Collected Stories (14 page)

 "When you are my age," she went on, "one's fires need little fuel. A sip of water, an occasional nibble, the odd crumb."

 "But you must eat," Rosemary looked at the old lady with some concern. "I mean-you have to."

 "Child-" Mrs Brown beckoned to Carlo who started to collect the empty plates, "-food is not necessarily meat and vegetables. Passion will feed the soul and nourish the body. I recommend love as an
hors d'oeuvre
, hate as the
entree
and fear as a chilly dessert."

 Rosemary looked nervously at Brian, then took a long drink of water to hide her confusion. The young man decided to bring the conversation back to a more mundane plane.

 "I am most interested in your house, Mrs Brown. It seems a shame that so little of it is used."

 "I did not say it was not used, dear," Mrs Brown corrected gently. "I said no one lived in the region that lies outside this apartment. There is, as I am sure you will agree, a difference."

 Carlo returned, carrying a dish of large, pink blancmange; this he deposited on the table after giving the girl and young man a long, expressionless stare.

 "You must forgive Carlo," Mrs Brown said while she carved the blancmange into thin slices. "It is some time since we entertained guests and he is apt to stare at that which he is not allowed to touch."

 Brian nudged Rosemary, who was watching the blancmange carving with undisguised astonishment. "Mrs Brown, you say the rest of the house is used, but not lived in. I'm sorry, but…"

 "Does anyone live in your stomach?" Mrs Brown asked quietly.

 He laughed, but seeing no smile on the wrinkled face opposite quickly assumed a serious expression.

 "No, of course not."

 "But it is used?" Mrs Brown persisted.

 He nodded. "Yes indeed. Quite a lot."

 "So with the house." She handed Rosemary a plate that contained three thin slices of pink blancmange and the girl said "Thank you" in a strangled voice. "You see, the house does not require people to live in it, for the simple reason that it is, in itself, a living organism."

 Brian frowned as he accepted his plate of sliced blancmange.

 "Why not?" The old lady appeared surprised that her word should be doubted. "Do you begrudge a house life?"

 They both shook their heads violently and Mrs Brown appeared satisfied with their apparent acquiescence.

 "After all, in ordinary houses, what are passages? I will tell you. Intestines. Bowels, if you wish. And the boiler which pumps hot water throughout the body of the house? A heart-what else could it be? In the same way, that mass of pipes and cisterns that reside up in the loft, what are they if not a brain?"

 "You have a point," Brian agreed.

 "Of course I have," Mrs Brown deposited another slice of blancmange on Rosemary's plate. "But of course I was referring to ordinary houses. This is not an ordinary house by any means. It really lives."

 "I would certainly like to meet the builder," Brian said caustically. "He must have been a remarkable chap."

 "Builder!" Mrs Brown chuckled. "When did I mention a builder? My dear young man, the house was not built. It grew."

 "Nutty as a fruit cake." Rosemary spoke with strong conviction while she sat on Brian's bed.

 "True," Brian nodded, "but the idea is rather fascinating."

 "Oh, come off it. How can a house grow? And from what? A brick?"

 "Wait a minute. In a way a house does grow. It is fathered by an architect and mothered by a builder."

 "That's all very well," Rosemary complained, "but that old sausage meant the damned thing grew like a tree. Frankly, she gives me the willies. You know something? I think she's laughing at us. I mean to say, all that business of carving blancmange into thin slices."

 "A house is an extension of a man's personality." Brian was thinking out loud. "In its early life it would be innocent, like a new-born baby, but after it had been lived in for a bit…" He paused, "then the house would take on an atmosphere… could even be haunted."

 "Oh, shut up." Rosemary shivered. "I'm expected to sleep here tonight. In any case, as I keep saying, the old thing maintains the house grew."

 "Even that makes a kind of mad logic." He grinned, mocking what he assumed to be her pretended fear. "We must reverse the process. The atmosphere came first, the house second."

 "I'm going to bed." She got up and sauntered to the door. "If you hear me scream during the night, come a-running."

 "Why bother to go?" Brian asked slyly. "If you stay here, I won't have to run anywhere."

 "Ha, ha. Funny man. Not in this morgue." She smiled impishly from the doorway. "I'd be imagining all manner of things looking down at me from the ceiling."

 Brian lay in his four-poster bed and listened to the house preparing for sleep. Woodwork contracted as the temperature dropped; floorboards creaked, window frames made little rattling noises, somewhere a door closed. Sleep began to dull his senses and he became only half-aware of his surroundings; he was poised on the brink of oblivion. Then, as though a bomb had exploded, he was blasted back into full consciousness. A long drawn-out moan had shattered the silence and was coming at him from all directions. He sat up and looked round the room. So far as he could see by the light of the rising moon that filtered through his lace curtains, the room was empty. Suddenly, the groan was repeated. He sprang out of bed, lit his candle, and looked wildly around him. The sound was everywhere-in the walls with their faded pink-rose wallpaper, in the cracked ceiling, the threadbare carpej. He covered his ears with shaking hands, but still the mournful groan continued, invading his brain, seeping down into his very being, until it seemed the entire universe was crying out in anguish. Then, as abruptly as it began, it ceased. A heavy, unnatural silence descended on the house like a great, enveloping blanket. Brian hastily scrambled into his clothes.

 "Enough is enough." He spoke aloud. "We're getting out-fast."

 Another sound came into being. It began a long way off. A slow, hesitant footstep, married to squeaking floorboards, a laborious picking up and putting down of naked feet, interspersed with a slow slithering which suggested the unseen walker was burdened with the tiredness of centuries. This time there was no doubt as to where the sound was coming from. It was up above. The soft, padding steps passed over the ceiling and once again the house groaned, but now it was a moan of ecstasy, a low cry of fulfilment. Brian opened the bedroom door and crept out into the corridor. The moaning cry and the slithering footsteps merged and became a nightmarish symphony, a two-toned serenade of horror. Then, again, all sound ceased and the silence was like a landmine that might explode at any moment. He found himself waiting for the moan, the slithering overhead footsteps to begin all over again-or perhaps something else, something that defied imagination.

 He tapped on Rosemary's door** then turned the handle and entered, holding his candle high and calling her name.

 "Rosemary, wake up. Rosemary, come on, we're getting out of here."

 The flickering candle-flame made great shadows leap across the walls and dance over the ceiling; it cut ragged channels through the darkness until, at last, his questing eye saw the bed. It was empty. The sheets and blankets were twisted up into loose ropes and a pillow lay upon the floor.

 "Rosemary!"

 He whispered her name and the house chuckled. A low, harsh, gurgling laugh, which made him run from the room, race down the long corridor, until he lurched into the dining-room. An old-fashioned oil lamp stood on the table, illuminating the room with a pale orange light and revealing Mrs Brown, seated in an armchair, calmly darning a sock. She looked up as Brian entered and smiled like a mother whose small son has strayed from his warm bed on a winter's night.

 "I would put the candle down, dear," she said, "otherwise you will spill grease all over the carpet."

 "Rosemary!" he shouted. "Where is she?"

 "There's really no need for you to shout. Despite my advanced years, I am not deaf." She broke the wool, then turned the sock and examined her work with a certain pride. "That's better. Carlo is so hard on his socks." She looked up with a sly smile. "It is only to be expected, of course. He has hard feet."

 "Where is she?" Brian set down the candle and moved closer to the old woman, who was now closing her work-basket. "She's not in her room and there are signs of a struggle. What have you done with her?"

 Mrs Brown shook her head sadly.

 "Questions, questions. How hungry youth is for knowledge. You demand to know the truth and, should I gratify your desire, how distressed you would become. Ignorance is a gift freely offered by the gods and so often it is spurned by misguided mortals. Even I sometimes wish I knew less, but…" Her sigh was one of sad resignation. "Time reveals all to those who live long enough. I should go back to bed, dear. The young need their sleep."

 Brian advanced a few steps, then spoke in a carefully controlled voice.

 "I am going to ask you for the last time, Mrs Brown, or whatever your name is-what have you done with Rosemary?"

 She looked up and shook her head in sad reproof.

 "Threats! How unwise. A sparrow should never threaten an eagle. It is so futile and such a waste of time."

 Mrs Brown carefully placed her work-basket on the floor, then snapped in a surprisingly firm voice: "Carlo!"

 There came, from somewhere to Brian's rear, a low, deep growl. Such a menacing sound might have issued from the throat of a large dog whose mistress has been threatened, or a she-wolf protecting her young, but when the young man spun round, he saw Carlo standing a few feet away. The man had his head tilted to one side and his large, yellow teeth were bared as he growled again. His stance was grotesque. He was leaning forward slightly as though preparing to spring and his fingers were curved, so that with their long, pointed nails, they looked uncannily like talons; his cheeks seemed to have shrunk and his black hair lay back over his narrow skull like a sleek, ebony mane.

 "Will you believe me?" Mrs Brown said, and her voice was less harsh-much younger. "I have only to say one word and your windpipe will be hanging down your shirt-front."

 "You are mad." Brian backed slowly away and Carlo moved forward, matching him step for step. "You are both mad."

 "You mean," Mrs Brown came round and joined Carlo, "we are not normal by your standards. That much I grant you. Sanity is only a form of madness favoured by the majority. But I think the time has come for you to meet truth, since you are so eager to make her acquaintance."

 "I only want to find Rosemary, then get out of here," Brian said.

 "Find your little friend? Perhaps. Leave here? Ah…" Mrs Brown looked thoughtful. "That is another matter. But come, there is much for you to see, and please, no heroics. Carlo is on the turn. He is apt to be a little touchy when the moon is full."

 They filed out into the hall, Mrs Brown leading the way with Brian following and the grim Carlo bringing up the rear. To the right of a great staircase was a black door and this Mrs Brown unlocked, then entered the room beyond, where she proceeded to light a lamp from Brian's candle.

 The light crept outwards in ever-increasing circles as she turned up the wick, revealing oak-panelled walls and a cobweb-festooned ceiling. The room was bare, except for the portrait hanging over a dirt-grimed marble fireplace. To this the young man's eyes were drawn like a pin to a magnet.

 The background was jet-black and the face corpse-white; the large black eyes glared an intense hatred for all living things and the thin-lipped mouth was shut tight, but so cunningly had the portrait been painted that Brian had the feeling it might open at any moment.

 "My late husband," Mrs Brown stated, "was a partaker of blood."

 The statement did not invite comment and Brian made none.

 "It must be the best part of five hundred years since they came down from the village," Mrs Brown continued. "Chanting priests looking like black ravens, mewing peasants huddled together like frightened sheep. I recall it was night and the mists shrouded the moors and swirled about their thrice-accursed cross as though it wished to protect us from the menace it represented."

*** 

 She paused and Brian realised that she looked much younger. The face was filling out, the shoulders were no longer bowed. . "They did not consider I was of great importance," Mrs Brown went on, "so I was merely tied to a tree and flogged, thereby providing entertainment for the herd of human cattle who liked nothing better than to see a woman writhe under the lash. But him… They dug a hole, and laid him flat, having bound his body in cords that were sealed with the dreaded sign. Then they drove a stake through his heart… Fools."

 She glared at Brian and clenched her small fists.

 "They left him for dead. Dead! His brain still lived. The blood was only symbolic, it was the vital essence we needed-still need: the force that makes the soul reach out for the stars, the hammer that can create beauty out of black depravity."

 She went over to the portrait and stroked the white, cruel face with hands that had become long and slender.

 "When they buried his beautiful body they planted a seed, and from that seed grew the house. A projection of himself."

 "I don't believe you." Brian shook his head. "I won't-can't believe you."

 "No!" She laughed and Carlo howled. "Then feel the walls. They are warm, flesh of his flesh. Moist. The body fluids seep out when he is aroused. Look." She pointed to a great double door set in one wall. "Look, the mouth. When I open the lips, food pops in. Succulent, living food and we all benefit. I, Carlo, who sprang from the old people-I still let him roam the moors when the moon is full-and, of course, He. The House. He needs all the sweet essence he can get. He sleeps after meat and no longer moans. I do not like to hear him moan."

 "Where is Rosemary?" Brian asked again and knew what must follow.

 "She passed through the lips an hour since." Mrs Brown laughed very softly and Carlo made a whining sound. "Now, if you would find her, there is not really much alternative. You must follow her through the great intestines, down into the mighty bowels. Wander and cry out, trudge on and on, until at last your will is broken and He can take from you what he needs."