaves quietly. Can’t smuggle his stuff out ’cause she’s too sharp-eyed. Clothes aren’t worth much, anyway. Hard on the lady, of course, but scarcely one of the cases where we call in the Yard.’ He paused, and looked thoughtfully around him. ‘All the same,’ he continued, It is a bit queer how he got out with the door locked inside. The window’s too big a drop, the roof’s out of reach, and there are no marks on the key to show he turned it from outside with forceps.’

  ‘How long’s he been missing?’ asked the Constable.

  The Sergeant consulted his watch. ‘About forty-two hours. She saw him coming upstairs with a parcel - probably this,’ he indicated the box and model on the table, ‘about five p.m. on Saturday, left him to sleep, as she supposed, all yesterday, and got the other fellow7 to break the lock when he didn’t come down to breakfast this morning, and she found the door fastened. Yes, it looks like a case of convenient disappearance, seeing that he’s not turned up at his job. Well, she ought to get her rent and a bit over on the price of this miniature if he doesn’t come back to claim it after a reasonable interval. But I

  doubt if she’ll see Master Hunt again in this house,’ he concluded.

  ‘For God’s sake water - and food,’ said a hoarse, feeble voice behind them, and they swung round in amazement to see the missing lodger, pale and haggard, sprawled across the bed!

  That familiarity breeds contempt is a proverb of some antiquity and more than a little justification, and, although contempt was the last sentiment Peter Hunt felt with regard to Lost Keep, it was not long before his initial fear of the unknown was transmuted into a complacent acceptance of his heritage and of the supernatural powers it conveyed. His circumstances at the age of thirty differed vastly from those in which the arrival of the remarkable miniature had found him. He now possessed a house in Park Lane, a country-seat down in Dorset, three cars, a large staff of servants for the upkeep of his establishments, and, above all, a very charming but neglected wife among whose many contributions to his well-being was a son and heir also named Peter, but generally known as Pete for purposes of distinction.

  It was in the library of his Park Lane mansion that Peter was sitting one August evening when a telephone call informed him that Lord Knifton proposed calling on him for a private interview in half an hour’s time, and Peter’s thin lips twisted into a grimace of satisfaction as he hung up the receiver. Knifton was his co-director in many of the big commercial enterprises from which his income was derived, and he had lately been behaving in a most obstructive way by refusing to approve certain conversion schemes which he - Peter - had evolved for their joint enrichment at the expense of the shareholders. He was one of the few financial magnates sufficiently powerful to interfere seriously with Peter’s activities, and the time had come when one or the other must definitely take second place.

  Well, Knifton might indulge in whatever ideals he chose, but Peter knew which of them that one would be.

  He opened the drawer of his desk and took out the miniature fortress. The hard circle of the lens pressed comfortingly against his abdomen in the inner pocket where it always reposed. A thousand Kniftons could not dominate the master of Lost Keep.

  With half an hour’s leisure, Peter’s thoughts wandered back to the day when he had discovered the trick of the model and so nearly lost his life in the discovery. Even now he shuddered to recall that unending march along the rocky causeway that seemed to lead on eternally towards a horizon that never grew a mile nearer. How that unchanging grey twilight had mocked him with its denial of Time after he had dropped his watch into the sea and had no means of counting the passage of the hours. The sullen waves had lapped on with changeless rhythm either side of him. raising and lowering their fringe of decaying weed with never a variation in the limit of their lift - until he had screamed aloud at their inexorable monotony. He remembered how he had tramped on, mile after mile, towards the ever-receding skyline till sheer exhaustion had dropped him in his tracks, and how, as he fell, his hand doubled under him, had come in contact with the lens which he then recollected having slipped into his pocket just as unconsciousness was claiming him in the Tilbury bedroom. With tired fingers he had drawn it out and held it, by some inner prompting, between his dim eyes and the distant beacon, to find himself, an instant later, lying across his bed with two policemen in the room and the tread of his landlady’s feet ascending the stairs. Even then, with no formulated ideas of the value of his discovery, instinct had warned him to slip the lens again into his pocket, and to their excited queries about where he had been and the manner of his return he had reiterated foolishly that he had been asleep.

  They had given him water - that of the strange ocean had been too brackish to drink - and bread, which he had devoured wolfishly, but to all their questions he had answered, ‘I don’t know. I was asleep,’ until they finally left him, evidently much mystified, and whispering together.

  It was during the ensuing night that, unable to sleep for thinking about the model fortress, he began to realise the almost unlimited possibilities it contained. In whatever uncharted spot the original was situated, he felt sure that its whereabouts remained undiscovered by man, and it followed logically that he would have unquestioned dominion there. True, there were no inhabitants upon whom to exercise it - but suppose he could find a way of transporting other people to the place? He had assured himself that the who
le thing was not feverish delirium by making several more brief visits to the Keep, always being careful to maintain a tight hold on the lens when the period of black-out arrived. Reference to the alarm clock by his bed showed him that, whatever might be the distance from the model to the real fortress, the transit occupied no measurable time at all; and this fact alone, should he choose to defy mankind, would provide a perfect alibi, since no jury would admit that he could travel hundreds - maybe thousands - of miles in a fraction of a second. Any breach of law or convention would have to be carried out at the real place at a time when he was known to be at home, and this arrangement would safeguard him against its very discovery. He reverted to the problem of getting his victims - veritable slaves they would be - to the island of his sovereignty, and concluded that the lens was large enough for two people to look through it at once, if it were held at the right distance.

  Peter awoke from a half-dream and smiled at the model To this day he had never come an inch nearer to solving the location of Lost Keep itself, but the miniature had served him well, and he loved those early memories. How scornfully disbelieving his foreman had been when he had hinted at the acquisition of something with magical properties! It had required a lot of restraint and tact to persuade him round to the lodging-house for a demonstration after he had brusquely sacked Peter for failing to be at work on that memorable Monday, but Peter had feigned cheerful indifference, supporting his attitude with talk of a quite mythical better job waiting for him, and the mention of a bottle of whiskey, bought out of his slender savings, had clinched the matter. After a few drinks Peter had brought out the miniature and, inviting the foreman to sit beside him and concentrate upon it, had focused it with the lens. The usual enlargement of the image and the subsequent black-out had duly occurred, but this time, on coming to his senses in the great courtyard, he had seen beside him another figure - a figure with dropped jaw and blank eyes staring up at the colossal pile overhanging them. He had thereupon directed the lens at the beacon and translated himself back to Tilbury - alone.

  It was only fair to himself, Peter always reflected at this point, to remember that he had been in ignorance of the man’s alcoholic heart. He had intended to punish him by leaving him marooned for a day, and it was with no little horror - for his autocratic power was still new - that he found him lying dead at the gateway on the following morning. Assurance of immunity, however, had gone far to overcome any remorse he had felt, and the six pounds odd which he had found in the man’s pockets had consoled him in his unemployment. Those six pounds had, in fact, been the foundation of his present fortune, for from that chance windfall the acquisition of other and larger sums had been a rational and easy step, and he had found that anything he carried on his person was translated with him on his journeys between Lost Keep and the everyday world. Other advantages, too, were afforded by his unique possession; there had been, for instance, women who had denied him.

  On one thing Peter had always congratulated himself. He had never allowed any of his bond slaves to escape from Lost Keep. Once, indeed, he had been tempted to bring back a girl, for whom he had felt an unusually lasting passion, into the warm world of sunlight and blue skies, but he had realised in time the danger of having his secret betrayed, and had left her to pine in the cold, grey twilight where none it seemed could survive more than a few months. He had taken her food and drink in plenty, for it had hurt him to visualise her in the agonies of starvation, but he had seen the lovely face grow wan, and the eyes lose a spark more of their lustre on each successive visit, and at the end he had stayed away for many days rather than face more of her pleadings for release.

  Peter shook himself, and glanced at the clock. Knifton was nearly due. He had been sitting dreaming in his shirt-sleeves, for the evening was oppressively hot, and now he rose and donned a heavy silk dressing-gown that was hung over the back of his chair. It was a highly coloured affair, the fabric of which had been especially woven for him in a unique pattern of interlacing circles.

  Lord Knifton was a man some fifty years of age, who possessed both personality and tact. Though he frankly disagreed with many of Peter’s principles, and never hesitated to tell him so, when their joint affairs were involved, he had considerable respect for his business acumen, and liked him well enough socially. Thus it was that, on being shown into the library, he made no immediate attempt to introduce the subject of their recent dispute, but shook hands and accepted a cigar while chatting of generalities. He soon noticed the model fortress and remarked its brilliant workmanship.

  ‘Yes,’ Peter agreed, ‘a marvellous example of miniature craft - but its wonders show up better when viewed through this glass. Just sit still and keep the model in focus. Don’t look away even if it makes your head swim for a second. There’s no danger to the eyes, and you’ll find the effect amazing.’ He leaned over the back of Lord Knifton’s chair, and held the lens so that both could see the fortress through it.

  ‘And now, Knifton,’ he said stridently, ‘I've got you just where I want you.’

  His companion rubbed his eyes and looked about him in bewilderment. A moment ago he had been sitting in Hunt’s luxuriously furnished library on a hot August night, looking at a miniature on the desk. Now, by some miracle, he found himself in a gigantic, stone-flagged court, high-walled and fronted by a fortress of staggering dimensions, while, under a dead grey sky that cast no shadows, the windless air struck coldly through his thin evening suit. The stench of a charnel-house assailed his nostrils, and he saw with revulsion that the ground was strewn with human remains in all stages of decomposition from bare, bleached skeletons to gory carcasses of the freshly slain, and the less recently alive - hideously distended.

  He cried out sharply, and recoiled several paces, slewing round with upraised arms as he collided with someone behind him.

  ‘Only your host,’ said the voice of Peter Hunt, with a chilly suavity from which all trace of friendliness had vanished, ‘please make yourself quite at home. It is your home, now, you know - that is, until you realise that I’m bound to win in the end, and sign this concession you so smugly discountenanced yesterday.'

  He produced an impressive looking document, stiff with seals, and opened it with a flourish, then, seeing that his guest remained tongue -tied, went on bitingly, ‘Framing a spate of questions, I suppose? What’s this place? How did I get here? And so forth. Well, you may save your breath. Where you are I know no better than you. What I do know is that I have been absolute monarch of it for many years. Peter Hunt of Park Lane, pillar of Society, political leader, supporter of the Constitution, deferring to the wishes of a dozen pettifogging public bodies - and enjoying the farce because I know that I can, at will, take any man to whose opinion I pretend to bow, and bring him here and rule him as you can rule a dog!’ He laughed unpleasantly. ‘You damned fool! Do you think it’s for the money that I want your signature? I can get enough to pay the National Debt by bringing the rich to Lost Keep and stripping them of their wealth. There’s one in there,’ he muttered, as a despairing moan echoed from behind a barred grating in the stonework, ‘he’s trying to decide whether it’s worth while to sign a cheque and write home to say how much he’s enjoying his holiday - in Portugal! No, my esteemed and scrupulous partner, one grows weary of ruling over subjects a few at a time in this gloomy place. I want to come out into the open and rule a country - and when this concession goes through I can do it.'

  At last Lord Knifton spoke, and in his tones were neither fear nor anger. Only an abiding sorrow.

  ‘Peter Hunt,’ he replied solemnly, ‘by some diabolical means which I do not even wish to fathom you wield a power that no man is ready to possess. I can only say: God take that power from you before more evil is done!’

  As he spoke a swift shadow blotted out half the sky, and Hunt threw back his head in amazement. In the whole course of his association with this weird retreat he had never known anything to break the canopy of twilight, and his hands fell nervelessly to his s
ides as there burst on his vision a mass of shining metal, so huge as almost to dwarf the Keep, miraculously suspended in space above it. For a few seconds its great spatulate point hovered over the turrets. Then, it darted down and rushed at them, its lower edge grinding and roaring along the paving stones.

  ‘Uncle, you promised to show me your new’ microscope. May I see it now?’ Pete demanded with a sidelong glance at his mother.

  ‘But it’s bedtime, dear,’ said Lydia Hunt, ‘and you can see Uncle Harry’s reading. Run upstairs now like a good boy and you shall see it tomorrow.’

  Pete drooped a pathetic lower lip. He was a sunny-natured child, though a trifle spoilt.

  ‘Oh, but Uncle did promise. He said today, and I’ve been looking forward to it all school-time. I told the other chaps in our form about it, and they’ll want to hear what I’ve seen with it tomorrow'. Won’t you show me something tonight please. Uncle Harry?’

  Lydia’s brother looked up from his evening paper with a whimsical smile. ‘Well,’ he laughed, ‘I’ve promised to take it round to Dr. Pruden’s tomorrow to check over some of his cultures, so perhaps the boy had better see it tonight. It won’t take long. All right, Pete. The “mike’s” in Daddy’s library, and I believe he’s got Lord Knifton there with him, but we’ll see if they’ll let us have it.’

  Pete clutched one of his hands with the enthusiasm of the ten-year-old, and danced across the hall at his side. They came to the library door and knocked, but there was no reply. Pete pushed it open and looked in. ‘Come on. Uncle Harry,’ he cried, they must have gone out. Where’s the microscope?’