Haggopian and Other Stories

As Nuttall ventured to open incredulous eyes the occultist stepped out of the circle, crossed to the light switch and flooded the room with light. The thing he and Nuttall had witnessed must indeed have been merely a vision—a demon-inspired hallucination—for no sign of the horror remained. The floor, the walls and bookshelves, the pushed-aside furniture, all were clean and dry, free of the horrid Essence of Bugg-Shash. No single trace of His visit showed in any part of the room; no single crack or crevice of the pine floor knew the morbid loathsomeness of His snail-trail slime…

IV

“Ray!” Alan Bart cried, shouldering his way through the long-haired, tassel-jacketed patrons of The Windsor’s smokeroom. Nuttall saw him, waved him in the direction of a table and ordered another drink. With a glass in each hand he then made his way from the bar, through the crush of regulars, to where Bart now sat with his back to the wall, his fist wrapped tightly around an evening newspaper.

Over a week had passed since their terrifying experience at the London flat of Thomas Millwright. Since then, they had started to grow back into their old creeds and customs. Although they still did not quite trust the dark, they had long since proved for themselves the efficacy of Millwright’s Third Sathlatta. Ever the cynic, and despite the fact that he still trembled in dark places, Nuttall now insisted upon taking long walks along lone country lanes of an evening, usually ending up at The Windsor before closing time. Thus Bart had known where to find him.

“What’s up?” Nuttall questioned as he took a seat beside the younger man. He noted with a slight tremor of alarm the drawn, worried texture of his friend’s face.

“Millwright’s dead!” Bart abruptly blurted, without preamble. “He’s dead—a traffic accident—run down by a lorry not far from his flat. He was identified in the mortuary. It’s all in the paper.” He spread the newspaper before Nuttall who hardly glanced at it.

If the olive-skinned man was shocked, it did not show; his weak eyes had widened slightly at Bart’s disclosure, nothing more. He let the news sink in, then shrugged his shoulders.

Bart was completely taken aback by his friend’s negative attitude. “We did know him!” he protested.

“Briefly,” Nuttall acknowledged; and then, to Bart’s amazement, he smiled. “That’s a relief,” he muttered.

Bart drew away from him. “What? Did I hear you say—”

“It’s a relief, yes,” Nuttall snapped. “Don’t you see? He was the only one we knew who could ever have brought that…thing…down on us again. And now he’s gone.”

For a while they sat in silence, tasting their drinks, allowing the human noises of the crowded room to close in and impinge upon their beings. Then Bart said: “Ray, do you suppose that…?”

“Hmm?” Nuttall looked at him. “Do I suppose what, Alan?”

“Oh, nothing really. I was just thinking about what Millwright told us; about the protection of that spell of his lasting ‘only unto death’!”

“Oh?” Nuttall answered. “Well, if I were you, I shouldn’t bother. It’s something I don’t intend to find out about for a long time.”

“And there’s something else bothering me,” Bart admitted, not really listening to Nuttall’s perfunctory answer. “It’s something I can’t quite pin down—part of what we discovered that night at Millwright’s place, when we were going through all those old books. Damned if I can remember what it is, though!”

“Then forget it!” Nuttall grinned. “And while you’re at it, how about a drink? It’s your round.”

• • •

Against his better instincts, but not wanting Nuttall to see how desperately he feared the darkness still, Bart allowed himself to be talked into walking home. Nuttall lived in a flat in one of the rather more “flash” areas of the city, but walking they would have to pass Bart’s place first. Bart did not mind the dark so much—he said—so long as he was not alone.

Low, scudding clouds obscured the stars as they walked and a chill autumn wind blew discarded wrappers, the occasional leaf and loose, eerily-flapping sheets of evening “racing specials” against their legs.

Nuttall’s flat was city-side of a suburban estate, while Bart’s place lay more on the outskirts of the city proper. The whole area, though, was still quite new, so that soon the distances between welcome lamp-posts increased; there was no need for a lot of light way out here. With the resultant closing-in of darkness, Bart shuddered and pressed closer to his apparently fearless friend. He did not know it, but Nuttall was deep in worried thought. Bart’s words in the smokeroom of The Windsor had brought niggling doubts flooding to the forefront of his consciousness; he could quite clearly recall all that they had uncovered at Millwright’s home—including that which Bart had forgotten…