Compleat Crow

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That night, though he had never been much of a believer, Titus Crow said his prayers. He did manage to sleep —however fitfully and with countless starlings awake, at every tiniest groan and creak of the old place — and in the morning looked just as haggard as this last week had determined he should look. Which was just as well, for as the time approached Carstairs would hardly let him out of his sight.

On four separate occasions that morning, the man came to visit him in the library, eyeing him avidly, like a great and grotesque praying mantis. And even knowing Carstairs' purpose with him — because he knew that purpose — Crow must keep up his pretence of going to the slaughter like a lamb, and not the young lion his looks normally suggested.

Lunch came and went, when Crow — mainly by deft sleight of hand — once more cut his wine intake to a minimum; and at 6:00 p.m. he negotiated the evening repast with similar skill and success. And through all of this it was plain to him that a morbid excitement was building in Carstairs, an agitation of spirit the man could barely contain.

At 7:30 — not long after Crow had finished off an entire jug of coffee and as he sat in silence by the light of one dim lamp, memorizing tonight's monstrous rite from what he had read of it in the Saracenic Rituals — Carstairs came and knocked upon the library door, walking in as usual before Crow could issue the customary invitation. No need now for Crow to feign haggardness or the weary slump of his shoulders, for the agonizingly slow buildup to the night's play had itself taken care of these particulars.

'Mr Crow,' said Carstairs in unusually unctuous tones, 'I may require a little assistance tonight

'Assistance?' Crow peered at the other through red-rimmed eyes. 'My assistance?'

'If you have no objection. I have some work to do in the cellar, which may well keep me until the middle of the night. I do not like to keep you from your bed, of course, but in the event I should call for you—' his voice stepped slyly down the register, 'you will answer, won't you?'

'Of course,' Crow hoarsely answered, his eyes now fixed on the burning orbs of the occultist.

'You will come, when I call?' Carstairs now droned, driving the message home. 'No matter how late the hour? You will awaken and follow me? You will come to me in the night, when I call?'

'Yes,' Crow mumbled.

'Say it, Titus Crow. Tell me what you will do, when I call.'

'I shall come to you,' Crow obediently answered. 'I will come to you when you call me.'

'Good!' said Carstairs, his face ghastly as a skull. 'Now rest, Titus Crow. Sit here and rest — and wait for my call. Wait for my call ...' Silently he turned and strode from the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

Crow got up, waited a moment, switched off the one bulb he had allowed to burn. In his alcove bedroom he drew the curtains and put on the light, then quickly changed into his dressing-gown. He took Harry Townley's .45 revolver out from under his mattress, loaded it and tucked it out of sight in the large pocket of his robe. Now he opened the curtains some twelve inches and brushed through them into the library proper, pacing the floor along the pale path of light from the alcove.

To and fro he paced, tension mounting, and more than once he considered flight; even now, close as he was to those dark mysteries which at once attracted and repelled him. The very grit of his makeup would not permit it, however, for his emotions now were running more to anger than the terror he had expected. He was to be, to have been, this monster Carstairs' victim! How now, knowing what the outcome would be — praying that it would be as he foresaw it— could he possibly turn away? No, flight was out of the question; Carstairs would find a substitute: the terror would continue. Even if Crow were to go, who could say what revenge might or might not fly hot on his heels?

At 9:30 cars pulled up at the house, quiet as hearses and more of them than at any other time, and through a

crack in his shades Crow watched shadowy figures enter the house. For a little while then there were faint, subdued murmurings and creakings; all of which Crow heard with ears which strained in the library's darkness, fine-tuned to catch the merest whisper. A little later, when it seemed to him that the noises had descended beneath the house, he put out the alcove light and sat in unmitigated darkness in the chair where Carstairs had left him. And all about him the night grew heavy, until it weighed like lead upon his head and shoulders.

As the minutes passed he found his hand returning again and again to the pocket where Townley's revolver lay comfortably heavy upon his thigh, and every so often he would be obliged to still the nervous trembling of his limbs. Somewhere in the distance a great clock chimed the hour of eleven, and as at a signal Crow heard the first sussurations of a low chanting from beneath his feet. A cold sweat immediately stood out upon his brow, which he dabbed away with a trembling handkerchief.

The Ritual of the Worm had commenced!

Angrily Crow fought for control of himself ... for he knew what was coming. He cursed himself for a fool -for several fools - as the minutes ticked by and the unholy chanting took on rhythm and volume. He stood up, sat down, dabbed at his chill brow, fingered his revolver ... and started at the sudden chiming of the half hour.

Now, in an instant, the house seemed full of icy air, the temperature fell to zero! Crow breathed the black, frigid atmosphere of the place and felt the tiny hairs crackling in his nostrils. He smelled sharp fumes - the unmistakable reek of burning henbane and opium - and sat rigid in his chair as the chanting from the cellar rose yet again, in a sort of frenzy now, throbbing and echoing as with the acoustics of some great cathedral.

The time must surely approach midnight, but Crow no longer dared glance at his watch.

Whatever it had been, in another moment his terror passed; he was his own man once more. He sighed raggedly and forced himself to relax, knowing that if he did not, then the emotional exhaustion must soon sap his strength. Surely the time —

— Had come!

The chanting told him: the way it swelled, receded and took on a new metre. For now it was his own name he heard called in the night, just as he had been told he would hear it.

Seated bolt upright in his chair, Crow saw the bookshelf door swing open, saw Carstairs framed in the faintly luminous portal, a loose-fitting cassock belted about his narrow middle. Tall and gaunt, more cadaverous than ever, the occultist beckoned.

'Come, Titus Crow, for the hour is at hand. Rise up and come with me, and learn the great and terrible mysteries of the worm!'

Crow rose and followed him, down the winding steps, through reek of henbane and opium and into the now luridly illumined cellar. Braziers stood at the four corners, glowing red where heated metal trays sent aloft spirals of burned incense, herbs and opiates; and round the central space a dozen robed and hooded acolytes stood, their heads bowed and facing inwards, toward the painted, interlocking circles. Twelve of them, thirteen including Carstairs, a full coven.

Carstairs led Crow through the coven's ring and pointed to the circle with the white-painted ascending node. 'Stand there, Titus Crow,' he commanded. 'And have no feat'

Doing as he was instructed, Crow was glad for the cellar's flickering lighting and its fume-heavy atmosphere, which made faces ruddy and mobile and his trembling barely noticeable. And now he stood there, his feet in the mouth of the ascending node, as Carstairs took up his own position in the adjoining circle. Between them, in the 'eye' where the circles interlocked, a large hourglass trickled black sand from one almost empty globe into another which was very nearly full.

Watching the hourglass and seeing that the sands had nearly run out, now Carstairs threw back his cowl and commanded: 'Look at me, Titus Crow, and heed the Wisdom of the Worm!' Crow stared at the man's eyes, at his face and cassocked body.

The chanting of the acolytes grew loud once more, but their massed voice no longer formed Crow's name. Now they called on the Eater of Men himself, the loathsome master of this loathsome ritual:

'Wamas, Wormius, Vermi, WORM!

'Wamas, Wormius, Vermi, WORM!

'Wamas, Wormius,

And the sand in the hourglass ran out!

'Worm!' Carstairs cried as the others fell silent. 'Worm, I command thee — come out!'

Unable, not daring to turn his eyes away from the man, Crow's lips drew back in a snarl of sheer horror at the transition which now began to take place. For as Carstairs convulsed in a dreadful agony, and while his eyes stood out in his head as if he were splashed with molten metal, still the man's mouth fell open to issue a great baying laugh.

And out of that mouth — out from his ears, his nostrils, even the hair of his head — there now appeared a writhing pink flood of maggots, grave-worms erupting from his every orifice as he writhed and jerked in his hellish ecstasy!

'Now, Titus Crow, now!' cried Carstairs, his voice a glutinous gabble as he continued to spew maggots. 'Take my hand!' And he held out a trembling, quaking mass of crawling horror.

'No!' said Titus Crow. 'No, I will not!'

Carstairs gurgled, gasped, cried, 'What?' His cassock billowed with hideous movement. 'Give me your hand —I command it!'

'Do your worst, wizard,' Crow yelled back through gritted teeth.

'But ... I have your Number! You must obey!'

'Not my Number, wizard,' said Crow, shaking his head and at once the acolyte circle began to cower back, their sudden gasps of tenor filling the cellar.

'You lied!' Carstairs gurgled, seeming to shrink into himself. 'You ... cheated! No matter — a small thing.' In the air he shaped a figure with a forefinger. 'Worm, he is yours. I command you — take him!'

Now he pointed at Crow, and now the tomb-horde at his feet rolled like a flood across the floor — and drew back from Crow's circle as from a ring of fire. 'Go on!' Carstairs shrieked, crumbling into himself, his head wobbling madly, his cheeks in tatters from internal fretting. 'Who is he? What does he know? I command you!'

'I know many things,' said Crow. 'They do not want me — they dare not touch me. And I will tell you why: I was born not in 1912 but in 1916 — on 2nd December of that year. Your ritual was based on the wrong date, Mr Carstairs!'

The 2nd December 1916! A concerted gasp went up from the wavering acolytes. 'A Master!' Crow heard the whisper. 'A twenty-two!'

'No!' Carstairs fell to Ms knees. 'No!'

He crumpled, crawled to the rim of his circle, beckoned with a half-skeletal hand. 'Durrell, to me!' His voice was the rasp and rustle of blown leaves.

'Not me!' shrieked Durrell, flinging off Ms cassock and rushing for the cellar steps. 'Not me!' Wildly he clambered from sight — and eleven like him hot on Ms heels.

'No!' Carstairs gurgled once more.

Crow stared at him, still unable to avert Ms eyes. He saw his features melt and flow, changing through a series of identities and firming in the final — the first! — dark Arab visage of Ms origin. Then he fell on his side, turned that ravaged, sorcerer's face up to Crow. His eyes fell in and maggots seethed in the red orbits. The horde turned back, washed over him. In a moment nothing remained but bone and 'shreds of gristle, tossed and eddied on a ravenous tide.

Crow reeled from the cellar, his flesh crawling, his mind tottering on the brink. Only his Number saved him, the 22 of the Master Magician. And as he fumbled up the stone steps and through that empty, gibbering house, so he whispered words half-forgotten, which seemed to come to him from nowhere:

'For it is of old renown that the soul of the devil-bought hastes not from his charnel clay, but fats and instructs the very worm that gnaws; till out of corruption horrid life springs ...'

Later, in his right mind but changed forever, Titus Crow drove away from The Barrows into the frosty night. No longer purposeless, he knew the course his life must now take. Along the gravel drive to the gates, a pinkish horde lay rimed in white death, frozen where they

crawled. Crow barely noticed them.

The tyres of his car paid them no heed whatever.