The Fluff At The Threshhold

Being a H.P.Lushcraft story

Edited and re-typed by S.Barber 1996

It was to my cousin's house on Carcosa Crescent that I came that December,

to look over the property and to set the place in order. I had been long overseas,
first working as an assistant to the Professor Of Difficult Sums at Celaeno Gate
College in the
sultry Celebes Islands, and then recalled to the family Regiment when it formed
up at the end of the War of Liberation in 2029, when the stranglehold of the EC
over the (now happily Nationalised) landmass of Europe, had been so crashingly
broken.
The house had been undamaged in the war, despite it being within
earshot of the great tank battle of the Thirsk Salient, where the Royalist armies
had smashed the EC federation's forces. Not so grand as many on the street, still
it had its o
wn garden front and back, and was built of the solid grey stone of the hills
around - and indeed there were some fine features of the neighbourhood, that made
me hesitant to part with it. For I had intended to sell it, having a house of my
own in the far
thest reaches of the Dales, where the local industry of raising great cyclopean
altars for the export trade still flourished profitably..
"Over there," the Agent had waved towards a hilltop just two streets behind
the house, "ancient prehuman temple, recently renovated and brought back online.
Services every new moon, usual splendid revived customs."
I had nodded, impressed. Like most people, I'm not overtly religious, but
when the night's right to stand on a hilltop beneath the lurid skyglow and make
shocking, howling obesiance to whatever's taken the trouble to turn up despite the
weather - well,
it'd be right handy, I told myself. Handy indeed and no mistake.
"And is everything ..... undisturbed ?" I asked. I had the keys from the
family Solicitor - as the last survivor of our line, the property had passed to
me, with all else that came with it.
The agent had nodded, his jackal ears and long, sharply handsome Annubis-
like muzzle turning to face me. "It's a sorry way to come into an Inheritance," he
looked at me solemnly, "But it's all yours. Everything he had, passes on to you."
Later, I was to remember those words. But as always - Later, would mean
far too late.

It was a bright and cheerful day, when I went over the place. Two stories
high, with a fine cellar built onto the ruins of buildings long destroyed in
nameless times, before even the invention of the digital toothbrush. I poked
around in the sub-basemen
t, marvelling at the pre-Saxon round-headed arches mysteriously sealed up, and the
runic seals undisturbed for a dozen centuries. Plenty of room for an extension
down there, I told myself cheerfully, knocking with the haft of my entrenching
tool on the a
ncient stone, and being rewarded with an answering sound that was not an echo. So
far, so good ..... and my first night's sleep was undisturbed as I rolled out my
sleeping bag and made camp on the dining room floor. Rocked to sleep by the gentle
sloshi
ng as of some miles-high thing of jelly walking deep in the ground, I slept.
The next day, I met my neighbour at Number Eleven, Mr. Heppleshaw. He was a
tall, six-horned goat of good local stock, the kind whose portraits you see etched
in beautiful pre-druidic Monoliths dredged up from where the North Sea rolls
today.
"So tha's movin' in, like tha' cousin ?" He greeted me over the fence,
waving an unlit pipe at me. "He went off to the wars, like ..... summat told me,
he'd not be coming back."
"Oh ?" My wolf ears twitched, as I looked at him. "Did you ... know him well
?"
The goat nodded thoughtfully. He scratched his lower set of horns with the
pipe, and I caught the familiar scent of refined hensbane and Asafoetida incense
about him. "Aye ..... there was a time I knew him well enough. But ........ not at
the end, like.
" His ears twitched, and he walked round to the gap in the fences of Carcosa
Crescent where a EuroStandard Type 6 Tank had driven through to judge from the
track marks still visible : not all the houses had made full repairs yet. "Come
and sit thissen do
wn, and I'll tell 'tha."
I followed him into a warm and crowded kitchen, lined with wooden barrels of
ale. He grinned, pouring a foaming tankard for us both, in the oddly proportioned
mugs that I recognised as having been illegally cut down from a litre to a pint.
"Drop o' the
best, to go with it," he gestured ."Took us a while to get the breweries back
doing owt but that StandardBrau muck, most of us got back to mashin' the ales at
home."
The ale was excellent: not too cold (ten degrees, the perfect temperature, I
admitted) and rich with floating yeast and hops. As I supped it, he looked at me,
one eyebrow raised quizically.
"I can see tha's a cousin ..... summat .... out of the way in the both of
you, happen." He said slowly. "Did tha' know 'im well ?"
I shook my head. "Not since before the Occupation .... I was about ten
then, he was fourteen ... I hardly remember him." And then I stopped. It was true
- I had found not one photograph of Cousin Osric, and indeed the house was quite
stripped of photog
raphs. "I'm not sure even what he looked like."
Mr. Heppleshaw motioned me to stay seated, while he went into the parlour,
and I heard him rummaging around. He came back a minute later, with an old
printout photo, obviously taken on a digital camera. "During the Occupation, this
was," he told me grav
ely. "Us folk had got a batch of ..... unmarked food, were doing us a barbecue.
Illegal, o'course. But then, tha' knows .... most things were."
I nodded. "That which is not illegal, is compulsory. That which is not
compulsory, is illegal", EC Directive 000000000000000001 . I know. I might have
escaped out of Europe, but it doesn't mean I didn't care. I came back when I
could: I was at Milton K
eynes, at the end." My face must have blanched, a difficult thing to do under fur
in most other circumstances.
But then I looked down, and saw the photograph. It was taken over the garden
fence, then intact, and showed a happy-looking group, standing found a barbecue.
I could date it fairly well: the roof over the whole business was of wet, heat-
absorbing blank
ets, which must have meant sometime after StandardSat 11667 had orbited in the
summer of 2027. That flying eye could spot a trespasser in the middle of a field
by the heat signature, let alone a subversive barbecue.
My Cousin was looking anxiously up at the sky - not at the camera, if indeed
he knew a picture was being taken. He resembled me, in that he was of wolf stock
.... but there the resemblance ended. I frowned. There was something definitely
ODD about the
look of cousin Osric ...... it certainly had not been there as a cub, when I knew
him. Children are super-sensitive to the smallest oddities, always seeking new
hooks to hang an insulting name on. What it was that so disturbed me, I really
found hard to
describe. He looked plump for a Wolf ........ but I had seen carnivores, even
cheetahs, with figures like beer-barrels, and none of them had looked so ......
disquieting.
My ears dipped. "Do you have any others of him ? I'd be grateful. I can't
seem to find any in the house."
The hex-horned goat shook his well-equipped head. "That's the last one,
like. I had a bundle, on the other film ..... he begged them from me and the disc
they were on, said he were going to get'em enlarged." He sucked the pipe
meditatively. "Never did s
ee them again. And you say you've not found any ?"
I shook my head, and he looked at me for a long minute.
"I see the resemblance .... in the bone, not in the fur, like. And he were
more like you ..... first year I knew him, he were in here. Not that I knew him
to talk to, back then .... I were living down at Number Six then, across the way
a piece. Chap t
ha' wants to talk to, lived that side," he gestured over my back lawn, towards my
other neighbour. "But he's gone, too. Happen he might be coming back, if he ever
gets .... cured."

That afternoon I spent sorting through the sad remnants of a life, boxing
things up. I divided mercilessly into three piles: items I wanted to keep, items
of some value that the Charity shop could use, and items to dispose of. The piles
grew as I ransa
cked drawers and cupboards, grimly passing judgement. But it was in one cupboard
that I found something Strange ..... or rather, what was strange was what was
missing.
On the first floor, there was a chimney neatly dividing the room, on the
wall facing my missing neighbour, the far side from Mr. Heppleshaw. On one side
of the fireplace, the niche had been boxed over into fitted cupboards full of
classic Rohan clothin
g I appropriated at first sight without even consulting the Classic price
catalogue. But the other ..... there was nothing there. And yet there should have
been. Either an alcove by the chimney side, four metres long by two deep, or the
same thing boxed
in as on the far side. And yet .... nothing, only a blank wall that rang as solid
as any other to my enquiring knock.
I stood there, scratching my head. It occurred to me that the houses could
be built in pairs on the terrace: instead of having straight boundaries, perhaps
they overlapped like a chain of Sieg Runes, nesting entwined with each other. To
find out - I w
ould first have to ask my other neighbour. And before that, I would have to find
him.

"In a more ignorant world," the white-coated attendant explained seriously,

as I followed him through the electric fences of the Earldom's recently re-opened
Bedlam Institute, " Mr. Smithers-Jones might have been diagnosed as a
"Traumatically Exposed I
ndividual of Tragically Triggered Reality Denial", and left at large in the
community. But these are modern times."
I nodded my head, walking past the spike-walled broom-cupboards where
Claustrophobics were encouraged to get it all out of their system before tasting
water or seeing daylight ever again. "But what's your prognosis ?"
The weasel medic's whiskers twitched. "Mr. Smithers-Jones is what we in the
medical profession call "A Looney". It's a medical term. Though he's making
reasonable progress: the first month he was here, we had to keep his head nailed
to the floor. Most o
f the evil spirits should have departed by now though ..... otherwise we couldn't
let you be exposed. You can catch it by eye contact, you know. Though I'm sure he
picked it up in the line of duty .... he was almost in our Profession in the
Occupation, y
ou know. Worked for the EC, training airbourne troops not to worry about unnatural
forces harming them when jumping out of aircraft......"
I strained to hear him over the screams of the inmates being encouraged to
Snap Out Of It, by one means or another. "What did you say he did ?"
"Like I said ...." the attendant gestured towards the room at the end of the
corridor. "A ParaPsychologist." We were brought up sharply at the end of the
corridor, by another of the Doctors. "Doctor Inselapfen, head of the Secure Unit,"
my guide expla
ined. "He's looking after your cousin." With that, he handed me over and hurried
down the corridor.
I stood looking at the Doctor for a few seconds, weighing him up. He was a
furless ape-descendant, but posessed a good growth of head hair, and looked back
at me with merrily twinkling eyes.
"Well now, so you're here to see Smithers-Jones," he boomed, jabbing the
stem of his pipe towards me. "First visitor he's had in awhile. Sad case, indeed -
very sad. Almost untreatable, but we're doing what we can."
"Is he in any .... state to talk to ?" I asked him cautiously , "All I need
is a few minutes with him..."
Inselapfen looked through one of the shutters into the cell, and shook his
head. "Not right now ..... if he moves, one of the puff adders will probably bite
him. It's Acclimatisation Therapy, you see .... turns out he needed treating for
fear of snakes
. Shouldn't be encouraged, you know ..... as Blenkinshaw and Yasamura discovered
fifteen years ago, it's all in the mind." He tapped his head with the pipe stem.
"All in the mind......"
I followed him into the office, and I explained my mission. The Doctor
nodded thoughtfully, and tapped a few keys on his computer. "Looking for
information on your cousin, eh ? Well, now ..... I might have some of that
myself..... the name rings a bel
l..." He pressed a few more keys, and the bell rang obediently. "Well, now.....
yes, we have. Of course, naturally I can't disclose confidential Patient
information..."
I tossed an envelope of newly-minted nine-pound notes onto his desk; like a
striking seabird with a fish he snatched it up and riffled through, barely
breaking the conversation for a second.
"Osric Olmthwaite, referred to various specialists.... well, as he's dead,
it's of no harm now, eh ?" He puffed his pipe meditatively. "Diagnosed as
suffering extreme paranoia, and refractophobia .... onset very sudden, whole thing
started overnight, so
to speak. Referred to various specialist centres for genetic diseases ..... hmmm,
can't find those. Records all lost in the War, no doubt.."
"Refractophobia ?" I looked at him curiously. "Fear of mirrors ? I've
noticed .... there isn't a mirror in the house .... not even a reflective
surface."
Doctor Inselapfen nodded. "That's part of it. Paranoia, self-loathing .....
obesssional behaviour of all sorts. Nowadays, of course, we'd give him a good
talking-to and tell him to Pull Himself Together - but those were unenlightened
times. Same thing w
ith his neighbour, to an extent ..... we're keeping Smithers-Jones in full sensory
deprivation and feeding him nothing but jam for days at a time, but .... even so,
we can't do miracles."
The clock struck two, and there was a sound as of iron trapdoors closing,
and the Doctor looked up. "Ah.... that'll be the treatment cycle changing. Let's
go and see if he's in a talkative mood."
 Smithers-Jones was in a very talkative mood - evidently the enforced company
of puff-adders and spitting cobras had discouraged him from making much noise for
the rest of the day. But as I entered the room, the grey-furred rabbit's eyes
bulged in horror
....... and he was looking at me, ears rigid in fear.
"Ye've Come Back !" He croaked..... " and like before .... before ye
knew...... as was promised....."
I blinked. "Ummm... I don't think we've met. I'm looking for people who
knew my Cousin Osric's house .... your neighbour ?"
A change came over him.... a crafty expression slid over his face, and he
beckoned me closer. "Osric, is it ? Yer cousin ? Aye' that'll do very well....
coming back, and none to know ..... back to the house, and folk won't wonder at
it, though you lo
ok like you did years before.... don't forget, it was me put you on the road..."
"I'm not Osric ! " I protested, showing him my Celaeno Gate Library pass and
my Heavy Armoured Vehicle Driver's licence. "I'm his cousin Rufus .... look !"
He winked at me, looking at the documents. "Ye've done well, lad .... Rufus,
do they call you now ? The face .... it's near enough ..... they'll not suspect.
And you didn't believe me .... you went off to die, so you thought ..... but you
should have
believed the second chapter of Von Tuu's book ...... and here ye stand, proof.
Proof!"
I looked at the rabbit, leering up at me, though safely held down by the
razorwire of the therapist's couch. And then I made a descision, that I was to
bitterly regret. I nodded, looking around as if to check for eavesdroppers.
"Yes, it's me...." I whispered .... not lying, though how he interpreted it
was his own business. "I'm back in the house.... is everything .... as I left it ?
"
He looked around, a crazed glee shining on his features. "Aye ! The Place
between ..... I sealed it up when they said you'd died ..... everything's safe. I
knew you'd come back, you see ... I knew it ...." His voice sank till even my
wolven ears coul
d barely hear it. "And .... when you come into your full Powers ..... will you
come and get me out of here ? After the Change, you know .... bars and grilles
won't stop you." He giggled, looking around the room. "I've measured it, you see
... there's a
gap of four milimetres under the door ... more than enough ... for You ....."
"Can I get in through your house ?" I persisted, pulling out a notebook
which I'd brought with me for this event. "I just need your permission..." I
winked at him, waving at the walls around us. "For THEM, you know .... so they
won't suspect."
He signed a consent form for me to look around his house unescorted, and
started giggling convulsively. I took my leave, but just as I turned to go, he
whispered pleadingly....
"Von Tuu, second chapter ! Don't forget !"

I returned to Osric's house, having first taken the precaution of playing a

good hour-long video session of "Immoral Kombat", the fast-paced carnage of the
game cleansing diseased thought-patterns from my mind, disinfecting it. Sunlight
was streaming
down Carcosa Crescent when I got in, to find Mr. Heppleshaw sitting on his patio,
a flagon of fine ale at hand. He waved cheerfully, and invited me over. "Tha'
looks like tha' pulled a hard day's work, lad," he grinned, pouring me a glass.
"It feels like it," I nodded, gratefully accepting it. "I've been to see Mr.
Smithers-Jones, in the Asylum. I've got his permission, to look around. And I've
nothing else to do, right now." A thought struck me. "It's the middle of the
week, and most f
olk are at work ..... what do you do for a living ?"
The six-horned goat got up, and beckoned mysteriously. I followed him into
the house, and he gestured towards an array of plaques and awards on the wall,
each framing a short quote written in gold calligraphy.
"Virtual NQ/D Error - do not metaphasically alter limiting limitation
limits," I read on one. "Ecneumenical Phase Imbalance Associations - See VVD-666a
URGENTLY." I looked at the other. Then it dawned on me. "I always WONDERED who did
that for a living
!"
He grinned. "Aye, lad. I'm the chap who thinks up cryptic and ambiguous
Error Messages for computer systems. Family trade, like - this was me grandpa's,
fifty year back."
I looked at the ancient award on the wall, and almost bowed in awe at its
timeless simplicity. Given the technology, with far less to go wrong than the
delights of an Artificial Stupidity System, it was hard to imagine ever beating
it. "Missing Keyboard
- Press any key to Continue ! "
I looked at my new neighbour almost in awe. And decided, there and then, to
tell him all that had happened to me. Here, I knew, was a wise being indeed - and
in the mysteries I found myself surrounded by, I could use his help.
We talked, until the sun went in, and the shadows lengthened. The first jug
of ale ran dry, and the second followed it, before we retreated for the night to
his kitchen. For something distinctly Strange was happening, and before I left
Carcosa Crescent,
I intended to find out what.

The next morning, I fired up my old wristwatch Cray computer, tapping into
the official enquiries office of the Ministry Of Peace. Indeed, I was told, Osric
Olmthwaite had joined up, trained, and followed the flag in the liberation of
Europe. But then
he had vanished - his name was posted as "Missing In Action", but of what that
action might have been, there was no clue.
"It was a very confused situation, in the final month," the clerk explained
apologetically, pointing me towards the Official Histories. "The combined National
Forces waded in as fast as they could, as we knew the EC was about to unleash
something we cou
ldn't stop ..... you know, of course, what they'd done already ?"
I nodded grimly. To first take, and then retain control, the EC's planners
in Brussels had brought in aid from Outside the familiar seven dimensions that
mortals and Elder Ones know. And though their final plans were frustrated, there
had already been s
ome hideous ..... Entities, made incarnate on Earth. And neither normal weapons or
Mnaran Rune magic had affected them greatly ..... the monstosities that would have
followed them, fortunately defied imagination. For the powers of Legomancy had
summoned
them as a desparate meadure: the evil art of rewriting Regulations to reshape the
fabric of spacetime itself.
"We've only fragmentary records, especially of the Rotterdam Counterattack,"
the clerk nodded. "That was after we'd pushed some of the Entities out of Holland
.... by that time, the second wave of them had been Summoned. The West Cornish
179th Tank Army
was annihilated, as was the Albanian 71st Guards next to them, by what came out
of Belgium. The final battles, " he shrugged. "One constant melee, falling back
metre by metre, street by street, we threw in whatever forces were left. Nobody
was keeping r
ecords, exactly .... anything could have happened. And the few survivors,
well...." he sucked in his breath sharply. "After what they saw, I doubt they'll
want to talk about it."

But that night, as I leafed through official histories, something struck me

as odd. Perhaps I was starting at the wrong end here - from what my neighbours had
gathered, my cousin had left here, not intending to return. And it mattered
little in what bu
rned out EC shopping mall or drive-in dentists of the Rotterdam suburbs he had met
his end - why had he gone there ? I closed my eyes, relaxing. And then a thought
struck me, as I lay half-asleep. Or, more than a thought .... an image - as if I
was look
ing at an architect's section of this house.... and in between my upstairs spare
bedroom and that of Smithers-Jones, there was a room-sized square block,
windowless and unaccounted-for.
"The Place Between", I murmured, recalling the madman's words. "What did he
say, "It was me put you on the Road"? Now, then ......."
I got up, purposefully, feeling the key to next door suddenly pressing in my
pocket. There was an accounting to be settled - with a few cubic metres of
mystery..
Outside, it was a calm night. Just behind Carcosa Crescent, a factory was
changing shifts - they made customised hockey-masks and balaclavas for axe-
wielding psychopaths (Or "Differently Moralled Persons of hard-to-satisfy
desires", as they would have b
een smilingly called under the EC's Correctness Regulations.) and were working all
hours. I looked up at the skies: Formahault and Algol were wheeling high above,
and the lanscape was washed with the pale light of a quite astoundingly gibbous
moon. Rea
ssured by the calm normality, I went in to face the Unknown.
In Smithers-Jones' house, all was orderly and neat, as if its owner had just
stepped out for a minute. It was quiet, the thick stone walls cutting out the
noise of the factory workers heading home: the only sound was from the kitchen: I
recognised the t
win of a food processor my Cousin had, evidently bought at the same sale of
Daemonically Possessed kitchen and household goods. With only the sound of its
sharp whirring blades and garbled screams for company, I headed upstairs.
Finding the right wall was easy enough, but finding the catch that opened
it, took me half the night. At last, I saw a narrow hatchway sliding aside as I
pressed the deceptively obvious bright red button on the wall, and looked inside.
My heart sank.
The room was windowless, barely two metres my three, and had been some form
of library. But a blueish fungal growth covered everything, and the books turned
to dust as I touched them. Even the computer's plastic shell caved in ..... as if
it was riddled
with rot, every component subsiding into an impalpably fine dust. Only one thick
book on an upper shelf survived even long enough for me to read its title - "Die
Uber Pflaumig Kulten", by Compte Von Tuu. But as I touched it, it caved in,
showering me wi
th dust and fibres, floating down through the air light as puffball spores.
I had come too late.

"Count Von Tuu," Mr. Heppleshaw nodded the next day, as we sat at ease in
his kitchen, he with his pipe and both of us with our ale, "Aye, I've got
something for you there, like. Found this in the Library, down in the Stacks."
He pulled out a faded vo
lume, and opened it on the desk - I shivered as I saw the title, for I had heard
dread things of "Every Boy's First Wonder Book of Unthinkable Rituals", which was
said to have inspired the Brussels Legomancers themselves.
"Count Von Tuu," he read slowly, from the brief entry, " was an individual
gifted, or cursed, with what can only be called Excessive powers of Observation.
Without external evidence, on several occasions he was simply Revealed things that
later proved t
o be true, though hideously unlikely. "
"Such as ?" I looked at him. The goat snorted, the bar-like pupils of his
eyes narrowing.
"His first Revalation," he read on, "Came as a child, when walking past
Sandwell's World Of Leather, a well-established furniture and clothing chain. He
insisted to his parents that behind the visible organisation, it was controlled by
Aliens who really
DID come from a World Of Leather .... a tough but wipe-clean planet, whose peace
was only broken by the horrified screams of offworld geologists and
Planetographers exiled there for professional misdeeds, and left there with their
Sanity Points melting
like ice in the sun."
"His parents, naturally, believed him, and encouraged him to write an expose
of it for his School newspaper. And the very next day after publication,
Sandwell's World Of Leather had vanished from Earth, leaving only precisely
punched-out hemispherical h
oles where the shops had stood, before they had been taken away without a trace or
witness."
Mr. Heppleshaw paused, to refill his pipe. "But of the book you want, "Die
UberPflaumig Kulten," it hasn't got a lot to say. It means "Cult of the Ultra-
Fluffy", and was said to be his last book ..... before he Vanished, from inside a
sealed and locked
room. THey never Did find out what happened to him .... and the manuscript was
lost, apart from a pirated edition that got circulated through Unthinkable Book Of
The Month Club, some ten years or so back. Strange, though .... the Dates."
I blinked. "He was writing it just before the fall of Belgium ? He knew even
then they were preparing to Summon up the Evil That Cuddles ?"
His ears twitched, and he put the book down. "Nay, lad. That'd be nowt so
strange ... or at least, it'd tie in with his usual talents. Belgium fell in 2029
....... but Von Tuu vanished, more'n Forty Years Earlier !" He clapped the book
shot with an i
mpressive bang. "And his Talent never dealt with the future, as such - it just
revealed, ..... what was already Happening."
My mouth was suddenly dry, in a way that a swallow of the excellent Ale
somehow failed to relieve. For the dates referred to a time before either of us
were born, or our parents either ....... in our Grandparents' time, the 1970's or
1980's, was a shoc
king hint that the world had been invaded by the cute Things that we had thought
bad enough in our own time, along with Psychotronic warfare and the like. Reality
had barely survived even in the late 2020's, where the technology had been rushed
into exis
tence in the last desparate hours to cope with them. I shivered.
"There's no trace of whatever was in the room, nothing I can read, anyway,"
I admitted glumly, and told him of the strange decay of the computer and books
.... as if their baterial had been, not so much rotted, as Transformed, into some
substance unrec
ognisably .... Other.

There was nothing more to be done. I finished sorting out the house on
Carcosa Crescent, spent a few more evenings with my Neighbour - and then business
called me away across the country, for three months. The mystery was pushed to the
back of my mind -
and then came that frosty October evening, when the phone rang.
"Ey up, lad," I recognised Mr. Heppleshaw's voice at once. "I've got summat
for thee. Ah bin checkin, like, on folk as knew tha' cousin ..... an' I found
one, who was with him near enough at the finish..."
 I must have blinked almost audibly. "You Have ? Who ?"
There was a silence. "It only happens to be us local Vicar, that's who. He's
been away, but he's coming back next week, to take up preachin' at Our Dark Mother
Of The Woods convent .... just ower Ramsgill Moor from us. Art tha' comin' ower ?
"
"Definitely !" I nodded, and arranged to return for the following week. As I
put the phone down, I nodded. It was something I should have thought of ....
although the official Military records might have very little to say, the post-
Milennium Clergy wer
e always on battlefields, and had their own records. Just on the horizon at the
Thirsk Salient battle, I recalled they had made their debut ..... and now the
white-collared Chaos Vicars were a regular feature, urging their troops on,
providing psionic de
fences against unwelcome Incursions from rival realities, and at need be,
administering the final rites to the fallen to make sure they would not rise
afterwards as the hideous pastel variants of Undead that had plagued Belgium.
Their long black coats fl
apping, pistols and the precious tantalum plush-grollicking knives unsheathed,
they would be in the forefront of every action where there was Unstuffed Horror to
be fought.
"Our Dark Mother Of The Woods," I smiled to myself, making a reverent
sinuous gesture, as tentacle-like as an internal skeleton would allow, to Shub-
Niggurath, the Dark Goat Of The Woods With A Thousand Young. "Or, as they'd call
her under the EC's Corr
ection Enforcement Policies, "The Ethnically Coloured Caprine Deity-Person of The
Sylvan Ecosystem With The Relaxed Attitude To Birth-Control"........"

It was raining again on Carcosa Crescent, when I arrived back. I was late, I
knew, having stopped off in the town square - they had been bayonetting some
Multiculturalists, a sight you rarely get to see much these days. I stood there,
on the doorstep,
looking out into the garden. And there I saw ..... no, "saw" is not the word for
it. It was more of an afterimage .... you know when you stare at a sharp image and
look away onto a white sheet of paper ? It was just a shape, fading .... as if
someone, or
something, was standing in the grass at the bottom of the garden, looking at the
house.
I stared, but there was nothing there, if indeed there ever had been. The
house was undisturbed, so after dropping my pack in the hall, I went next door. By
the hop aroma flooding out across the cold night winds, Mr. Heppleshaw was brewing
a new batch.
"Ey up lad," he greeted me, turning round from the boiling vat he was
stirring. "Good to see thi', like !" And then he must have seen something in my
face, for his own goat ears twitched. "Looks like tha's seen a ghost."
I shook my head. "Not tonight. I've seen ghosts, and .... well. This was
something Else." I sat down heavily, suddenly realising I had been trembling.
"Have you .... noticed anything, out there ?"
He shook his head, and we both listened. For a minute there was nothing, and
then both our ears twitched. There was a sound, coming faintly down the wind, as
if falling from endless heights of Outer space. Our ears pricked up in alarm ...
and suddenly
my neighbour laughed.
"I know what That is, lad," he chuckled. "It's that time of year again, tha'
knows ? Wait till folk get thessen a bit nearer, and relax thissen. Drink up !"
With that, he filled another two of the illegally ground-down glasses, and passed
me a foaming
measure.
 Soon enough, I could hear the words, of the little band of singers working
their way down Carcosa Crescent. Then they were at the door, Mr. Heppleshaw
flinging it open to smile on the little band Lurking At The Threshold. They sang,
one of the old, old
seasonal tunes that still brings a lump to my throat every time I hear it, or see
a Balefire blazing merrily on some lightning-crowned hilltop far away:
"Roodmas time, tentacles and slime
Children do unspeakable crimes
Blood on the altars, balefires burn
Time to rejoice as the Old Ones Return!"

I hardly need to add that both my neighbour and I howled shocking obesiance
with the choruses of all ninety-six verses. When the singers moved on, their
pockets jingling with spare change, bon-bons, mal-mals and other such treats, we
sat down again, fee
ling spiritually refreshed.
"Aye, lad, they Do sing'em like that these days," he smiled, raising his
tankard. "I remember learnin' it in School, it were in that musical, "Joseph and
the Appalling Monochrome Trenchcoat."
"I did that one !" I nodded. "I didn't get to sing, though .... the
teachers thought I was pretty hot stuff playing the thin and sinister nameless
flute ..... and I'm not too bad at clicking the bone-dry crotala, either..."
"I think Everyone did that musical at school .... " he mused .... It's even
in the Hr'ghyal'gha Shards, they pulled out of a Precambrian landfill site from
eight hundred million years back .... well, you know what they say." His voice
changed, and wrest
led with a vocabulary that biologies suited to drinking carbon-based beer and
sitting in three-dimensional rooms were not wholly optimised for.
"Ry'lhrrg... Chttttrgggg.. ny'tharg'ha ... Urupthraaah'g ... ry'llllgh'nyath
.. p'ghrygg.. phftaaagh..."
I applauded. "But what does it Mean ?"
He gave a sudden, lop-sided grin. "Nobody knows, like .... but it's been
passed down since Precambrian times, so it's got to be good, tha' reckons ? The
only bits anyone translated of it read "Joseph And The Appalling Monochrome
Trenchcoat...""
There was a pause, while we mulled over our thoughts, and mulled ale on the
fire as the night grew chill. Eventually, I bade him good-night, and strolled home
onder the light of the sinister stars and a quite phenomenally Gibbous moon.

The next day I set out alone, hiking out over Ramsgill Moor, eager to find
out more, if I could. It was becoming something of an obsession, I admitted to
myself ..... it was not that I had ever known my cousin all that well ..... my
brothers had peri
shed in one of the EC's Political Correctness Enforcement Community Centres, and I
felt no burning need to find out the details of that. No, it was something else
..... something that struck a cord deep within me, as I left the house with no
mirrors, or
photographs to reveal just what Osric had looked like.
I found myself wondering just what had been on those shelves, and stored on
the computer ..... which had fallen into such strange dust, almost like the
threads and spores of a fungus. But what sort of fungus could eat plastic, glass
and all the mixed ex
otic parts of a computer ? The books were easily enough explained: paper and skin
bindings perish easily, in the dampness. Though I would have been happier in a
way, if there had BEEN some trace of dampness having been in the windowless room
between the
houses.
The vicarage was easily spotted: it was one of the standard wartime designs,
looking rather like a battleship on tracks, but much bigger and far more heavily
armoured. It was dug in hull-down next to the post-office: as I stepped out onto
the drawbridge
I shivered at the fifty metre drop to the top of the tracks in the great
artificial canyon yawning below me.
Summoning up my courage, I knocked on the door.

"Your Cousin," I heard the Reverend Fanshaw deeply intoned, "Was, I must
tell you, deeply suspect when he came to us. You do know of our Mission ? And what
our duties are ?"
I nodded wordlessly, looking across the expanse of the desk. It was a
beautiful leather-topped desk two by three metres across, its surface a mosaic of
hundreds of rat-sized blue skins, cunningly jigsawed together. "You root out all
.... unwanted intru
sions from the wrong side of the time-tracks."
He nodded ponderously. The Vicar was a tall, horn-crowned deer of some kind:
with his twisting, long horns I wondered if he proudly claimed descent from the
famous Vlad The Impala. "We do that. However they may be found. Some, you know,
arrive direct, a
s it were ..... in full form, from Universes of ghastly cuteness so extreme that
they glow in the dark here, the pastel lambence of real matter breaking down,
corrupting to their own substance where it touches them." He took a deep breath.
"And living th
ings that have been ... exposed .... they too become corrupted, and warp their
shapes in time to things of similar, but lesser horror."
The Vicar stood up, and looked out of the window, a fine stained-glass
affair depicting stylised crusaders (all black armour, Chaos runes and spiky bits)
hacking apart something of such sweetness that I felt nauseous when the light
passing through its i
mage fell on my crawling fur.
"With those, spotting them is simple enough. Dealing with them is less so
.... but fortunately, it was found just in time that certain rare metals can
disrupt their auras enough to send them back to the foulness from whence they
came. " He flicked his
long coat aside, and I saw the crossed hilts of a pair of fighting sabres, plain
basket hilts and black nylon holsters.
"Tantalum," he pulled one from its scabbard, and slid it towards me.
"Tantalum and technicium, the only non-radioactive elements that are suited to the
job. When Nasimura first isolated the fundamental particle, the Kawaiion, back in
'09, nobody knew an
y material that would stop it without being .... corrupted."
I picked up the sabre, as he turned back towards the window - at least I
tried to, then tried to pick it up again. The blade was incredibly heavy, a
strangely textured pattern on it catching the sunlight, like the Widmanstaaten
lines of polished iron me
teorites. And then I touched it - and gave a sudden yelp of pain, dropping it on
the table with a hard thud.
"Cut myself," I explained, sucking my paw as he whirled to face me. "Those
things are Sharp !" I had a mental image of how they would be used, one ten-kilo
blade in each hand, the Reverend's trail on the battlefield a hideous spray of
smashed plush and
spilled stuffing, the like of which would sizzle most Mortal's Sanity points away
like water on a hot stovetop.
He gave me a hard look, then relaxed slightly, nodding. "Those blades I wore
to Belgium," he said simply, as if nothing else needed to be said. There was a
long silence, and he began again to speak, without preamble.
"Your cousin joined us after we had already thrown the EC out of France,
though there was one particular ..... Site, South-West of Paris, that was never
reclaimed. What they had intended to do there, we dared not guess - but we hit the
area with short-l
ived radionucleides and VX agent, and sealed it off forever. That accounted for
all the Mortal cultists, we know, and by now .... well, without Sacrifices,
whatever Gate they had built, would have gone offline in weeks. So we went into
Belgium ..... in
to the heart of it. Just in time for the new breed, you might say..."
He pulled off his mirror sunglasses, and looked at me hard. My heart skipped
a beat, and as I flinched away from his gaze, I knew why all Vicars were said to
be Differently Sane, as the EC Directive 0085569922110 bis would have forced me to
say. Those e
yes had stared into the pastel Abyss of ultimate fluffiness, and their owner was
still alive nearly ten years after. Exactly what he had seen and done there, I was
glad I would never have to know. Or so I thought at the time, that afternoon in
the study
lit by the oddly tinted sunlight shining through that holy and damned window.
"Olmthwaite, O, 4566444," he mused, breaking tone again as he tapped at a
Sony DataStation he pulled out of an inner coat pocket. "Some military skill, and
a lot of true crusading Zeal ..... his own Vicar thought highly of him. Which
covered over thing
s that might have otherwise..... not gone unnoticed. For the Corruption of the
Cute can be subtle, mark you ! Subtle and slow, and perhaps lie dormant for years
awaiting that trigger to full-blown contagion. And so we have to be, so Very
careful, even
now. They are among us still."
"I first met him when the Reverend Hubberholme had given his life to
preserve his troops .... given them time to get away by duelling with a Totoroid
monstrosity at the Marne crossing. They can recognise us, and you can scarcely
believe the glee they r
adiate when we come within possible hugging reach. It was your cousin who held
the retreat together, and stopped it becoming a rout. A fine leader, but to look
at him .... there was something deeply disturbing. His shape. Round as roundness
should not
be .... and he became no thinner, even in the September campaigns where the
resupply failed, and the rations were halved. I never saw him after that - for
some reason he disliked using the video link. Why that should have been ....
disturbs me, even no
w."
"Then, there was that final campaign .... just when they were about to
unleash the flood of That Which Squeaks below, and needed to be sure we didn't
overrun the Summoning sites they needed to do it. There were very few survivors of
our forward groups,
and your cousin was thrown into a rag-tag of whatever forces we had left -
including a Russian artillery unit, the 103rd Guards, nicknamed "Farewell
Motherland.""
He looked at me with those eyes, that seemed to be focussing on a spot a
light year behind the back of my head. "You must understand, that until that
campaign, there had been very few of those from Outside, summoned up against us.
At no time, more than
two hundred - but what those things ARE, is almost indestructable. Conventional
weapons might blow them across the landscape, but with no more harm to them than a
football takes from being kicked. Even nuclear devices - need to hit them,
literally, with
in twenty radius' distance of the warhead core, or it'll do is punt them into high
orbit, to land somewhere less prepared for their pastel horror.
"By the final campaign, though .... there were Many of them. And our
instruments detected a vast surge in the Kawaiion flux, deep under Brussels
itself, as if thousands were massing. I was thirty kilometres away from your
cousin at the end, in the outer
suburbs of Rotterdam ....." he Shivered. "That was in the final hours, and much
was done there that will never be known. But the comms link to his Assault gun
battery stayed up till the end."
He told me what he knew, from the official reports, and even managed to pull
off a few pages of the original datascript, from that desparate time. The Cornish
179th Tank Army had been almost wiped out, its vehicles picked up and Cuddled till
they crumpl
ed like tinfoil ... whole regiments had gone down beneath the all-conquering (but
hideously Adorable) toes of the fluffy Horror that was planting its real Pastel
bridgehead on Earth. For they had been the ones who had told the EC how to seize
power: the
Unification Directive and the horrors of the Occupation had been simply their
idea of a good joke. Under their inspired leadership, all that was not forbidden
became compulsory, and the Regulations were changed until the living envied the
dead (who paid
less taxes anyway.)
But in that suburb of Rotterdam, the survivors dug in and held, rationing
their ammunition. The Russian artillery unit that was covering the bridge crossing
was down to half its strength, and with barely a hundred tonnes of ammunition
remaining - and wi
th one of the big, smurf-killing 435 mm pieces on full automatic fire, a hundred
tonnes does not last long.
Osric was there, surprisingly alive and sane, despite having been exposed to
line-of sight contact with the pastel Horror several times. He was crewing the
assault-gun when the final attack came in - mortal EC troops first, then tiny
squeaking blue-skin
ned Daemons in a subhuman Wave attack .... and the rubble of Rotterdam bounced
with the concussion as the last scores of 435 mm shells threw them back. For a
few minutes all was silent, but then over the comms link there came a united groan
of horror i
n half a dozen languages, followed by a distant burst of high, screaming laughter
as one of the gun crew suffered another psychiatric fatality. Something Big was
coming, rising up out of the river, it's drip-dry, machine-washable fleece
streaming with w
ater, in a ghastly caricature of an Old One happily striding up from one of the
beautiful cities beneath the Pacific.
There was hardly any ammunition left, by then .... and none of the full-
calibre concrete-pierving shells that might just would it, if a long enough burst
hit a seam. But the comms link caught hints - not translated till all was over -
of how there was o
ne shell they were keeping till last, a reprocessed RSZ-11 Artillery round twenty
years old, that had been hurriedly fitted with a contact fuze and an outer jacket
to fit the larger calibre piece they were using. And then there was no more time
to talk,
for it was on them.
Perhaps Osric was the last one left alive and sane by then, for the tracked
Smurf Destroyer had no runic protection, only the "Chelyabinsk Chobham", and that
level of Cuteness could penetrate the top and sides armour in seconds, at that
range. For he s
tayed at his cannon, the final shell in the breech, even while the very steel and
ceramic around him began to glow pink with contamination ..... waiting till the
very last second....
The Reverend Fanshaw stopped, and looked at me. "How he stayed functioning
so long, is something that .... puzzled me at the time," he said slowly. "For he
kept on calling out ranging information even when the Fluffy thing was within a
few hundred metre
s ..... he had to be sure the RSZ shell hit a vulnerable seam, and penetrated.
And then .... something very .... strange happened. IT seemed to sense where he
was, behind the armour, and made straight towards him. His last shout was that it
was openin
g its mouth .... by then it was only fifty metres away, and preparing to Hug."
There was a silence. At last, I stirred, finding I had been gripping the arm
of my chair painfully hard. "And he lived long enough to fire ?"
The Chaos Vicar gave a single, abrupt nod. "He did. That we DO know - in
the last second before he was overrun, he destroyed the Main Battle Fluffy that
would have crushed whatever resistance we had left. A single shell, right in its
gaping maw .....
that was what it would have needed, for brand new the RSZ-11's yield was barely
four kilotonnes, and the warhead was in its last working year."
So has Osric died, I knew, knowing what he did, and knowing what he had to
do. But still.... there was still a question beyond that, still so be answered.
The Vivar was looking at me oddly, fingering his asymmetric star Octafix, when the
phone rang, an
old-fashioned one fixed to the wall in the corridor. He left me there in his
study without a word, and I looked around at the book-lined walls.
Just then, my heart gave a strange jump. I recognised on the shelf, a book
that I had seen before - a second copy, of Von Tuu's "UberPflaumig Kulten", twin
to the one that had crumbled to such odd dust in my hands ! I could still hear the
Vicar talking
down the hallway, so in haste I grabbed it, taking great care to first spot
exactly how it had lain on the shelf.
The book was Old, I could see ..... it must have dated back to the nineteen-
seventies, at least ..... and the script was in the style and font coming down
from the dark days before the Milennium. The fly-leaf stamp showed this copy to
have been part of
the private collection of the Dutch transport rental magnate, Albert Van Hire, and
I shuddered to recall things I had heard whispered of the circumstances of his
..... disappearence, for nothing readily identifiable as a body had ever been
found.
Quickly, I pulled out my pocket Leica, flicking through the dread paperback
page by page and photographing it, glad I had worked so hard for my Espionage Gold
badge in the Cub Scouts. Just in time, I heard the phone going down in the
corridor and replac
ed the book, matching to the milimetre the dust-line showing where on the shelf it
had rested.
"I'll look into the files on your Cousin, if you're interested," Reverend
Fanshaw nodded as I left that day, back over the moor. "I'm sure there's never
been a .... full corerelation of what we know. And then ...." he smiled at me,
though I managed to a
void his eyes, "I'll let you know."

Back I walked across Ramsgill Moor, breathing easier for it. And for a few
days nothing extraordinary happened ..... except that I was conscious, perhaps
.... of being Watched. It was nothing definite .... but when I worked outside the
house, even in d
aytime, my fur prickled as if someone was standing right behind me. Nothing was
there. The photos I had taken were sent off to be developed by some Privatised ex-
KGB lab near St.Petersburg: foolishly I had forgotten how few cellulose film
processors ther
e were these days.
And then came that night of Horror, when my life was changed forever. It had
started innocently enough: I had tuned in to watch that famous Japanese game show,
"Pro-Celebrity Bomb Disposal", Happily settling down to watch the studio audience
vote on wh
ich wires last season's stars should try next, I was content. And then the phone
rang.
I was already out of the chair and halfway across the room when I remembered
something fairly basic. I didn't HAVE a phone here. There was an old handset, but
it was not connected: what little voice communication I wanted, went via my
wristwatch Cray an
d its Aetheric modem. I found the white plastic telephone, and picked it up .....
the whole cable coming with it, the unconnected plug swinging freely. And still it
rang.
I froze, standing there in the hallway, with the shrilling thing in my
hands. Then, very slowly .... I picked up the reciever.
At first I heard nothing. Then, there was what seemed like an endlessly
distant voice, as if I was only hearing the echo bouncing off the dome of a great
soft Cathedral, pouring down like syrup from the stars. There were words .... but
for a minute, I c
ould make nothing out. Then I could, and I froze in horror.
".......... past ..... never Knew ........ away, tried to ...... it was
too late! The ...... lastday, I knew ......... tried end it all, but ........
surely enough to finish me , but ....... never saw the flash ........... so
fast..... t
hen I Woke Up !"
The last words were in a kind of horrified squeak, and I almost dropped the
phone. But as my fur fluffed out in horror, I realised there was something in the
voice that I ought to recognise. Not by its distant squeakiness, never had I known
that before
, but ..... something familiar was there, behind it, that struck a deeply-buried
note somewhere.
"............ was Grandfather, he didn't know ...... " the voice was
getting higher-pitched now, and harder to follow, though somehow nearer. "Worked
........Florida.. ..... ney, the Castle ...... two seasons,
and...............took root ......
....can't .......... it spreads down the years ! Father knew, he .......... end
it properly....... no scrap, if you can .............too late..... now.....
looking down the years, he found out today ! " There was a muffled squeak. and
then there was
one last clear burst, before the phone hissed and suddenly went dead. "He's almost
at the house ! Run !"
I stood there a full minute, my mind blank but seething like a pot of
boiling water. My ears went down, and carefully I put the phone down, staring at
it as if it was some poisonous
snake. But there was nothing more: the phone stayed as silent as an unpugged
plastic thing should remain. I shivered, and turned to return to the room.
Suddenly, there was a...... what I can only describe as a wave of Silence,
flowed through the house. It lay like mist, cold, choking mist ....... almost as
if the air had been frozen and solidified, so nothing moved in that place. And
from out of the wi
ndows, I saw a hideously suggestive glow of light, as no light should ever be.
What colour it had, I can hardly put a name to ..... but it seemed to ooze through
the stalled air, as if it spread at some speed of its own that Einstein would
never have cou
ntainanced nor tried to measure.
It was in the back garden. It was coming from that direction where I had
thought I had sen something standing like an invisible statue, looking at me and
at the house. With legs that seemed lto be working severely time-lagged, I forced
myself to move to
the kitchen window, and look out. Just as I opened the curtains, the light flared
and faded to a dim glow.... and sound returned, as if the air had been desparately
holding its own breath and only now let it out.
 My hand was on the door handle: grimly I forced it to turn, for there are
Survival routines in the hindbrains of us all, that are there for very good
reasons. But I overrode them, and stepped out into the garden, expecting to be
overwhelmed by some noxi
ous stench. The air was indeed strangely sickly-sweet, but nothing unbearable.
Slowly, I went down the garden - and there my old life ended.
The Reverend Fanshaw's own life had stopped too: I found his body still
warm. His face was set in a rictus of hate; in each hand was an unsheathed
Tantalum sabre, the keen edges of which seemed somehow ..... blunted, almost
glowing. On their razor edges
were lines of dim phosphorescence, that faded as I watched, leaving the place in
darkness. Examining him, I found no obvious wound, but by the grating of broken
bones as I turned him over, I realised he had been crushed .... as if bear-hugged
to death i
n some final deadly embrace with a foe he had come here prepared to meet.
The glow had gone from the surroundings, as I have said. But as my eyes
adjusted, I saw to my horror that there was a fading trail of it leading behind
the potting-shed - and a stronger, though flickering glow reflected from the fence
behind.
If only I had run, there and then ! The voice on the telephone had told me
to run, and I might have gone far indeed, by which time certain .... traces, would
have faded with the daylight. But I followed the trail, and around the corner I
came face to fa
ce with that which haunts my dreams even now.
It was rounded, a blueish thing of such ..... proportions, and ... texture,
that I only know my mind mercifully blanked off the worst of what I was there. And
it was fading: the Tantalum blades had torn it apart with wounds that its
unnatural vigour cou
ld never heal. It flickered .... like a hologram in the last seconds of battery
life, and then it looked at me.
"I tried .... stop him ...... he didn't know until now ... and didn't
tell ... anyone.." It was the voice I had heard on the phone, faint now but clear.
"I saw you'd come back ...... absorbed ..... evidence, didn't want you to know.
The film you took
..... I couldn't stop that .... you'll have to know, now ..."
The pastel thing squeaked painfully, and as it turned its head I caught an
alarming .... Resemblance, so shocking I staggered and almost fell, It panted and
flickered wildly, and spoke again, its huge eyes fixed on me.
"They checked up on me, but .... they couldn't prove anything. Because ....
there was nothing Outside.... I changed from Within .... it was Grandfather, you
see. Exposed .... it took hold of him, but he died normally before ..... anyone
.. knew. Excep
t Father .... the furnace, remember?"
I looked at him, and recognised what ghastly hints of face and voice had
been telling me. And then I DID faint, to wake up only with the daylight, where
no trace remained. What had been there had .... evaporated, for it was not matter
of our kind at al
l ..... a kind of ghastly fluff shed from the cosmic String of a universe so
alien, and yet so covetous of our own sane and healthy six dimensions.

The police took the Reverend's body away the next day; I told them of the
light and the Silence, and of the Thing I had seen - but not a word of what it had
told me. And when the photographs from that terrible Book came back that day, I
looked through t
hem once before destroying them. For they only confirmed the thing I dreaded to
see.
Von Tuu's book truly was a monstrous thing to read, and I am only glad he
wrote no more. Had it been Prophetic, it would have been bad enough, for it has
this to say of the things the world found out about almost too late to stop:
"And they shall come forth in their legions, from the false castles raised
and praised throughout the world: those of softness and squeaking, whose names
shall be on all lips, yet no mortal lips shall know the name they give Themselves,
nor mortal ears
hear their plans till they are ripened. And in the form they take before they are
fully bodied, neither shall eyes that live see them, whether in naked fibre or
fibrous corruption sheathed in flesh. The Devilbunnies are their kin, yet they can
spy them b
ut dimly, and none shall know the secret sowing in mortal flesh till its season of
ripening and bitter harvest comes."
"For the corruption they bring may pass through the blood, and sleep long
years to awaken: they shall walk among us unknown and unknowing, except to those
who share that cup of horror. And at the last the secret seed shall ripen, and
trouble all the age
s until the last of it is burned, burned without trace nor relic."
All this, I knew, or could guess. But the date was wrong ! If Von Tuu had
spoken truth, it was not in my lifetime, even, but much, much earlier when the
first of them had set foot on Earth, and decided it would be theirs.
Von Tuu was right. The Thing that spoke to me before it died ...... I knew
it at the last, and I know what it meant. My cousin Osric had removed the mirrors
from the house and tried to destroy all records of his appearence when he felt the
Change comin
g ...... and somehow he found out what was happening. Some of the books that now
were dust in the Room Between had the look of Family records, and some hint of
what his Grandfather - MY Grandfather had done, and where he had been, might have
survived. So
me time when Von Tuu was dreaming his hideously accurate visions, Grandfather
Olmthwaite had worked across the Atlantic in a place that was known as Florida
when it lay above the waves, at a certain ..... Complex whose name has not been
spoken willingly
for long years.
What did the pastel thing say ? Of someone who had found out, and made
certain that his body would not change further, nor rise again even in the normal
Undead fashion ? Osric's Father, my Uncle, I recalled from the family legend, had
met a tragic and i
nexplicable end by falling into a blast furnace that the investigation proved had
excellent safely guards against Accidents like that. What of him ?
For I knew even as I fainted, that Osric had not died in Holland. He had
tried to - but already, enough of him had been ...... altered, to survive even the
fate he embraced. And he had regained consciousness, bit by bit, month after
month, in a waking n
ightmare as he knew exactly what he had become. Not in solid form, oh no, but in a
sentient cloud, a constellation of particles of Their matter, gaining strength and
solidity all the time, and at last making its way back to the only home it knew,
hoping
perhaps to warn me.
I look down at my hand every now and then, at the scar on my hand. In the
Vicarage, I had picked up the Tantalum blade ..... but its edge had not cut me -
it had Burned me like red-hot iron. Now I know why the Reverend Fanshaw had
looked at me so oddly
, why the lunatic in the asylum had half recognised something of Osric in me ....
not for the natural genetics we shared, but for that Other thing that we share now
- that curse which no natural death will remove.
As I write this, I know what I must do. There will be no furnace for me: the
Change may be too far advanced for even that to succeed. I will hand this to my
neighbour, with instructions to open it a week after I am gone ..... for I know
the Reverend Fan
shaw was coming not for my Cousin, but for me, and I have another fate in mind. I
will go to that destroyed land that was called Belgium, and seek out the others of
my kind ..... for we have no Count Von Tuu for this decade, and beneath the green
radioa
ctive scabs of Brussels, horrid life stirs in secret.
Cousin Osric came back to warn me ...... can I do less for the world ?

#End Transcript 125666 #