Clay (11 page)

“You always were an incurable busybody, Richard..."

Echoing icily in the dim corners of that low ceilinged room, the sibilant hardness of the voice seemed unreal. Only, when I had turned to find Claude’s angular, dark-suited figure framed in the doorway, was I certain that my confused brain wasn’t playing tricks on me. There was no mistaking the malevolent reality of the half smile that curled my brother’s lips. Sunken in his pallid, immobile face, onyx eyes flashed with caustic humor.

“I’m afraid my little creation gave you rather a turn," he murmured. "You know, Richard, it’s always best for sensitive souls to mind their own business..."

The old, impotent rage blurred my vision; Claude’s venomous smile faded and grew horribly clear again. When my voice came, it was thick and ill-controlled: “You’d better do your packing, now. I’ve made reservations on the midnight train for Inneswich..."

We reached Inneswich Priory at noon the following day. A winter storm had swept inland, and gray, needling rain made the ivy-choked walls glisten evilly. There was a fire on the library hearth; before it, Doctor Ellerby stood waiting for us. One look at his face, and the vile suspicion that had been spawned last night in that dark, narrow room, blazed into putrescent reality. In that instant, I knew who had been the subject of the-hellish portrait in Pickham Square. I knew my father was dead.

Claude made no display of pretended grief. He made no secret of his eagerness to have the will settled. There was whispering in the village; the simple, superstitious people of Inneswich spoke of daemons and the consorts of hell who could laugh in the face of Death. My brother’s terrible, inhuman cheerfulness became a festering legend muttered by witch-hunting nonegenarians. Only the brave, the few who had been closest to the Church and my father, attended the lonely burial service, and even they departed in haste, glancing apprehensively backward at the figure of Claude Ashur, black against the bleak and threatening sky. Two weeks after the interment, one week after the reading of the will, Claude cashed a check for the full amount of his monetary inheritance and disappeared.

*

YOU can make a religion of escape. You can run away from the memory of horror, and hide yourself, in willful forgetfulness. You can fill your life with feverish activity, that crowds out the shadows of diseased evil. I know. I did just that for nearly eight years. And, in a certain measure, I succeeded. Having acquired a modest, white-stuccoed cottage on the outskirts of a southern Jersey resort, I divided my time between it and the Priory. I made new friends. I forced myself to mingle with worldly society as I’d never done before. After a time, I was able to resume my neglected literary career. I told myself I had escaped. Actually, I was never able to pass that carven padlocked door in the East Wing without having to suppress a nauseous chill. There were still moments when, alone in the dusk-dimmed library I broke into a cold sweat and Claude Ashur’s voice echoed demoniacally in the shadowed corners of the room. At worst, however, these terrible sensations were transient illnesses that could be cured by friendly laughter or concentrated creative work. Somewhere, I knew, the malign genius of my brother still existed, but I hoped and slowly grew to believe that he had passed out of my life forever. I never spoke his name. I knew and wanted to know nothing about him. Only once, in all those years, did I have any direct news of Claude.

By a lucky chance my first book excited friendly interest among certain groups, and I found myself on the invitation lists of the literati. I attended countless cocktail parties and dinners, and it was at one such soiree that I met Henry Boniface. He was a small man, almost effeminate, with a sandy top-knot and straggling beard to match. He shook my hand timidly, but I fancied a sudden brightness in his pale eyes as he repeated my name. I wanted to get away from him. Thinking of what my hostess had said of Henry Boniface as she guided me toward him through the crowd, I felt a sudden oppressive apprehension close in upon me. He was a surrealist painter who just returned from the West Indies and a few years back, he had taught at Miskatonic University.

“Ashur", his soft, persistent voice murmured. “But, of course! I knew I’d heard that name!" That odd, brilliant interest blinked in his eyes again. "You must be Claude Ashur’s brother...."

For years no one had referred to me in that manner. The loathesome phrase whispered in my head maliciously. Claude Ashur’s brother. The sound of it seemed to throw open some tremendous portal within me; all the ancient deliberately forgotten terror swelled in my chest like a rising, slimy tide. “Yes," I said thickly. “That’s right...."

It seemed to me that Boniface's gaze narrowed, biting into my face. His tone was light, diffident, but mercilessly probing. "I suppose you haven’t heard from Claude in some time? No. I daresay not. Well, in that case, I have a bit of news for you...”

I wanted to tell him to shut up, to quit opening old cancerous sores with his rotten chatter. I only stared at him.

“Yes... The fact is, I heard about Claude while I was in the Indies. Amazing. He was always a most amazing fellow. I knew him quite well while he was at Miskatonic. He was in one of my art classes. Said he wanted to learn to paint so that he could do some sort of portrait..."

Cold beads of perspiration coated my palms. The worm-eaten monstrosity of Pickham Square reeled evilly in my brain. Henry Boniface droned on.

“But, to get back to the Indies. The blacks there told me of a white man who was living in the back-country among their witch-doctors, studying voodoo. Seems he’d wormed his, way into their confidence. He’d been admitted into the cult and took part in all those repulsive doings at the humfort They... ah... They said his name was Claude Ashur...." Boniface shook his tiny head slowly. “Amazing. Extraordinary fellow, indeed. What strikes me is how he can go on living there in immunity. He was never what you’d call robust, was he? And there are all sorts of horribly fatal diseases in the back-country... It’s a miracle he’s alive..."

I felt a hard smile curl the stiffness of my lips. “Don’t' worry about Claude," I said bitterly. "He has a tremendous will to live. Nothing will kill him...”

The words fell flat and cold between us, and after a' moment of awkward silence, I excused myself, leaving Henry Boniface to stare after me with those bird-bright, curious eyes. I never saw him again, but more than once in the horror-ridden years, that followed, my mind reached back through limitless dark to the night I uttered that damnable prophecy. “Nothing will kill him." Had I realized then the corrupt truth of those words, I might have saved Gratia Thane and myself. I might have destroyed Claude Ashur before he was beyond destruction.

Early in October, 1926, I returned once more to the monastic quiet of Inneswich Priory, intending to pass the winter there, and complete the last chapters of my second book. After so extended a period of freedom from my brother’s influence, the Priory had to all intents and purposes reverted to kind. It had become again the sequestered, peaceful home I had known in early childhood. Settled down to work, living comfortably but simply, I was almost happy. My second novel was never finished. Less than a month after my arrival at the Priory, I received the letter:

My dear Richard:

I know that you had hoped never to hear from me again. I’m indeed sorry to disappoint you. But, the fact is, the prodigal has grown weary of wandering, and is ready to come home. And, much as you might dislike the idea, you can’t deny your devoted brother his right, to live in the ancestral, manse, can you? Be so good as to prepare one of the better bedchambers, Richard. The blue one in the West Wing would be ideal. For, you see, I’m not returning as I left— alone. I’m bringing, home my bride.

V

IN THE week that followed the arrival of Claude’s letter, the news had spread with, awesome rapidity, and fear had flowered anew in the shadows of Inneswich, blooming like some malignant cancer whose growth had been hidden for a while, but never checked: Wild conjecture muttered from street to street. Who was this creature Claude Ashur had married. What could she be like? There were predictions that murmured of a woman of strange and evil beauty; there were hints at reincarnation of, the hell-spawned witch Jabez Dreisen had burned at the stake more than a century ago. Long before they had ever seen her, the people of Inneswich were haunted by an abject fear of my brother’s life. I too was growing strangely fearful of the nameless woman who was Claude’s bride. I had finished the sixth brandy before I sprang to my feet at the sound of a car turning into the Priory drive.

Memories of that night have always returned to me in fitful, nightmarish segments, haunting impressions, that flash brilliantly in some secret crevice of the brain then fade once more into the cloying yellow mist of remembered horror. I hear again the metallic summons of the wrought-iron knocker echoing through the darkened halls of the Priory. I recall a faint rustle of clothes and the housekeeper’s awed murmur: "Mister Richard is in the library." I remember turning to face the door. Then, Claude Ashur stood on the threshold. He had changed. He seemed taller than when last I’d seen him. The aquiline face was paler and more emaciated, and yet it had taken on a certain regularity of feature that made it handsome in a striking, sardonic way. Claude, as I remembered him, had always been pointedly negligent of his attire. Now, his expensive, well-cut tweeds, soft-collared shirt and knitted tie were in the best of taste. He moved easily across the room toward me; his hand in mine was abnormally cold. He smiled.

“Richard, old man! It’s been a long time!"

The casual heartiness of his tone gave me a start. In that moment, I decided that, if Claude had lived in the hideous back-country of the Indies, he had also spent some time in Europe. For that sibilantly powerful voice had taken on a very definite Continental cadence. He spoke with a faintly Germanic accent.

“Sorry we’re so late. The trains, you know. They’re always so..." He must have seen that I wasn’t listening; my gaze had gone beyond him to the library doorway. His face vaguely puzzled, he turned, and then smiled again. "Ah... Gratia, my dear...."

I had never seen anyone like Gratia Thane. Her face was a softly squared oval

framed by wind-blown, auburn hair that emphasized the soft whiteness of her skin. A hesitant smile touched the corners of full, perfectly-rouged lips, and as she came nearer, I saw that the rather wide-set eyes were, sloe-black and strangely docile. The traveling tweeds she wore couldn’t conceal the exquisite grace of her carriage. She stood only a few feet from me, now. Her eyes had not left my face for a moment. As though from a great distance, I heard Claude’s quiet laughter.

“Well, my dear? Aren’t you going to say ‘hello’ to Richard?"

As the dark eyes swung slowly to meet Claude’s, they underwent a remarkably subtle change. In the flickering amber glow of the fire, they seemed to grow suddenly warmer; they caressed Claude’s face with a kind of hypnotic, voiceless adoration. Only when my brother had given her a barely perceptible nod of assent, did Gratia turn back to me. I took her extended hand in mine. When she spoke, her voice was throaty and beautifully modulated, but she said the words with the diffident air of a little girl who has learned her lesson well.

"I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Richard...."

I cannot recall my mumbled reply. I know that the moment those warm, soft fingers touched mine an unwonted, boyish confusion swelled in my throat. For a time, I only stared at the loveliness of Gratia Thane, and then, suddenly realizing that I had held her hand too long, I let it go. I think I flushed. I was conscious of Claude’s steady scrutiny of my face, and when I looked at him, I saw the tight, malicious curl of his lips. All the old, corrupt malevolence was in that smile. I knew, then, that despite his Continental manner, Claude Ashur hadn’t really changed.

The dinner was not a success. I was frightened. It was strange, selfless fear that turned cold inside me, as I sat, pretending to eat, and studied Gratia Thane. Time and again, I saw that childlike devotion soften her lovely face; she never failed to smile when Claude chanced to look her way. It was a gentle, worshipping smile, and still, the longer I watched it, the more convinced I was that it was a mask —a mask that could not quite hide the mute, unutterable weariness that crept into her eyes in unguarded moments. I was no longer afraid of my brother’s wife; I was afraid for her. I was haunted by the feeling that, somehow, the subtle, cancerous evil that had followed Claude Ashur since birth was reaching out its vile, slime-coated tentacles to claim this girl, to destroy her as it had destroyed everything it ever touched. And, quite suddenly, I knew I didn’t want that to happen. I didn’t want anything to happen to Gratia. She was the loveliest woman I had ever known.

After Claude and Gratia had climbed the wide staircase, disappearing into the gloom of the upper hallway I didn’t retire immediately, I went back to the cold hearth and poured myself a stiff drink from the decanter. The liquor didn’t warm me. I felt tired and confused, but I knew that if I went to bed, I wouldn’t sleep. I don’t know how long I sat slumped in the chair by the lifeless grate. I lost count of the drinks I poured. I lost touch with everything but the pale, frightened image that floated before my closed eyes —the image of Gratia Thane.

*

THE shadow-shrouded corners of the room closed in upon me, and through the French casements seething, icy fog swirled as though no earthy barrier could stop it. Terror clutched at my chest as, slowly, out of the blinding, jaundiced mist there emerged two wavering figures. Horror warped Gratia’s face, wrenching all beauty from it. Her lips parted as though she would scream, but, no sound came. Madly she stumbled through the scum-coated labyrinths of outer darkness, and at her heels, its saturnine laughter shrieking in her ears, ran the swollen, slime-dripping thing that was Claude Ashur. The running feet thrummed rhythmically, like the sacrificial drums of some demon-worshipping tribe. Nearer, they beat. Nearer. Nearer.