HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

on appearances, things and people, you had to be, the stuff I’d
been involved in. He was slim and, well, elegant, you’d say, gliding
over his window in the lamplight. He had an aquiline profile,
not aristocratic, better, like the actors used to look years
ago and don’t any more. And yes, he looked quiet, as if he
wouldn’t make a row.
Then comes this bloody great crash overhead, and everything
shakes. I’d been dozing, and shot out of my chair swearing
blind. I thought it was a bomb for a minute. I’ve been
around enough of those, I can tell you.
But then the ceiling didn’t come down, the windows were
still in the frames—no dust, no screams—no fire and smoke
and wailing medical vehicles. No blood dripping through.
Instead, a kind of dragging sound. Furniture being moved?
Heavy furniture . . .
I thought, bloody old fool, what’s he up to? I wondered if
I should go up and see if he was all right, or even go down to
the housekeeper guy who sits all day and half the night in a
cubicle off the lobby—unless you want him, of course, then
he’s off somewhere. But really, I try to keep out of other people’s
lives. Either you maintain your distance, or pretty soon
you have to tell a pack of lies. So, I left it. And the dragging
stopped. And later I heard his soft footfalls upstairs, so I reckoned
he was O.K.
I went out again that night. Once or twice a week, I’ll take a
couple of pints at the pub, or a whisky or two if I’m flush. I came
back around 11 p.m., and as soon as I started up my bit of stair,
I heard the new noise. It sounded like an electric typewriter, but
the old kind that makes a real racket. Clackety-clack-clack-swurrr
it went. So much for the genteel writing in longhand.
For an hour or so I sat in my room, listening to the typewriter.
It’s one of those noises, like a talentless kid playing
scales on a piano, that can drive you crazy. I thought O.K., mister,
I’ll let you off tonight. Maybe it’s some special job you have
to do, and handwriting isn’t good enough. But if this starts
again tomorrow, or goes on much longer tonight, I’m going up
to pay you a visit in the morning, my friend. I’m a big bloke. I
can make my opinion felt fairly easily. Then again, we’d have to
sort something out. He had a right to get on with his business
sometimes, whatever the hell it was.
After I got to bed, despite the continuing typer, I went out
like a light. Not usual, that. I don’t generally sleep that well. I
had a dream too—which is odd, because normally I don’t
remember my dreams, if I even have any like they say everybody
does. What I dreamed was, the old man upstairs was typing
a novel about me. He’d got to the bit where I, and five others
of my platoon, were sheltering in that bombed-out hotel
in—well, somewhere hot and filthy. And across the wall, the
type words were running, and they said: “You are a displaced
person.”
When I woke up, I’d slept later than I usually do, and as I
washed, shaved and drank my coffee, the grey house hung
there round me, all silence again, not a squeak.
I had to get some shopping for myself that day—I really
miss a woman to do that, they do it better. A woman would
make a furnished flat a home, too, but there, I was on my own.
When I’d got outside the building, I had a sudden curiosity. I
went and looked at the names by the door. Only two. Mine,
which at the moment is Rausloy, and this other name scrawled
above. It could be anything, illegible, like doctors’ handwriting—Crowle?
Gourte? Corall?
I glanced up from the pavement at the upper windows. No
one to be seen today. All that typing and furniture-moving
must have tired him, he must be sleeping it off!
When I came back from the mall, I saw my neighbour,
there ahead of me on the stairs.
I’d rounded the corner, and he was just in front of me, and
obviously it was the man from upstairs because, aside from my
own flat, there was nowhere else he could be going.
Yes, even from the back you could see he was the elegant
actorly type. Thin and smart in an expensive overcoat and black
hat. He’d got a cane too, silver top, didn’t need it, just twirling it
idly in one thin hand that had a ring on it with a big black stone.
Seeing him, God knew why, I felt queasy. Probably something
I ate last night, I thought. I know how to look after
myself but don’t always do it. Fish and chips out of the paper
isn’t always the answer.
But anyhow, I spoke. “Good morning,” I said.
He didn’t even look round. He just glided on up the stairs
and disappeared from view around the next bend.
I thought, He’s deaf, or he’s rude.
I shrugged, and went into my flat.
All the shopping fell to the floor. It made a bloody mess, I
can tell you, those twelve eggs broken, and the carton of coffee
burst.
I haven’t described my room, have I? It has brownish-pink
florals on the walls, a tiled fireplace with a gas-fire shoved in,
and over that a picture of some animal or other, a stag probably,
but so muddy and faded you’d have to study it to see, and
who would want to.
However, my room had changed. The worn carpet had a
different pattern. The wallpaper, though similar, was not the
same, and marked in different places. There were knickknacks
about that weren’t mine. I didn’t have anything like that. There
was a piece of complicated walnut furniture—a secretary I
think they call it, something like that, and a ripe red couch-cumchair
thing. The stag had been replaced by a herd of cattle.
Someone else—he might have thought he’d somehow let
himself into the wrong room. But I’ve spent most of my life
knowing where I was and what I was doing, it’s how I stayed
alive, if not quite intact. So, I knew I’d come in the right door,
and that everything was altered. I even walked over to the window
and saw it now looked out on a higher wider view. I could
see all the way to the mall.
None of that though was what made me drop my bag and
break the eggs. I did that when the ceiling bulged inward at me,
like dough rising, and out of it there stared, for one split
second, a face like nothing, even with the various horrors I’ve
witnessed, I have ever seen. It was raw—it was not human.
It was indescribable. One split second—then gone. Thank God
gone.
When I opened my eyes, the room was mine again, the
ceiling just a ceiling with a light-fitment and a stain.
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H . P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R 83