The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants

title has a lot of meaning. There his priests cannot only see the past and future — they can see how objects extend into the last dimension. That's why if we invoke him and hold him by the Pentacle of Planes, we can get his aid in cutting out the distortion. And that's about all the explanation I can give you now. It's almost 2:30 already and we must be ready by 2:45; that's when the openings will align… Of course, if you don't feel like going ahead, please tell me now. But I don't want to get everything into place for nothing.'

'I'll stay,' Gillson told him, but he glanced at the image of Daoloth a little uneasily.

'All right. Give me a hand here, will you?'

Fisher opened a cupboard door next to the bookcase. Gillson saw several large crates, set in neat order and marked with painted symbols. He held one up as Fisher slid another from beneath it. As he closed the door, Gillson heard the other lifting the lid; and when he turned, Fisher was already laying the contents out on the floor. An assortment of plastic surfaces came to light, which were assembled into a distorted semi-solid pentagram; and it was followed by two black candles formed into vaguely obscene shapes, a metal rod carrying an icon, and a skull. That skull disturbed Gillson; holes had been bored in its cranium to hold the candles, but even so he could tell from its shape and lack of mouth that it had not been human.

Fisher now began to arrange the objects. First he pushed chairs and tables against the walls, then shoved the pentagram into the centre of the floor. As he placed the skull, now carrying the candles, inside the pentagram, and lit the candles, Gillson asked behind him:

'I thought you said we mustn't have any light — what about those, then?'

'Don't worry — they won't illuminate anything,' Fisher explained. 'When Daoloth comes, he'll draw the light from them — it makes the alignment of the openings easier.'

As he turned to switch the lights out, he remarked over his shoulder: 'He'll appear in the pentacle, and his solid three-dimensional materialization will remain in there all the time. However, he'll put forth two-dimensional extensions into the room, and you may feel these — so don't be afraid. You see, he'll take a little blood from both of us.' His hand moved closer to the switch.

'What? You never said anything—'

'It's all right,' Fisher assured him. 'He takes blood from any that call him; it seems to be his way of testing their intentions. But it won't be much. He'll take more from me, because I'm the priest — you're only here so I can draw on your vitality to open the path through for him. Certainly it won't hurt.' And without waiting for further protests, he switched off the lights.

There was a little light from the neon sign of the garage outside the window, but hardly any filtered through the curtains. The black candles were very dim, too, and Gillson could make out nothing beyond the pentagram, from his position by the bookcase. He was startled when his host slammed the icon-bearing rod on the floor and began to shout hysterically. 'Uthgos plam'f Daoloth asgu'i — come, o Thou who sweepest the veils of sight aside, and showest the realities beyond.' There was much more, but Gillson did not notice it specially. He was watching the luminous mist which appeared to arch from both him and Fisher, and enter the misshapen cranium of the skull in the pentacle. By the end of the incantation there was a definite aura around the two men and the skull. He watched it in fascination; and then Fisher ceased speaking.

For a minute nothing happened. Then the arcs of mist vanished, and there was only the light of the candles; but they glowed brighter now, and a misty aura surrounded them. As Gillson looked at them, the twin flames began to dim, and suddenly winked out. For a moment a black flame seemed to replace each — a sort of negative fire — and as quickly it was gone. At the same moment Gillson knew that he and Fisher were not alone in the room.

He heard a dry rustling from the pentacle, and sensed a shape moving there. At once he was surrounded. Dry, impossibly light things touched his face, and something slid between his lips. No spot on his body was touched for long enough for him to snatch at what felt at him; so quickly did they pass that he remembered rather than sensed the touching feelers. But when the rustling returned to the centre of the room, there was a salt taste in his mouth — and he knew that the feeler entering his mouth had tapped his blood.

Above the rustling, Fisher called: 'Now Thou hast tasted of our blood, Thou knowest our intentions. The Pentagram of Planes shall hold Thee until Thou shalt do what we desire — to rend the veil of belief and show us the realities of unveiled existence. Wilt Thou show it, and thus release Thyself?'

The rustling increased. Gillson wished the ritual would end; his eyes were becoming accustomed to the glow from the garage sign, and even now he could almost see a faint writhing in the darkness within the figure.

Suddenly there was a violent outburst of discordant metal scraping, and the entire building shook. The sound whirred into silence, and Gillson knew that the pentacle's tenant had gone. The room was still dark; the candlelight had not returned, and his sight could not yet penetrate the blackness.

Fisher said from his position by the door: 'Well, he's gone — and that figure is constructed so he couldn't go back without doing what I asked. So when I turn on the light you'll see everything as it really is. Now if you feel your way, you'll find a pair of eyepatches on top of the bookcase. Put them on and you won't be able to see anything — that's if you don't want to go through with it. Then I can turn the light on and see all I want to see, and then use the icon to nullify the effect. Would you rather do it that way?'

'I've come all this way with you,' Gillson reminded him, 'and it wasn't to get scared at the last moment.'

'Do you want to see now? You know once you've seen, the tactile delusions won't ever operate again — are you sure you can live with it?'

'For God's sake, yes!' Gillson's answer was barely audible.

'All right. I'm turning on the lights—now!'

When the police arrived at the flats on Tudor Street, where they had been summoned by a hysterical tenant, they found a scene which horrified the least squeamish among them. The tenant, returning from a late party, had only seen Kevin Gillson's corpse lying on the carpet, stabbed to death. The police were not sickened by this, however, but by what they found on the lawn under the broken front window; for Henry Fisher had died there, with his throat torn out by glass slivers from the pane.

It all seemed very extraordinary, and the tape-recorder did not help. All that it definitely told them was that some kind of black magic ritual had been practised that night, and they guessed that Gillson had been killed with the pointed end of the icon rod. The rest of the tape was full of esoteric references, and towards the end it becomes totally incoherent. The section after the click of the light-switch on the recording is what puzzles listeners most; as yet nobody has found any sane reason for Fisher's murder of his guest.

When curious detectives play the tape, Fisher's voice always comes: 'There — hell, I can't see after all that darkness. Now, what…

'My God, where am I? And where are you? Gillson, where are you — where are you? No, keep away — Gillson, for Christ's sake move your arm. I can see something moving in all this — but God, that mustn't be you… Why can't I hear you — but this is enough to strike anyone dumb… Now come towards me — my God, that thing is you — expanding — contracting — the primal jelly, forming and changing — and the colour… Get away! Don't come any closer — are you mad? If you dare to touch me, I'll let you have the point of this icon — it may feel wet and spongy and look — horrible — but it'll do for you! No, don't touch me — I can't bear to feel that—'

Then comes a scream and a thud. An outburst of insane screaming is cut short by the smashing glass, and a terrible choking sound soon fades to nothing.

It is amazing that two men should have seemingly deluded themselves into thinking they had changed physically; but such is the case, for the two corpses were quite unchanged except for their mutilations. Nothing in the case cannot be explained by the insanity of the two men. At least, there is one anomaly; but the chief of the Camside police is certain that it is only a fault in the tape which causes the recorder to emit, at certain points, a loud dry rustling sound.

The Inhabitant of the Lake

After my friend Thomas Cartwright had moved into the Severn valley for suitable surroundings in which to work on his macabre artwork, our only communication was through correspondence. He usually wrote only to inform me of the trivial happenings which occur in a part of the countryside ten miles from the nearest inhabited dwelling,