HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

The thing’s grey mouth reared up. Swallowed the razor’s
owner whole. That event was like everything folded up—like
when you put a telescope away. And there was a long drawnout
whistling shriek—similar to a train entering a tunnel, and
disappearing—but a million times more frightening . . . and
once again my world went crazy.
Spin, roll—that awful tornado feeling. Sight and hearing in
tumult. Gone. Everything I was or ever would be, swirling in a
vast centrifuge.
For a nanosecond Pierrot—standing puzzled in an empty
room. Rubbing his neck. My beautiful son.
No altar. No adept. No goat-man. No half-recognised
young woman. My body swelling, finding its old shape. Muscle
and bone—and an echo—that great thunder, roaring
Redemption . . .
Blackout.
A hard pavement beneath me. Someone tripping on my feet.
“Bit early in the day, ain’t it?” Laughter, fading.
I had my arms round him and he likewise was clasping me. My
heart felt it was about to burst. My face was pressed against his
yellow hair. His body was close to mine, pouring its vitality into
my tired, corrupt old body. Forgive me . . . I whispered, but of
whom I asked pardon I did not know. My whispering trailed
on, away . . . “Pierrot . . . ”
The pavement smelled of toasted gorse blossom.
4he sidewalk reeked of cats’ piss. Nothing to forgive, I
began, and my name isn’t fucking Pierrot, then was
interrupted by a sharp pain in the kidney. I rolled my
head up and around. This elderly lady is poking me with the tip
of her brolly.
“You should be ashamed, both of you.”
A rubicund gent at her side nodded vigorously. “And
they’re on about longer licensing hours too.”
The pair moved on. My eyes got focus and I saw we were
lying just below the bottom step of the tall grey house. The
House of Chaos, I call it. We rose. Swaying, clutching, teetering.
I saw the door was ajar. We mounted the steps together
and went in.
FOR all I know.
For all I know, Lon Clitheroe is off somewhere, alive and
sound, fighting in some minor skirmish, giving grief to some
pompous authority, battling for justice against tyranny. Can
never keep out of trouble, Lon.
What I do know is that the tape has been rewound. The
execution repealed. The scar on my leg has gone.
No one will ever believe what I know. But sure as all-getout
I expect a scratchy misspelt letter one day soon, suggesting
I join him. A letter from Lon.
This I know.
(e never communicates, but for all I know, my son is
continuing his valuable work for mankind on the
other side of the world. Whole, unharmed, undefiled.
Ask me not how I know, but this I know.
I look into the blue eyes of this man, who loaned me his
power.
We were standing in the hall, where grey shadows gathered
in a hush. Not a sound. The house waited.
“We were all to be destroyed.”
“Yeah. They used us.”
“But we were too much for them.”
“Yeah. Experiments. We were lab rats. Rats that got
away!”
Laughter, and it was as if the house gasped.”We were too
strong.”
“No. We were too good.
Too good?
A very long silence.
I HAVE said farewell to the man whose true name I never
knew, nor he mine. He packed up his few things and saluted me
like a soldier, before striding off down the road. Our souls had
come apart like the division of molecules in some arcane experiment,
as he said. We had traded brain and heart and cell structure
and empirical knowledge, to reconstitute them in a climacteric;
together we had shaken Heaven and Hell.
I knew that he and I would always be bound, but at a distance.
There, the charge of our selves could wreak no justice,
cause no havoc, breed no monsters.
The sun came out as I wished him good fortune.
I am going to find Alice and marry her,” he said. “Should
have done it long ago.”
I looked at him.
“Do you think you will recognise her?”
He said: “Why wouldn’t I?”
I watched him depart.
I knew an Alice once. She was one of HIS acolytes. Small
and dark, très séduisante, she partook in the rituals.
It is said that the present is Time nudging Eternity. Its
wheel comes around and again around and sometimes it doubles
back on itself, defying the cosmic law for reasons not for
our telling.
Standing on the front doorstep I glance up and back at the
tall grey house where I intend to continue dwelling. It looks
prim and very proper, ever so slightly nervous, like a maiden
lady sitting meekly between two ruffians. n
Tanith Lee, who prefers writing longhand with a pen, has won the August
Derleth, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. She has written almost 90
books and well over 250 short stories. Tempting the Gods, the first volume
of her collected stories, is now available from Wildside Press; the second
volume, Hunting the Shadows, is forthcoming in summer 2009. Lee lives
on the English seacoast with her husband, John Kaiine.
Rosemary Hawley Jarman is the author of the British historical novels
We Speak No Treason, The King’s Grey Mare, Crown in
Candlelight and The Courts of Illusion. She has been dubbed a
“Daughter of Mark Twain” by the Samuel Clemens Society in the U.S.
for her services to literature.
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