Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (46 page)

“We keep this for guests,” Judy said, as if sensing Cara’s disappointment not to find herself in a gloomy, shadowed chamber.

“Do you get a lot of guests?” Cara couldn’t help asking, depositing her luggage bag on the bed.

Judy shrugged. “At some times of year. We have a big family.”

“This must be when the children come,” Cara said, “the ones who like the book.”

“Yeah.” Judy paused, then said, “There’s a bathroom a little way down the passage to your right. Hot water whenever you need it, but if you want a bath, better wait. We’ll be eating soon. Shall I call you?”

“Yes. Please.”

Left alone, Cara stood at the window, staring out across the ocean. The sounds that came muted to her ears were soporific, the plunge of the waves, the wail of the winds.

§

At dinner, Cara ate what she could only describe as a
polite
meal of roasted chicken breast, with what tasted like home-grown vegetables, full of flavor. Not exactly exciting or exotic, but well-cooked and satisfying. For dessert there was honeycomb ice cream, which Mrs. De La Mere explained was made on a farm near Mordarras. “The girls from Morbenyn Farm help us out here,” she said. “It’s a big house for the two of us.”

“Has it been in your family a long time?” This was a question Cara often asked, a staple of her conversation with clients.

“Oh yes, a very long time. Our ancestors were seafarers, you know.”

After dinner, Mrs. De La Mere wanted to show Cara DVDs of the local area, mainly because Maples was mentioned a couple of times as being something of a curio. Cara was conducted to a large comfortable sitting room, somewhat overfurnished in a Victorian manner, but dominated by an immense, flat-screen TV. Mrs. De La Mere used a series of remote controls expertly and swiftly in order to begin the presentation. In one film, she was interviewed, standing regally before her domain on a bright sunny day, wearing a wide-brimmed hat. All she had to say was that in the summer Maples offered cream teas and that several of the rooms in the house were then open to the public. The hall, apparently, was faintly famous for its carvings and window. The camera panned round to show tables set out on the flat ground in front of the house. No one was sitting there. Mordarras was also featured; a typically picturesque Cornish village huddling in a deep hole beneath the cliffs as if it had fallen there. The single road that led through it was punishingly steep to either side. But there wasn’t anything that interesting in the documentaries, which were clearly aimed at tourists who wanted only an animated guidebook to take them to pretty spots and tell them where to eat, where to stand to view the sea.

Mrs. De La Mere was lavish with her sherry while they watched, so that Cara felt quite inebriated by ten o’clock. “Do you mind if I turn in?” she asked. “It was a long journey today.”

“Not at all. You go ahead.” Mrs. De La Mere poured herself another sherry. “Judy can wake you. Not too early. We’re not early risers.”

§

Cara dreamed of the illustration she had seen in the book. This wasn’t of some fantastical journey, swimming down through the ocean deeps, but merely of standing in the library, staring at the picture and saying aloud to someone unseen behind her, “but there must be a way to it, there must.”

She woke up in darkness, pulled abruptly from sleep by what she could only describe as a racket. This was a rhythmic clacking, thumping sound, which as she listened, became faster in tempo until it was a wall-shaking rattle. “What the hell?” she said aloud and leaned over to turn on the bedside light. She glanced around the room, unnerved, but not exactly frightened. She saw that despite the relative modernity of the fittings, the radiator in the room was of the ancient cast-iron type. The noise came from that. Cara got out of bed and went to touch the radiator, which was mildly warm. Her fingers registered a faint vibration that surely should have been greater. The noise was so loud. And then it wasn’t. The room fell silent. Cara looked out through the open curtains. The night was overcast, drizzle still falling. And yet it seemed the sea was glowing. She watched this for some five minutes, even took some photos on her phone. Then she returned to bed and slept till morning.

§

 “It’s the pipes,” Judy supplied, rather unhelpfully, when Cara mentioned the noises in the night. Judy had come at 9:30 to rouse Cara, who had already been awake.

“Well, I gathered that, but it sounded like your boiler was about to explode.”

Judy stood in the middle of the room, hands stuffed into the pockets of cut-off jeans. “It comes through the pipes,” she said, “from the sea.”

“The sea?”

“Gets amplified, I guess. Knocking and that. It won’t blow up.”

“
What
comes through the pipes?”

“Just sounds from the sea. Waves, water moving things.” Judy shrugged. “Our drains go into it, so the sounds come back up. Always been like that.”

The explanation seemed plausible, and of course old buildings were renowned for temperamental plumbing arrangements. But Cara plunged on, refusing to be deterred by Judy’s dismissive tone. “The sea, too… it was strange, but when I looked out of my window it appeared to be glowing, as if lit from beneath.”

“Algae,” Judy said abruptly. “They let off light. Sometimes.”

“Oh.” Cara paused, then added brightly, “That must be where lots of old legends spring from—lights beneath the sea.”

“Yeah,” said Judy. She smiled insincerely—apparently bored—and turned to leave the room, Cara following.

§

Mrs. De La Mere wasn’t at breakfast. Judy, draped awkwardly yet strangely graceful in her seat at the table, rather like an unstrung puppet, explained that her grandmother liked to have her morning meal in bed. There were boiled eggs, cooked to perfection, thick-sliced brown bread, laid in a basket upon a paper towel, and a glass dish of dark yellow butter. All this produce, Judy said, came from Morbenyn Farm.

After breakfast, Cara went directly to the library. She’d left her tools laid out neatly there. The day wasn’t much brighter than the one before, but when Cara turned on a desk lamp it threw a powerful, interrogatory light over the table. She drew on her gloves and examined the book’s cover more carefully. She had cellulose products that could help restore its condition and luster, even if the embossing was lost for good. The interior pages could be subtly laminated with professional tissue, which would protect them while being almost invisible. She had been called upon in time. The invalid could be nursed to health. Before starting her gentle therapy, however, Cara wanted to look through the book. She stared once again at the opening illustration, the invitation to explore. A tunnel of weed and rock, hiding shy inhabitants, who watched the viewer as their eyes strayed down the path. At the end? A suggestion of ruins or a huge building of some kind, but so faint within the light it was impossible to discern details.

Cara turned the page. On the left folio was text, heavily printed in dense black ink, but in a language with which she wasn’t familiar. She didn’t recognize many of the characters. They weren’t Russian or Greek, but around half were similar to Latin letters. She must ask Mrs. De La Mere about that. Her eyes wandered to the illustration on the right hand page. She’d deliberately kept her gaze from it until that moment. There was the city beneath the sea, to which the path had led her. She was gazing at it from the mouth of the tunnel, from which curtains of weed hung down, half obscuring her view. But now she could glimpse towers and staircases, colonnades and balconies. She could not see people, of any kind, but fishes in abundance—some seeming to fly in blurred flocks like birds, others swimming stately and alone; huge, and adorned in gowns of fins.

She turned the page. Now she had stepped beyond the mouth of the tunnel onto a paved pathway. The stones were inlaid with shells and crystals, depicting stylized sea creatures and curling waves. She could see now that the entire city was walled. Sentinel statues, as tall as three storied buildings, stood guard at the immense gates, which were slightly ajar. The statues had the torsos of men, but their heads hung down so you could not see their faces, and were further obscured by swathes of weedlike hair that fell to their waists. Below that, they were
of
the sea; not with fish tails, like mermen, but a mass of squidlike tentacles. These creatures were not fearsome but to be respected. She did not want to wake them.

Cara turned the page. She was right by the statues now, close to the alluringly barely open gates. The portal was made of stone, and carved with octopi rampant—that was the only way she could describe them. On each looming panel a creature faced inward, four of its tentacles raised toward its partner on the other gate.

Cara put her hand upon the stone, then jumped, as if woken abruptly from sleep. “What?” she said aloud. She’d
been
there, just for an instant. Not merely looking at a picture, but ready to push open the gates. How evocative these old illustrations were. They’d drawn her in that much. She took a step back from the table.

For several long seconds she stood motionless. Her head was aching slightly. Then she became aware of a presence, another living thing, and her gaze snapped to the doorway. She couldn’t suppress a small cry and jumped in alarm. A young woman stood at the threshold; tall, thin, with a small, round head. Her pale hair streamed to her waist and she wore a long ocean-green dress. Her large, rather protuberant eyes were fixed on Cara. For some agonizing moments Cara thought this person wasn’t real, couldn’t be, but then the woman said. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Would you like some tea? Just making some for the missus.”

“Oh…” Cara shook her head. “Sorry, I was miles away. Yes, that’s kind of you.”

The woman smiled. She had a wide mouth. “I’ll bring a tray.”

Was she beautiful or hideous? Cara truly couldn’t say. Arresting, perhaps. Strange.

Cara closed the book; she would begin work upon the cover. As she mixed her cellulose paste, the woman returned, gliding into the room like one of those peculiar catwalk models who were striking to behold, yet not anyone’s idea of conventionally pretty. She did not seem to be the sort of person who would serve tea, or indeed engage in any menial task.

She appeared curious about what Cara was doing, peering somewhat indirectly, perhaps to be polite, so Cara felt she should say something. She held up her pot of cellulose mixture. “This is to mend the cover. The paste will soak gently into the leather without damaging it, simply binding its fibers, protecting them.” She smiled, not comfortable enough to look directly into the woman’s round-eyed stare. “It won’t look new but it will be strong again.” She risked a quick glance. “You work here, then?”

“I help,” said the woman.

“You’re from the farm, Morbenyn.”

“That’s right. We help out.” She smiled in her oddly face-stretching way. “I’m Minny.”

“Cara,” Cara said, managing not to laugh at the other woman’s name, which was so inappropriate it didn’t sound feasible. “This is a very beautiful book.”

“It is. We’re very glad there are people like you to save it.” Minny laughed in an entirely normal way, which coming from her seemed completely odd. “Oh, what does that sound like? It’s not
our
book, of course, but the legends mean a lot to us around here. The old sea stories. And they’re not saved anywhere, are they, some of the old legends?”

“I know what you mean. It’s horrible to think how many wonderful stories are just lost.” Cara pointed at the book. “Disintegrating away in old libraries.”

Minny nodded. “Well, happily this will not be one of them.”

“So…” Cara began carefully. “This book is about a local legend?”

“The deep city, yes.”

“ I thought at first it would just be about marine life and so on.”

“Well, it is that too. Perhaps half the species are dead now.”

“A very old legend, then.”

“Oh yes, very old.” Minny straightened up. “Sugar?”

“Yes, just a little bit.” Cara inspected the woman as she poured out the tea. She could be a mermaid herself, with that pale coloring, the streaming hair, and—it had to be said—somewhat fishlike features. Did this indicate inbreeding?

“Do you know what the language is, in this book?” Cara asked as Minny handed her a mug. “It doesn’t look like old Cornish.”

“It’s a dead language now,” Minny replied.

“From what part of the world?”

“Oh, far away. I don’t know, really. No one does.”

“Where did the book come from?”

“It’s been in the De La Mere family for a long time, that’s all I know. They were seafaring people.”

“But you said it was a local legend…”

“It is.” Minny grinned widely again. “Well, perhaps legends repeat themselves, in different places. I’m not sure where the book came from exactly. You’ll have to ask the missus if you want to know more.”

“Well, I’m just being curious. I don’t need to know the book’s history to restore it. I just think it’s so fascinating.”

Minny nodded. “The pictures are magical. I loved them when I was little. The missus always lets the children look at them.”

The book didn’t look like a children’s book to Cara, mainly because the era in which it appeared to have been made didn’t tend to produce books specifically for children. Still, it had illustrations, and to many people a book with pictures was for the young.

By lunchtime, Cara had finished work on the cover and left it to settle for the rest of the day. She was still curious about what else the book contained, but would have to leave further exploration until tomorrow.

Judy called Cara to a modest lunch of sausage rolls and tea. The weather had cleared somewhat; at least the rain had stopped. “I’m thinking of going into the village this afternoon,” Cara said.

Judy nodded disinterestedly, nibbling at her food. Cara wondered about the girl. Where were her parents? Why wasn’t she at school or college or at work? Did she live off her grandmother?