The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

days he was so quiet that they were afraid he'd been struck dumb. Finally he did calm down enough to answer questions, but a lot was left unexplained. Of course, as you say…

'Apparently he'd been ploughing through the thickest part of the forest when he heard something following him down the path. Very heavy footsteps, he said — with a sort of metallic sound about them. Well, he turned round, but there was a bend in the path that blocked his view. However, the sun was shining down the path, and it cast a shadow of something which must have been just beyond the turning. Nobody knows exactly what it was; the man only said that while it was almost as tall as a tree, it was no tree — and it was moving towards him. I suppose he would have seen it in a moment, but he didn't wait for that. He ran the other way down the path. He must have run for quite some time, I think, because he ended up in the haunted clearing. Quite the last place he'd have chosen.

'This is the part that rather interests me. The sun was near to setting, and maybe that gave an added luridness to the scene. Anyway, in this glade in the forest he saw a metal cone standing in the centre. It was made of grey mineral that didn't reflect, and was more than thirty feet high. There was a kind of circular trapdoor on one side, but on the other side were carved reliefs. Presumably he was frightened to go near it, but finally he approached it. Over at one side of the space, there was a long stone with a rectangular hollow scooped out of the top. It was surrounded by human footprints — and there was dried blood in the hollow.

'Another hiatus, I'm afraid. He never would describe those carvings on the cone, except to say that some represented the thing he had almost seen on the path, and others were of — other things. He didn't look at them long, anyway, but went round the other side to look at the trapdoor. It didn't seem to have any lock or way of opening, and he was studying it. Then a shadow fell across him. He looked up.

'It was only the sun finally setting, but it did attract his attention away from the trapdoor. When he looked back, it was hanging open. And while he watched, he heard a throbbing noise somewhere above him, in the tip of the cone. He said he thought there was a sort of dry rustling inside, getting closer. Then he saw a shape crawling out of the darkness inside the trapdoor. That's about it.'

'What do you mean — that's all there is?' I said incredulously.

'More or less, yes,' the teacher agreed. 'The man became very incoherent after that. All I can learn is that he said it told him about its life and what it wanted. The legend hints something more, actually — speaks of his being dragged off the earth into other universes, but I wouldn't know about that. He's supposed to have learned the history of these beings in the cone, and some of what's passed down in the legend is remarkably unusual. At sunrise the Daytime Guardians — that's what they're called in the story — come out, either to warn people away from the clearing or to drive them in there, I don't know which. These were that species of thing that cast the shadow he saw on the path. On the other hand, after dark the others come out of the cone. There was a lot more told him, but the whole thing's very vague.'

'Yes, it is vague, isn't it?' I agreed meaningfully. 'Too vague — horrors that are too horrible for description, eh? More likely whoever thought this up didn't have enough imagination to describe them when the time came. No, I'm sorry, I won't be able to use it — I'd have to fill in far too much if I did. The thing isn't even based on fact, obviously; it must be the invention of one of the locals. You can see the inconsistencies — if everybody was so scared of this clearing, why did this man suddenly stand up and go into it? Besides, why's the thing so explicit until it reaches any concrete horror?'

'Well, Mr Shea,' remarked my informant, 'don't criticise it to me. Tell Sam, there — he's one of the locals who knows about these things; in fact, he told me the legend.' He indicated an old rustic drinking a pint of beer at the bar, who I had noticed watching us all through the conversation. He now rose from the stool and sat at our table.

'Ah, zur,' remonstrated our new companion, 'you don't want t' sneer at stories as is tole roun' here. 'Im as you was 'earin' about laughed at wot they said t' him. 'E didn't believe in ghosts nor devils, but that was before 'e went t' the woods… An' I can't tell yer more about wot 'e got from the thing int' cone 'cos them as knew kep' quiet about it.'

'That's not the only one about the clearing in the woods,' interposed the teacher. 'This witch-cult which held their meetings there had their reasons. I've heard they got some definite benefit from their visits — some sort of ecstatic pleasure, like that one gets from taking drugs. It had something to do with what happened to the man when he went in — you know, when he seemed to enter another universe? — but beyond that, I can't tell you anything.

'There are other tales, but they're still more vague. One traveller who strayed down there one moonlit night saw what looked like a flock of birds rising out of the glade — but he got a second look, and even though these things were the size of large birds, they were something quite different. Then quite a few people have seen lights moving between the trees and heard a kind of pulsation in the distance. And once they found someone dead on a path through the woods. He was an old man, so it wasn't too surprising that he'd died of heart failure. But it was the way he looked that was peculiar. He was staring in absolute horror at something down the path. Something had crossed the path just ahead of the corpse, and whatever it was, it must have been enough to stop a man's heart. It had broken off branches more than fifteen feet from the ground in passing.'

We had all been talking so long that I did not realise how much I had drunk. It was certainly with alcoholic courage that I stood up as my two companions stared in amazement. At the door to the staircase I turned, and unthinkingly declared: 'I've got some days to spare here, and I don't intend to see you all terrified by these silly superstitions. I'm going into the woods tomorrow afternoon, and when I find this rock formation you're all so scared of, I'll chip a bit off and bring it back so it can be exhibited on the bar!'

The next morning brought cloudless skies, and up to midday I was glad that the weather could not be construed an ill omen by the innkeeper or similar persons. But around two o'clock in the afternoon mist began to settle over the district; and by two-thirty the sun had taken on the appearance of a suspended globe of heated metal. I was to leave at three o'clock, for otherwise I would not reach the clearing before dark. I could not back out of my outlined purpose without appearing foolish to those who had heard my boasting; they would certainly think that any argument that the mist would make my progress dangerous was merely an excuse. So I decided to journey a little distance into the forest, then return with the tale that I had been unable to find the clearing.

When I reached the wood after driving as fast as was safe in my sports car, the sun had become merely a lurid circular glow in the amorphously drifting mist. The moistly peeling trees stretched in vague colonnades into the distance on both sides of a rutted road. However, the teacher had directed me explicitly, and without too much hesitation I entered the forest between two dripping trees.

II: The Thing In The Mist

There was a path between the tortuous arches, though it was not well defined. Before long the oppressive atmosphere of the tunnel, distorted through the walls of mist, combined with the unfamiliar sounds which occasionally filtered into the ringing silence to produce a disturbing feeling of awed expectancy. What I expected, I could not have said; but my mind was full of hints of some impending occurrence of terrible significance. My eyes were strained by my efforts to pierce the drab wall before me.

It was not long before this persistent conviction became unbearable, and I told myself this was the time to return to the inn with my prepared excuse — before darkness. The path had had no others meeting it, so that I could easily retrace my journey, even through the mist. That was when I turned to go back down the path, and stopped in indecision.

I had almost collided, I thought, with a metallically grey tree. Small in comparison with the average in the forest, this tree was about sixteen feet high with very thick cylindrical branches. Then I noticed that the trunk divided into two cylinders near the ground, and the lower ends of these cylinders further divided into six flat circular extensions. This might merely have been a natural distortion, and such an explanation might also have accounted for the strange arrangement of the branches in a regular circle at the apex of the trunk; but I could not reach for a natural explanation when those branches nearest me suddenly extended clutchingly in my direction, and from the top of what I had taken for a trunk rose a featureless oval, leaning towards me to show an orifice gaping at the top.

The mist eddied around me as I ran blindly down the path, which slid from under my feet and twisted away at unpredictable places. I visualised that giant being clumping in pursuit through the forest, its tentacles waving in anticipation, the mouth in the top of that featureless head opening hungrily. The silence of the forest unnerved me; perhaps the monstrosity was not pursuing me, in which case there must be some yet worse fate ahead. How many of the things might inhabit the forest? Whatever they were, surely they could be no acknowledged species. How