Haggopian and Other Stories

The Second Wish

I wrote this story in 1976 for Arkham House’s Ramsey Campbell-edited New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1980). Not only a homage to Lovecraft (you will find several allusions to HPL’s stories in this one) but also to Robert E. Howard of Conan fame, “The Second Wish” is a fully fledged Mythos tale with just about every Mythos prop. But it’s also one of my personal favourites. Most recently it was reprinted in my hardcover collection, Beneath the Moors & Darker Places, TOR Books, 2002.

The scene was awesomely bleak: mountains gauntly grey and black towered away to the east, forming an uneven backdrop for a valley of hardy grasses, sparse bushes, and leaning trees. In one corner of the valley, beneath foothills, a scattering of shingle-roofed houses, with the very occasional tiled roof showing through, was enclosed and protected in the Old European fashion by a heavy stone wall.

A mile or so from the village—if the huddle of time-worn houses could properly be termed a village—leaning on a low rotting fence that guarded the rutted road from a steep and rocky decline, the tourists gazed at the oppressive bleakness all about and felt oddly uncomfortable inside their heavy coats. Behind them their hired car—a black Russian model as gloomy as the surrounding countryside, exuding all the friendliness of an expectant hearse—stood patiently waiting for them.

He was comparatively young, of medium build, dark-haired, unremarkably good-looking, reasonably intelligent, and decidedly idle. His early adult years had been spent avoiding any sort of real industry, a prospect which a timely and quite substantial inheritance had fortunately made redundant before it could force itself upon him. Even so, a decade of living at a rate far in excess of even his ample inheritance had rapidly reduced him to an almost penniless, unevenly cultured, high-ranking rake. He had never quite lowered himself to the level of a gigolo, however, and his womanizing had been quite deliberate, serving an end other than mere fleshly lust.

They had been ten very good years by his reckoning and not at all wasted, during which his expensive lifestyle had placed him in intimate contact with the cream of society; but while yet surrounded by affluence and glitter he had not been unaware of his own steadily dwindling resources. Thus, towards the end, he had set himself to the task of ensuring that his tenuous standing in society would not suffer with the disappearance of his so carelessly distributed funds; hence his philandering. In this he was not as subtle as he might have been, with the result that the field had narrowed down commensurately with his assets, until at last he had been left with Julia.

She was a widow in her middle forties but still fairly trim, rather prominently featured, too heavily made-up, not a little calculating, and very well-to-do. She did not love her consort—indeed she had never been in love—but he was often amusing and always thoughtful. Possibly his chief interest lay in her money, but that thought did not really bother her. Many of the younger, unattached men she had known had been after her money. At least Harry was not foppish, and she believed that in his way he did truly care for her.

Not once had he given her reason to believe otherwise. She had only twenty good years left and she knew it; money could only buy so much youth…Harry would look after her in her final years and she would turn a blind eye on those little indiscretions which must surely come—provided he did not become too indiscreet. He had asked her to marry him and she would comply as soon as they returned to London. Whatever else he lacked he made up for in bed. He was an extremely virile man and she had rarely been so well satisfied…

Now here they were together, touring Hungary, getting “far away from it all”.

“Well, is this remote enough for you?” he asked, his arm around her waist.

“Umm,” she answered. “Deliciously barren, isn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s all of that. Peace and quiet for a few days—it was a good idea of yours, Julia, to drive out here. We’ll feel all the more like living it up when we reach Budapest.”

“Are you so eager, then, to get back to the bright lights?” she asked. He detected a measure of peevishness in her voice.

“Not at all, darling. The setting might as well be Siberia for all I’m concerned about locale. As long as we’re together. But a girl of your breeding and style can hardly—”

“Oh, come off it, Harry! You can’t wait to get to Budapest, can you?”

He shrugged, smiled resignedly, thought: You niggly old bitch! and said, “You read me like a book, darling—but Budapest is just a wee bit closer to London, and London is that much closer to us getting married, and—”

“But you have me anyway,” she again petulantly cut him off. “What’s so important about being married?”

“It’s your friends, Julia,” he answered with a sigh. “Surely you know that?” He took her arm and steered her towards the car. “They see me as some sort of cuckoo in the nest, kicking them all out of your affections. Yes, and it’s the money, too.”

“The money?” she looked at him sharply as he opened the car door for her. “What money?”

“The money I haven’t got!” He grinned ruefully, relaxing now that he could legitimately speak his mind, if not the truth. “I mean, they’re all certain it’s your money I’m after, as if I was some damned gigolo. It’s hardly flattering to either one of us. And I’d hate to think they might convince you that’s all it is with me. But once we’re married I won’t give a damn what they say or think. They’ll just have to accept me, that’s all.”

Reassured by what she took to be pure naïveté, she smiled at him and pulled up the collar of her coat. Then the smile fell from her face, and though it was not really cold she shuddered violently as he started the engine.

“A chill, darling?” He forced concern into his voice.

“Umm, a bit of one,” she answered, snuggling up to him. “And a headache too. I’ve had it ever since we stopped over at—oh, what’s the name of the place? Where we went up over the scree to look at that strange monolith?”

“Stregoicavar,” he answered her. “The ‘Witch-Town’. And that pillar-thing was the Black Stone. A curious piece of rock that, eh? Sticking up out of the ground like a great black fang! But Hungary is full of such things: myths and legends and odd relics of forgotten times. Perhaps we shouldn’t have gone to look at it. The villagers shun it…”

“Mumbo jumbo,” she answered. “No, I think I shall simply put the blame on this place. It’s bloody depressing, really, isn’t it?”

He tut-tutted good humouredly and said: “My God!—the whims of a woman, indeed!”

She snuggled closer and laughed in his ear. “Oh, well, that’s what makes us so mysterious, Harry. Our changeability. But seriously, I think maybe you’re right. It is a bit late in the year for wandering about the Hungarian countryside. We’ll stay the night at the inn as planned, then cut short and go on tomorrow into Budapest. It’s a drive of two hours at the most. A week at Zjhack’s place, where we’ll be looked after like royalty, and then on to London. How does that sound?”

“Wonderful!” He took one hand from the wheel to hug her. “And we’ll be married by the end of October.”

• • •

The inn at Szolyhaza had been recommended for its comforts and original Hungarian cuisine by an innkeeper in Kecskemét. Harry had suspected that both proprietors were related, particularly when he first laid eyes on Szolyhaza. That had been on the previous evening as they drove in over the hills.

Business in the tiny village could hardly be said to be booming. Even in the middle of the season, gone now along with the summer, Szolyhaza would be well off the map and out of reach of the ordinary tourist. It had been too late in the day to change their minds, however, and so they had booked into the solitary inn, the largest building in the village, an ancient stone edifice of at least five and a half centuries.

And then the surprise. For the proprietor, Herr Debrec, spoke near-perfect English; their room was light and airy with large windows and a balcony (Julia was delighted at the absence of a television set and the inevitable “Kultur” programs); and later, when they came down for a late-evening meal, the food was indeed wonderful!

There was something Harry had wanted to ask Herr Debrec that first evening, but sheer enjoyment of the atmosphere in the little dining-room—the candlelight, the friendly clinking of glasses coming through to them from the bar, the warm fire burning bright in an old brick hearth, not to mention the food itself and the warm red local wine—had driven it from his mind. Now, as he parked the car in the tiny courtyard, it came back to him. Julia had returned it to mind with her headache and the talk of ill-rumoured Stregoicavar and the Black Stone on the hillside.

It had to do with a church—at least Harry suspected it was or had been a church, though it might just as easily have been a castle or ancient watchtower—sighted on the other side of the hills beyond gaunt autumn woods. He had seen it limned almost as a silhouette against the hills as they had covered the last few miles to Szolyhaza from Kecskemét. There had been little enough time to study the distant building before the road veered and the car climbed up through a shallow pass, but nevertheless Harry had been left with a feeling of—well, almost of déjà vu—or perhaps presentiment. The picture of sombre ruins had brooded obscurely in his mind’s eye until Herr Debrec’s excellent meal and luxurious bed, welcome after many hours of driving on the poor country roads, had shut the vision out.

• • •

Over the midday meal, when Herr Debrec entered the dining room to replenish their glasses, Harry mentioned the old ruined church, saying he intended to drive out after lunch and have a closer look at it.

“That place, mein Herr? No, I should not advise it.”

“Oh?” Julia looked up from her meal. “It’s dangerous, is it?”

“Dangerous?”

“In poor repair—on the point of collapsing on someone?”

“No, no. Not that I am aware of, but—” he shrugged half-apologetically.

“Yes, go on,” Harry prompted him.

Debrec shrugged again, his short fat body seeming to wobble uncertainly. He slicked back his prematurely greying hair and tried to smile. “It is…very old, that place. Much older than my inn. It has seen many bad times, and perhaps something of those times still—how do you say it?—yes, ‘adheres’ to it.”

“It’s haunted?” Julia suddenly clapped her hands, causing Harry to start.

“No, not that—but then again—” the Hungarian shook his head, fumbling with the lapels of his jacket. He was obviously finding the conversation very uncomfortable.

“But you must explain yourself, Herr Debrec,” Harry demanded. “You’ve got us completely fascinated.”

“There is…a dweller,” the man finally answered. “An old man—a holy man, some say, but I don’t believe it—who looks after…things.”

“A caretaker, you mean?” Julia asked.

“A keeper, madam, yes. He terms himself a ‘monk’, I think, the last of his sect. I have my doubts.”

“Doubts?” Harry repeated, becoming exasperated. “But what about?”

“Herr, I cannot explain,” Debrec fluttered his hands. “But still I advise you, do not go there. It is not a good place.”

“Now wait a min—” Harry began, but Debrec cut him off.

“If you insist on going, then at least be warned: do not touch…anything. Now I have many duties. Please to excuse me.” He hurried from the room.

Left alone they gazed silently at each other for a moment. Then Harry cocked an eyebrow and said: “Well?”

“Well, we have nothing else to do this afternoon, have we?” she asked.

“No, but—oh, I don’t know,” he faltered, frowning. “I’m half inclined to heed his warning.”

“But why? Don’t tell me you’re superstitious, Harry?”

“No, not at all. It’s just that—oh, I have this feeling, that’s all.”

She looked astounded. “Why, Harry, I really don’t know which one of you is trying hardest to have me on: you or Debrec!” She tightened her mouth and nodded determinedly. “That settles it then. We will go and have a look at the ruins, and damnation to all these old wives’ tales!”

Suddenly he laughed. “You know, Julia, there might just be some truth in what you say—about someone having us on, I mean. It’s just struck me: you know this old monk Debrec was going on about? Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be his uncle or something! All these hints of spooky goings-on could be just some sort of put-on, a con game, a tourist trap. And here we’ve fallen right into it! I’ll give you odds it costs us five pounds a head just to get inside the place!” And at that they both burst out laughing.

• • •

The sky was overcast and it had started to rain when they drove away from the inn. By the time they reached the track that led off from the road and through the grey woods in the direction of the ruined church, a ground mist was curling up from the earth in white drifting tendrils.

“How’s this for sinister?” Harry asked, and Julia shivered again and snuggled closer to him. “Oh?” he said, glancing at her and smiling. “Are you sorry we came after all, then?”

“No, but it is eerie driving through this mist. It’s like floating on milk!…Look, there’s our ruined church directly ahead.”

The woods had thinned out and now high walls rose up before them, walls broken in places and tumbled into heaps of rough moss-grown masonry. Within these walls, in grounds of perhaps half an acre, the gaunt shell of a great Gothic structure reared up like the tombstone of some primordial giant. Harry drove the car through open iron gates long since rusted solid with their massive hinges. He pulled up before a huge wooden door in that part of the building which still supported its lead-covered roof.

They left the car to rest on huge slick centuried cobbles, where the mist cast languorous tentacles about their ankles. Low over distant peaks the sun struggled bravely, trying to break through drifting layers of cloud.

Harry climbed the high stone steps to the great door and stood uncertainly before it. Julia followed him and said. with a shiver in her voice: “Still think it’s a tourist trap?”

“Uh? Oh! No, I suppose not. But I’m interested anyway. There’s something about this place. A feeling almost of—”

“As if you’d been here before?”

“Yes, exactly! You feel it too?”

“No,” she answered, in fine contrary fashion. “I just find it very drab. And I think my headache is coming back.”

For a moment or two they were silent, staring at the huge door.

“Well,” Harry finally offered, “nothing ventured, nothing gained.” He lifted the massive iron knocker, shaped like the top half of a dog’s muzzle, and let it fall heavily against the grinning metal teeth of the lower jaw. The clang of the knocker was loud in the misty stillness.

“Door creaks open,” Julia intoned, “revealing Bela Lugosi in a black high-collared cloak. In a sepulchral voice he says: ‘Good evening…’” For all her apparent levity, half of the words trembled from her mouth.

Wondering how, at her age, she could act so stupidly girlish, Harry came close then to telling her to shut up. Instead he forced a grin, reflecting that it had always been one of her failings to wax witty at the wrong time. Perhaps she sensed his momentary annoyance, however, for she frowned and drew back from him fractionally. He opened his mouth to explain himself but started violently instead as, quite silently, the great door swung smoothly inward.

The opening of the door seemed almost to pull them in, as if a vacuum had been created…the sucking rush of an express train through a station. And as they stumbled forward they saw in the gloom, the shrunken, flame-eyed ancient framed against a dim, musty-smelling background of shadows and lofty ceilings.

The first thing they really noticed of him when their eyes grew accustomed to the dimness was his filthy appearance. Dirt seemed ingrained in him! His coat, a black full-length affair with threadbare sleeves, was buttoned up to his neck where the ends of a grey tattered scarf protruded. Thin grimy wrists stood out from the coat’s sleeves, blue veins showing through the dirt. A few sparse wisps of yellowish hair, thick with dandruff and probably worse, lay limp on the pale bulbous dome of his head. He could have been no more than sixty-two inches in height, but the fire that burned behind yellow eyes, and the vicious hook of a nose that followed their movements like the beak of some bird of prey, seemed to give the old man more than his share of strength, easily compensating for his lack of stature.

“I…that is, we…” Harry began.

“Ah!—English! You are English, yes? Or perhaps American?” His heavily accented voice, clotted and guttural, sounded like the gurgling of a black subterranean stream. Julia thought that his throat must be full of phlegm, as she clutched at Harry’s arm.

“Tourists, eh?” the ancient continued. “Come to see old Möhrsen’s books? Or perhaps you don’t know why you’ve come?” He clasped his hands tightly together, threw back his head, and gave a short coughing laugh.

“Why, we…that is…” Harry stumbled again, feeling foolish, wondering just why they had come.

“Please enter,” said the old man, standing aside and ushering them deeper, irresistibly in. “It is the books, of course it is. They all come to see Möhrsen’s books sooner or later. And of course there is the view from the tower. And the catacombs…”

“It was the ruins,” Harry finally found his voice. “We saw the old building from the road, and—”

“Picturesque, eh. The ruins in the trees… Ah!—but there are other things here. You will see.”

“Actually,” Julia choked it out, fighting with a sudden attack of nausea engendered by the noisome aspect of their host, “we don’t have much time…”

The old man caught at their elbows, yellow eyes flashing in the gloomy interior. “Time? No time?” His hideous voice grew intense in a moment. “True, how true. Time is running out for all of us!”

It seemed then that a draught, coming from nowhere, caught at the great door and eased it shut. As the gloom deepened Julia held all the more tightly to Harry’s arm, but the shrunken custodian of the place had turned his back to guide them on with an almost peremptory: “Follow me.”

And follow him they did.

Drawn silently along in his wake, like seabirds following an ocean liner through the night, they climbed stone steps, entered a wide corridor with an arched ceiling, finally arrived at a room with a padlocked door. Möhrsen unlocked the door, turned, bowed, and ushered them through.

“My library,” he told them, “my beautiful books.”

With the opening of the door light had flooded the corridor, a beam broad as the opening in which musty motes were caught, drifting, eddying about in the disturbed air. The large room—bare except for a solitary chair, a table, and tier upon tier of volume-weighted shelves arrayed against the walls—had a massive window composed of many tiny panes. Outside the sun had finally won its battle with the clouds; it shone wanly afar, above the distant mountains, its autumn beam somehow penetrating the layers of grime on the small panes.

“Dust!” cried the ancient. “The dust of decades—of decay! I cannot keep it down.” He turned to them. “But see, you must sign.”

“Sign?” Harry questioned. “Oh, I see. A visitors’ book.”

“Indeed, for how else might I remember those who visit me here? See, look at all the names…”

The old man had taken a leather-bound volume from the table. It was not a thick book, and as Möhrsen turned the parchment leaves they could see that each page bore a number of signatures, each signature being dated. Not one entry was less than ten years old. Harry turned back the pages to the first entry and stared at it. The ink had faded with the centuries so that he could not easily make out the ornately flourished signature. The date, on the other hand, was still quite clear: “Frühling, 1611.”

“An old book indeed,” he commented, “but recently, it seems, visitors have been scarce…” Though he made no mention of it, frankly he could see little point in his signing such a book.

“Sign nevertheless,” the old man gurgled, almost as if he could read Harry’s mind. “Yes, you must, and the madam too.” Harry reluctantly took out a pen; and Möhrsen watched intently as they scribbled their signatures.

“Ah, good, good!” he chortled, rubbing his hands together. “There we have it—two more visitors, two more names. It makes an old man happy, sometimes, to remember his visitors… And sometimes it makes him sad.”

“Oh?” Julia said, interested despite herself. “Why sad?”

“Because I know that many of them who visited me here are no more, of course!” He blinked great yellow eyes at them.

“But look here, look here,” he continued, pointing a grimy sharp-nailed finger at a signature. “This one: ‘Justin Geoffrey, 12 June, 1926’. A young American poet, he was. A man of great promise. Alas, he gazed too long upon the Black Stone!”

“The Black Stone?” Harry frowned. “But—”

“And here, two years earlier: ‘Charles Dexter Ward’—another American, come to see my books. And here, an Englishman this time, one of your own countrymen, ‘John Kingsley Brown’.” He let the pages flip through filthy fingers. “And here another, but much more recently. See: ‘Hamilton Tharpe, November, 1959’. Ah, I remember Mr. Tharpe well! We shared many a rare discussion here in this very room. He aspired to the priesthood, but—” He sighed. “Yes, seekers after knowledge all, but many of them ill-fated, I fear…”

“You mentioned the Black Stone,” Julia said. “I wondered—?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. An old legend, nothing more. It is believed to be very bad luck to gaze upon the stone.”

“Yes,” Harry nodded. “We were told much the same thing in Stregoicavar.”

“Ah!” Möhrsen immediately cried, snapping shut the book of names, causing his visitors to jump. “So you, too, have seen the Black Stone?” He returned the volume to the table, then regarded them again, nodding curiously. Teeth yellow as his eyes showed as he betrayed a sly, suggestive smile.

“Now see here—” Harry began, irrational alarm and irritation building in him, welling inside.

Möhrsen’s attitude, however, changed on the instant. “A myth, a superstition, a fairy story!” he cried, holding out his hands in the manner of a conjurer who has nothing up his sleeve. “After all, what is a stone but a stone?”

“We’ll have to be going,” Julia said in a faint voice. Harry noticed how she leaned on him, how her hand trembled as she clutched his arm.

“Yes,” he told their wretched host, “I’m afraid we really must go.”

“But you have not seen the beautiful books!” Möhrsen protested. “Look, look—” Down from a shelf he pulled a pair of massive antique tomes and opened them on the table. They were full of incredible, dazzling, illuminated texts; and despite themselves, their feelings of strange revulsion, Harry and Julia handled the ancient works and admired their great beauty.

“And this book, and this.” Möhrsen piled literary treasures before them. “See, are they not beautiful? And now you are glad you came, yes?”

“Why, yes, I suppose we are,” Harry grudgingly replied.

“Good, good! I will be one moment—some refreshment—please look at the books. Enjoy them…” And Möhrsen was gone, shuffling quickly out of the door and away into the gloom.

“These books,” Julia said as soon as they were alone. “They must be worth a small fortune!”

“And there are thousands of them,” Harry answered, his voice awed and not a little envious. “But what do you think of the old boy?”

“He—frightens me,” she shuddered. “And the way he smells!”

“Ssh!” He held a finger to his lips. “He’ll hear you. Where’s he gone, anyway?”

“He said something about refreshment. I certainly hope he doesn’t think I’ll eat anything he’s prepared!”

“Look here!” Harry called. He had moved over to a bookshelf near the window and was fingering the spines of a particularly musty-looking row of books. “Do you know, I believe I recognise some of these titles? My father was always interested in the occult, and I can remember—”

“The occult?” Julia echoed, cutting him off, her voice nervous again. He had not noticed it before, but she was starting to look her age. It always happened when her nerves became frazzled, and then all the makeup in the world could not remove the stress lines.

“The occult, yes,” he replied. “You know, the ‘Mystic Arts’, the ‘Supernatural’, and what have you. But what a collection! There are books here in Old German, in Latin, Dutch—and listen to some of the titles:

“De Lapide Philosophico…De Vermis Mysteriis…Othuum Omnicia…Liber Ivonis…Necronomicon.” He gave a low whistle, then: “I wonder what the British Museum would offer for this lot? They must be near priceless!”

“They are priceless!” came a guttural gloating cry from the open door. Möhrsen entered, bearing a tray with a crystal decanter and three large crystal glasses. “But please, I ask you not to touch them. They are the pride of my whole library.”

The old man put the tray upon an uncluttered corner of the table, unstoppered the decanter, and poured liberal amounts of wine. Harry came to the table, lifted his glass, and touched it to his lips. The wine was deep, red, sweet. For a second he frowned, then his eyes opened in genuine appreciation. “Excellent!” he declared.

“The best,” Möhrsen agreed, “and almost one hundred years old. I have only six more bottles of this vintage. I keep them in the catacombs. When you are ready you shall see the catacombs, if you so desire. Ah, but there is something down there that you will find most interesting, compared to which my books are dull, uninteresting things.”

“I don’t really think that I care to see your—” Julia began, but Möhrsen quickly interrupted.

“A few seconds only,” he pleaded, “which you will remember for the rest of your lives. Let me fill your glasses.”

The wine had warmed her, calming her treacherous nerves. She could see that Harry, despite his initial reservations, was now eager to accompany Möhrsen to the catacombs.

“We have a little time,” Harry urged. “Perhaps—?”

“Of course,” the old man gurgled, “time is not so short, eh?” He threw back his own drink and noisily smacked his lips, then shepherded his guests out of the room, mumbling as he did so: “Come, come—this way—only a moment—no more than that.”

And yet again they followed him, this time because there seemed little else to do; deeper into the gloom of the high-ceilinged corridor, to a place where Möhrsen took candles from a recess in the wall and lit them; then on down two, three flights of stone steps into a nitrous vault deep beneath the ruins; and from there a dozen or so paces to the subterranean room in which, reclining upon a couch of faded silk cushions, Möhrsen’s revelation awaited them.

The room itself was dry as dust, but the air passing gently through held the merest promise of moisture, and perhaps this rare combination had helped preserve the object on the couch. There she lay—central in her curtain-veiled cave, behind a circle of worn, vaguely patterned stone tablets, reminiscent of a miniature Stonehenge—a centuried mummy-parchment figure, arms crossed over her abdomen, remote in repose. And yet somehow…unquiet.

At her feet lay a leaden casket, a box with a hinged lid, closed, curiously like a small coffin. A design on the lid, obscure in the poor light, seemed to depict some mythic creature, half toad, half-dog. Short tentacles or feelers fringed the thing’s mouth. Harry traced the dusty raised outline of this chimaera with a forefinger.

“It is said she had a pet—a companion creature—which slept beside her in that casket,” said Möhrsen, again anticipating Harry’s question.

Curiosity overcame Julia’s natural aversion. “Who is…who was she?”

“The last true Priestess of the Cult,” Möhrsen answered. “She died over four hundred years ago.”

“The Turks?” Harry asked.

“The Turks, yes. But if it had not been them…who can say? The cult always had its opponents.”

“The cult? Don’t you mean the order?” Harry looked puzzled. “I’ve heard that you’re—ah—a man of God. And if this place was once a church—”

“A man of God?” Möhrsen laughed low in his throat. “No, not of your God, my friend. And this was not a church but a temple. And not an order, a cult. I am its priest, one of the last, but one day there may be more. It is a cult which can never die.” His voice, quiet now, nevertheless echoed like a warning, intensified by the acoustics of the cave.

“I think,” said Julia, her own voice weak once more, “that we should leave now, Harry.”

“Yes, yes,” said Möhrsen, “the air down here, it does not agree with you. By all means leave—but first there is the legend.”

“Legend?” Harry repeated him. “Surely not another legend?”

“It is said,” Möhrsen quickly continued, “that if one holds her hand and makes a wish…”

“No!” Julia cried, shrinking away from the mummy. “I couldn’t touch that!”

“Please, please,” said Möhrsen, holding out his arms to her, “do not be afraid. It is only a myth, nothing more.”

Julia stumbled away from him into Harry’s arms. He held her for a moment until she had regained control of herself, then turned to the old man. “All right, how do I go about it? Let me hold her hand and make a wish—but then we must be on our way. I mean, you’ve been very hospitable, but—”

“I understand,” Möhrsen answered. “This is not the place for a gentle, sensitive lady. But did you say that you wished to take the hand of the priestess?”

“Yes,” Harry answered, thinking to himself: “if that’s the only way to get to hell out of here!”

Julia stepped uncertainly, shudderingly back against the curtained wall as Harry approached the couch. Möhrsen directed him to kneel; he did so, taking a leathery claw in his hand. The elbow joint of the mummy moved with surprising ease as he lifted the hand from her withered abdomen. It felt not at all dry but quite cool and firm. In his mind’s eye Harry tried to look back through the centuries. He wondered who the girl had really been, what she had been like. “I wish,” he said to himself, “that I could know you as you were…”

Simultaneous with the unspoken thought, as if engendered of it, Julia’s bubbling shriek of terror shattered the silence of the vault, setting Harry’s hair on end and causing him to leap back away from the mummy. Furthermore, it had seemed that at the instant of Julia’s scream, a tingle as of an electrical charge had travelled along his arm into his body.

Now Harry could see what had happened. As he had taken the mummy’s withered claw in his hand, so Julia had been driven to clutch at the curtains for support. Those curtains had not been properly hung but merely draped over the stone surface of the cave’s walls; Julia had brought them rustling down. Her scream had originated in being suddenly confronted by the hideous bas-reliefs which completely covered the walls, figures and shapes that seemed to leap and cavort in the flickering light of Möhrsen’s candles.

Now Julia sobbed and threw herself once more into Harry’s arms, clinging to him as he gazed in astonishment and revulsion at the monstrous carvings. The central theme of these was an octopodal creature of vast proportions—winged, tentacled, and dragonlike, and yet with a vaguely anthropomorphic outline—and around it danced all the demons of hell. Worse than this main horror itself, however, was what its attendant minions were doing to the tiny but undeniably human figures which also littered the walls. And there, too, as if directing the nightmare activities of a group of these small, horned horrors, was a girl—with a leering dog-toad abortion that cavorted gleefully about her feet!

Hieronymus Bosch himself could scarcely have conceived such a scene of utterly depraved torture and degradation, and horror finally burst into livid rage in Harry as he turned on the exultant keeper of this nighted crypt. “A temple, you said, you old devil! A temple to what?—to that obscenity?”

“To Him, yes!” Möhrsen exulted, thrusting his hook-nose closer to the rock-cut carvings and holding up the candles the better to illuminate them. “To Cthulhu of the tentacled face, and to all his lesser brethren.”

Without another word, more angry than he could ever remember being, Harry reached out and bunched up the front of the old man’s coat in his clenched fist. He shook Möhrsen like a bundle of moth-eaten rags, cursing and threatening him in a manner which later he could scarcely recall.

“God!” he finally shouted. “It’s a damn shame the Turks didn’t raze this whole nest of evil right down to the ground! You…you can lead the way out of here right now, at once, or I swear I’ll break your neck where you stand!”

“If I drop the candles,” Möhrsen answered, his voice like black gas bubbles breaking the surface of a swamp, “we will be in complete darkness!”

“No, please!” Julia cried. “Just take us out of here…”

“If you value your dirty skin,” Harry added, “you’ll keep a good grip on those candles!”

Möhrsen’s eyes blazed sulphurous yellow in the candlelight and he leered hideously. Harry turned him about, gripped the back of his grimy neck, and thrust him ahead, out of the blasphemous temple. With Julia stumbling in the rear, they made their way to a flight of steps that led up into daylight, emerging some twenty-five yards from the main entrance.

They came out through tangled cobwebs into low decaying vines and shrubbery that almost hid their exit. Julia gave one long shudder, as if shaking off a nightmare, and then hastened to the car. Not once did she look back.

Harry released Möhrsen who stood glaring at him, shielding his yellow eyes against the weak light. They confronted each other in this fashion for a few moments, until Harry turned his back on the little man to follow Julia to the car. It was then that Möhrsen whispered:

“Do not forget: I did not force you to do anything. I did not make you touch anything. You came here of your own free will.”

When Harry turned to throw a few final harsh words at him, the old man was already disappearing down into the bowels of the ruins.

• • •

In the car as they drove along the track through the sparsely clad trees to the road, Julia was very quiet. At last she said: “That was quite horrible. I didn’t know such people existed.”

“Nor did I,” Harry answered.

“I feel filthy,” she continued. “I need a bath. What on earth did that creature want with us?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. I think he must be insane.”

“Harry, let’s not go straight back to the inn. Just drive around for a while.” She rolled down her window, breathing deeply of the fresh air that flooded in before lying back in the seat and closing her eyes. He looked at her, thinking: “God!—but you’re certainly showing your age now, my sweet”…but he couldn’t really blame her.

• • •

There were two or three tiny villages within a few miles of Szolyhaza, centres of peasant life compared to which Szolyhaza was a veritable capital. These were mainly farming communities, some of which were quite picturesque. Nightfall was still several hours away and the rain had moved on, leaving a freshness in the air and a beautiful warm glow over the hills, so that they felt inclined to park the car by the roadside and enjoy a drink at a tiny Gasthaus.

Sitting there by a wide window that overlooked the street, while Julia composed herself and recovered from her ordeal, Harry noticed several posters on the wall of the building opposite. He had seen similar posters in Szolyhaza, and his knowledge of the language was just sufficient for him to realise that the event in question—whatever that might be—was taking place tonight. He determined, out of sheer curiosity, to question Herr Debrec about it when they returned to the inn. After all, there could hardly be very much of importance happening in an area so out-of-the-way. It had already been decided that nothing should be said about their visit to the ruins, the exceedingly unpleasant hour spent in the doubtful company of Herr Möhrsen.

• • •

Twilight was settling over the village when they got back. Julia, complaining of a splitting headache, bathed and went straight to her bed. Harry, on the other hand, felt strangely restless, full of physical and mental energy. When Julia asked him to fetch her a glass of water and a sleeping pill, he dissolved two pills, thus ensuring that she would remain undisturbed for the night. When she was asleep he tidied himself up and went down to the bar.

After a few drinks he buttonholed Herr Debrec and questioned him about the posters; what was happening tonight? Debrec told him that this was to be the first of three nights of celebration. It was the local shooting carnival, the equivalent of the German Schützenfest, when prizes would be presented to the district’s best rifle shots.

There would be sideshows and thrilling rides on machines specially brought in from the cities—members of the various shooting teams would be dressed all in hunter’s green—beer and wine would flow like water and there would be good things to eat—oh, and all the usual trappings of a festival. This evening’s main attraction was to be a masked ball, held in a great barn on the outskirts of a neighbouring village. It would be the beginning of many a fine romance. If the Herr wished to attend the festivities, Debrec could give him directions…?

Harry declined the offer and ordered another drink. It was odd the effect the brandy was having on him tonight: he was not giddy—it took a fair amount to do that—but there seemed to be a peculiar excitement in him. He felt much the same as when, in the old days, he’d pursued gay young debutantes in the Swiss resorts or on the Riviera.

Half an hour and two drinks later he checked that Julia was fast asleep, obtained directions to the Schützenfest, told Herr Debrec that his wife was on no account to be disturbed, and drove away from the inn in fairly high spirits. The odds, he knew, were all against him, but it would be good fun and there could be no possible comeback; after all, they were leaving for Budapest in the morning, and what the eye didn’t see the heart wouldn’t grieve over. He began to wish that his command of the language went a little further than “good evening” and “another brandy, please”. Still, there had been plenty of times in the past when language hadn’t mattered at all, when talking would have been a positive hindrance.

In no time at all he reached his destination, and at first glance he was disappointed. Set in the fields beside a hamlet, the site of the festivities was noisy and garishly lit, in many ways reminiscent of the country fairgrounds of England. All very well for teenage couples, but rather gauche for a civilized, sophisticated adult. Nevertheless, that peculiar tingling with which Harry’s every fibre seemed imbued had not lessened, seemed indeed heightened by the whirling machines and gaudy, gypsyish caravans and sideshows; and so he parked the car and threaded his way through the swiftly gathering crowd.

Hung with bunting and festooned with balloons like giant ethereal multi-hued grapes, the great barn stood open to the night. Inside, a costumed band tuned up while masked singles and couples in handsome attire gathered, preparing to dance and flirt the night away. Framed for a moment in the huge open door, frozen by the camera of his mind, Harry saw among the crowd the figure of a girl—a figure of truly animal magnetism—dressed almost incongruously in peasant’s costume.

For a second masked eyes met his own and fixed upon them across a space of only a few yards, and then she was gone. But the angle of her neck as she had looked at him, the dark unblinking eyes behind her mask, the fleeting, knowing smile on her lips before she turned away—all of these things had spoken volumes.

That weird feeling, the tingling that Harry felt, suddenly suffused his whole being. His head reeled and his mouth went dry; he had consciously to fight the excitement rising from within; following which he headed dizzily for the nearest wine tent, gratefully to slake his thirst. Then, bolstered by the wine, heart beating fractionally faster than usual, he entered the cavernous barn and casually cast about for the girl whose image still adorned his mind’s eye.

But his assumed air of casual interest quickly dissipated as his eyes swept the vast barn without sighting their target, until he was about to step forward and go among the tables in pursuit of his quarry. At that point a hand touched his arm, a heady perfume reached him, and a voice said: “There is an empty table on the balcony. Would you like to sit?”

Her voice was not at all cultured, but her English was very good; and while certainly there was an element of peasant in her, well, there was much more than that. Deciding to savour her sensuous good looks later when they were seated, he barely glanced at her but took her hand and proceeded across the floor of the barn. They climbed wooden stairs to an open balcony set with tables and cane chairs. On the way he spoke to a waiter and ordered a bottle of wine, a plate of dainties.

They sat at their tiny table overlooking the dance floor, toying with their glasses and pretending to be interested in completely irrelevant matters. He spoke of London, of skiing in Switzerland, the beach at Cannes. She mentioned the mountains, the markets of Budapest, the bloody history of the country, particularly of this region. He was offhand about his jet-setting, not becoming ostentatious; she picked her words carefully, rarely erring in pronunciation. He took in little of what she said and guessed that she wasn’t hearing him. But their eyes—at first rather fleetingly—soon became locked; their hands seemed to meet almost involuntarily atop the table.

Beneath the table Harry stretched out a leg towards hers, felt something cold and hairy arching against his calf as might a cat. A cat, yes, it must be one of the local cats, fresh in from mousing in the evening fields. He edged the thing to one side with his foot…but she was already on her feet, smiling, holding out a hand to him.

They danced, and he discovered gypsy in her, and strangeness, and magic. She bought him a red mask and positioned it over his face with fingers that were cool and sure. The wine began to go down that much faster…

• • •

It came almost as a surprise to Harry to find himself in the car, in the front passenger seat, with the girl driving beside him. They were just pulling away from the bright lights of the Schützenfest, but he did not remember leaving the great barn. He felt more than a little drunk—with pleasure as much as with wine.

“What’s your name?” he asked, not finding it remarkable that he did not already know. Only the sound of the question seemed strange to him, as if a stranger had spoken the words.

“Cassilda,” she replied.

“A nice name,” he told her awkwardly. “Unusual.”

“I was named after a distant…relative.”

After a pause he asked: “Where are we going, Cassilda?”

“Is it important?”

“I’m afraid we can’t go to Szolyhaza—” he began to explain.

She shrugged, “My…home, then.”

“Is it far?”

“Not far, but—”

“But?”

She slowed the car, brought it to a halt. She was a shadowy silhouette beside him, her perfume washing him in warm waves. “On second thoughts, perhaps I had better take you straight back to your hotel—and leave you there.”

“No, I wouldn’t hear of it,” he spoke quickly, seeing his hopes for the night crumbling about him, sobered by the thought that she could so very easily slip out of his life. The early hours of the morning would be time enough for slipping away—and he would be doing it, not the girl. “You’d have to walk home, for one thing, for I’m afraid I couldn’t let you take the car…” To himself he added: And I know that taxis aren’t to be found locally.

“Listen,” he continued when she made no reply, “you just drive yourself home. I’ll take the car from there back to my hotel.”

“But you do not seem steady enough to drive.”

“Then perhaps you’ll make me a cup of coffee?” It was a terribly juvenile gambit, but he was gratified to see her smiling behind her mask.

Then, just as quickly as the smile had come, it fell away to be replaced by a frown he could sense rather than detect in the dim glow of the dashboard lights. “But you must not see where I live.”

“Why on earth not?”

“It is not…a rich dwelling.”

“I don’t care much for palaces.”

“I don’t want you to be able to find your way back to me afterward. This can be for one night only…”

Now this, Harry thought to himself, is more like it! He felt his throat going dry again. “Cassilda, it can’t possibly be for more than one night,” he gruffly answered. “Tomorrow I leave for Budapest.”

“Then surely it is better that—”

“Blindfold me!”

“What?”

“Then I won’t be able to see where you live. If you blindfold me I’ll see nothing except…your room.” He reached across and slipped his hand inside her silk blouse, caressing a breast.

She reached over and stroked his neck, then pulled gently away. She nodded knowingly in the darkness: “Yes, perhaps we had better blindfold you, if you insist upon handling everything that takes your fancy!”

She tucked a black silk handkerchief gently down behind his mask, enveloping him in darkness. Exposed and compromised as she did this, she made no immediate effort to extricate herself as he fondled her breasts through the silk of her blouse. Finally, breathing the words into his face, she asked:

“Can you not wait?”

“It’s not easy.”

“Then I shall make it easier.” She took his hands away from her body, sat back in her seat, slipped the car into gear and pulled away. Harry sat in total darkness, hot and flushed and full of lust.

• • •

“We are there,” she announced, rousing him from some peculiar torpor. He was aware only of silence and darkness. He felt just a trifle queasy and told himself that it must be the effect of being driven blindfolded over poor roads. Had he been asleep? What a fool he was making of himself!

“No,” she said as he groped for the door handle. “Let’s just sit here for a moment or two. Open a bottle, I’m thirsty.”

“Bottle? Oh, yes!” Harry suddenly remembered the two bottles of wine they had brought with them from the Schützenfest. He reached into the back seat and found one of them. “But we have no glasses. And why should we drink here when it would be so much more comfortable inside?”

She laughed briefly. “Harry, I’m a little nervous…”

Of course! French courage!—or was it Dutch? What odds? If a sip or two would help her get into the right frame of mind, why not? Silently he blessed the manufacturers of screw-top bottles and twisted the cap free. She took the wine from him, and he heard the swishing of liquid. Her perfume seemed so much stronger, heady as the scent of poppies. And yet beneath it he sensed…something tainted?

She returned the bottle to him and he lifted it to parched lips, taking a long deep draught. His head immediately swam, and he felt a joyous urge to break into wild laughter. Instead, discovering himself the victim of so strange a compulsion, he gave a little grunt of surprise.

When he passed the bottle back to her, he let his hand fall to her breast once more—and gasped at the touch of naked flesh, round and swelling! She had opened her blouse to him—or she had removed it altogether! With trembling fingers he reached for his mask and the handkerchief tucked behind it.

“No!” she said, and he heard the slither of silk. “There, I’m covered again. Here, finish the bottle and then get out of the car. I’ll lead you…”

“Cassilda,” he slurred her name. “Let’s stop this little game now and—”

“You may not take off the blindfold until we are in my room, when we both stand naked.” He was startled by the sudden coarseness of her voice—the lust he could now plainly detect—and he was also fired by it. He jerked violently when she took hold of him with a slender hand, working her fingers expertly, briefly, causing him to gabble some inarticulate inanity.

Momentarily paralysed with nerve-tingling pleasure and shock, when finally he thought to reach for her she was gone. He heard the whisper of her dress and the click of the car door as she closed it behind her.

Opening his own door he almost fell out, but her hand on his shoulder steadied him. “The other bottle,” she reminded him.

Clumsily he found the wine, then stumbled as he turned from the car. She took his free hand, whispering: “Ssh! Quiet!” and gave a low guttural giggle.

Blind, he stumbled after her across a hard, faintly familiar surface. Something brushed against his leg, cold, furry and damp. The fronds of a bushy plant, he suspected.

“Lower your head,” she commanded. “Carefully down the steps. This way. Almost there…”

“Cassilda,” he said, holding tightly to her hand. “I’m dizzy.”

“The wine!” she laughed.

“Wait, wait!” he cried, dragging her to a halt. “My head’s swimming.” He put out the hand that held the bottle, found a solid surface, pressed his knuckles against it and steadied himself. He leaned against a wall of sorts, dry and flaky to his touch, and gradually the dizziness passed.

This is no good, he told himself: I’ll be of no damn use to her unless I can control myself! To her he said, “Potent stuff, your local wine.”

“Only a few more steps,” she whispered.

She moved closer and again there came the sound of sliding silk, of garments falling. He put his arm around her, felt the flesh of her body against the back of his hand. The weight of the bottle slowly pulled down his arm. Smooth firm buttocks—totally unlike Julia’s, which sagged a little—did not flinch at the passing of fingers made impotent by the bottle they held.

“God!” he whispered, throat choked with lust. “I wish I could hold on to you for the rest of my life…”

She laughed, her voice hoarse as his own, and stepped away, pulling him after her. “But that’s your second wish,” she said.

Second wish… Second wish? He stumbled and almost fell, was caught and held upright, felt fingers busy at his jacket, the buttons of his shirt. Not at all cold, he shivered, and deep inside a tiny voice began to shout at him, growing louder by the moment, shrieking terrifying messages into his inner ear.

His second wish!

Naked he stood, suddenly alert, the alcohol turning to water in his system, the unbelievable looming real and immense and immediate as his four sound senses compensated for voluntary blindness.

“There,” she said. “And now you may remove your blindfold!”

Ah, but her perfume no longer masked the charnel musk beneath; her girl’s voice was gone, replaced by the dried-up whisper of centuries-shrivelled lips; the hand he held was—

Harry leapt high and wide, trying to shake off the thing that held his hand in a leathery grip, shrieking his denial in a black vault that echoed his cries like lunatic laughter. He leapt and cavorted, coming into momentary contact with the wall, tracing with his burning, supersensitive flesh the tentacled monstrosity that gloated there in bas-relief, feeling its dread embrace!

And bounding from the wall he tripped and sprawled, clawing at the casket which, in his mind’s eye, he saw where he had last seen it at the foot of her couch. Except that now the lid lay open!

Something at once furry and slimy-damp arched against his naked leg—and again he leapt frenziedly in darkness, gibbering now as his mind teetered over vertiginous chasms.

Finally, dislodged by his threshing about, his blindfold—the red mask and black silk handkerchief he no longer dared remove of his own accord—slipped from his face… And then his strength became as that of ten men, became such that nothing natural or supernatural could ever have held him there in that nighted cave beneath black ruins.

• • •

Herr Ludovic Debrec heard the roaring of the car’s engine long before the beam of its headlights swept down the black deserted road outside the inn. The vehicle rocked wildly and its tyres howled as it turned an impossibly tight corner to slam to a halt in the inn’s tiny courtyard.

Debrec was tired, cleaning up after the day’s work, preparing for the morning ahead. His handful of guests were all abed, all except the English Herr. This must be him now, but why the tearing rush? Peering through his kitchen window, Debrec recognised the car—then his weary eyes widened and he gasped out loud. But what in the name of all that…? The Herr was naked!

The Hungarian landlord had the door open wide for Harry almost before he could begin hammering upon it—was bowled to one side as the frantic, gasping, bulge-eyed figure rushed in and up the stairs—but he had seen enough, and he crossed himself as Harry disappeared into the inn’s upper darkness.

“Mein Gott!” he croaked, crossing himself again, and yet again. “The Herr has been in that place!”

• • •

Despite her pills, Julia had not slept well. Now, emerging from unremembered, uneasy dreams, temples throbbing in the grip of a terrific headache, she pondered the problem of her awakening. A glance at the luminous dial of her wristwatch told her that the time was ten after two in the morning.

Now what had startled her awake? The slamming of a door somewhere? Someone sobbing? Someone crying out to her for help? She seemed to remember all of these things.

She patted the bed beside her with a lethargic gesture. Harry was not there. She briefly considered this, also the fact that his side of the bed seemed undisturbed. Then something moved palely in the darkness at the foot of the bed.

Julia sucked in air, reached out and quickly snapped on the bedside lamp. Harry lay naked, silently writhing on the floor, face down, his hands beneath him.

“Harry!” she cried, getting out of bed and going to him. With a bit of a struggle she turned him on to his side, and he immediately rolled over on his back.

She gave a little shriek and jerked instinctively away from him, revulsion twisting her features. Harry’s eyes were screwed shut now, his lips straining back from his teeth in unendurable agony. His hands held something to his heaving chest, something black and crumbly. Even as Julia watched, horrified, his eyes wrenched open and his face went slack. Then Harry’s hands fell away from his chest; in one of them, the disintegrating black thing seemed burned into the flesh of his palm and fingers. It was unmistakably a small mummified hand!

Julia began to crawl backwards away from him across the floor; as she did so something came from behind, moving sinuously where it brushed against her. Seeing it, she scuttled faster, her mouth working silently as she came up against the wall of the room.

The—creature—went to Harry, snatched the shrivelled hand from him, turned away…then, as if on an afterthought, turned back. It arched against him for a moment, and, with the short feelers around its mouth writhing greedily, quickly sank its sharp teeth into the flesh of his leg. In the next instant the thing was gone, but Julia didn’t see where it went.

Unable to tear her eyes away from Harry, she saw the veins in his leg where he had been bitten turn a deep, dark blue and stand out, throbbing beneath his marble skin. Carried by the now sluggish pulsing of his blood, the creature’s venom spread through him. But…poison? No, it was much more, much worse, than poison. For as the writhing veins came bursting through his skin, Harry began to melt. It went on for some little time, until what was left was the merest travesty of a man: a sticky, tarry thing of molten flesh and smoking black bones.

Then, ignoring the insistent hammering now sounding at the door, Julia drew breath into her starving lungs—drew breath until she thought her chest must burst—and finally expelled it all in one vast eternal scream…