| FILLED OF FEAR |
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© 1989 by Donald W. Gillette First published in Ship
Of Terror, May 1990 |
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The thief watched silently from beneath a huge oak
tree as the children chased their shadows through the small clearing in the
park. He smiled as the children darted back and forth between the shrubbery,
tripping sometimes on the fallen limbs strewn in the path of their play, then
recovering quickly, and continuing in their imaginary pursuits. The shadows
were growing longer now and the children's play would soon end as day merged
with the moon and became darkness. He stayed in the park long after the children had
gone; his time spent staring out across the calm expanse of Getting up slowly, using the tree as a brace, he
closed his eyes for a moment and pictured the site of his next robbery. The Lovecraft House loomed in his mind and he sensed the quiet
surrounding the house and saw the hundreds of small trees, their branches
askew, waving in the wind. He brushed off the seat of his pants with both hands.
Walking toward the peaceful water, he began to
whistle, softly at first, but then louder as he surveyed his surroundings and
found himself completely alone. He walked along the shore for a time and then
stopped. Time
to go to work.
He looked around quickly, paused, and then walked
briskly to his car at the far end of the spacious parking lot, deserted now
except for the Citroen gleaming from the light cast from the lone streetlamp.
He fumbled the keys out of his pocket and climbed in behind the wheel. Again,
the prospect of the Lovecraft House rose in his
thoughts and the tales of hidden passageways and long-forgotten gold and silver
excited him. He leaned back and let the images float through his mind. But there was something else. His daydream became
clouded with another subject. He winced as his mental picture of mounds of
precious metal melted away only to be replaced by a clear view of the English
countryside in the stark twilight of a midsummer’s day morning. The Lovecraft House stood in the foreground of his new
landscape and he watched as a long procession moved along a street of stone
winding from a hillside to the front door of the house. The participants were
clothed in skins with furred helmets crowning their heads. They wore
grotesquely painted masks depicting fear in some cases, anger in others, and
still others exuding terror. The thief opened his eyes and shook his head rapidly,
trying to clear the images from his mind. "Damn," he whispered. "1 must be
nuts." Then the thoughts were gone and he was driving through
the center of town ignoring the traffic signs and buildings he had passed so
many times before; not fully cognizant of his whereabouts, only sure of his
destination. He drove through the town as if it never existed and devoured the
thirty miles of highway between the town and the Lovecraft
House. Pulling the Citroen onto a side street, he cut the lights and coasted
until he was no more than a hundred yards from the main driveway. He left the keys in the ignition and entered a small
clearing in the otherwise crowded woods adjacent to the house. He waited there
for a time, studying the area as he had in the daylight, and then moved slowly
and carefully, making no noise and disturbing his surroundings as little as
possible until he spied the house through a small patch of brush. As he looked up toward the house, his mind wandered
back to the Wiltshire uplands. He began to see figures adorned with necklaces
of teeth, bearing spears and crude axes move up the stone boulevard toward the
house. An atmosphere of gaiety emanated from the participants in this
prehistoric parade and the thief stood fast, engrossed in their antics. As quickly as the vision had come, it was gone.
The thief's breath was coming hard and the palms of
his hands began to sweat. I've been too
anxious about this--got to settle down. He measured his breathes and wiped his hands against
his jeans, trying desperately to calm himself. Despite the faint chill of the
night, he felt unreasonably warm and wiped his face with the sleeve of his
jacket, checking it for perspiration. He hesitated for a moment and then, as if
giving in to an urge, started toward the house. He reached the rear door of the huge mansion and
cracked the windowpane with his elbow. Glass shattered and as he reached
through the gaping hole, he was taken back by the image of a naked child and
flaxen robed woman standing just inside the door to greet him. Shaking the
premonition off, he opened the latch and pushed the heavy, wooden door inward
with more than enough force. He shone his flashlight around the inside of the room
and stepped across the threshold nimbly, as if expecting to meet with an
electrical charge. The room was empty. With each room he entered, his excitement and
anticipation waned. The rooms were stripped of any valuables and the few
furnishings that remained were covered with dustsheets. The thief found the
first floor unpromising. He moved up the stairs quickly, the beam from his
flashlight illuminating a wide path before him. He heard rats scurry behind the
walls of the ancient house and the stairs groaned under his weight. As he
reached the landing, he turned and shone the flash- light against the far wall.
The beam fell on a huge portrait of Roland Lovecraft and the surprise caused the thief to gasp. He
recovered quickly and lurched around the corner, running the rest of the way to
the top of the staircase. "Goddamit, I've got to
knock this off," he said aloud as he shone the light into the closest
room. The light reflected off a mirror on the far side of
the room and as he entered, he saw a rather large, oaken desk and behind the
desk, a dust covered leather chair. The walls of the room were lined with
vacant bookshelves and a faint aroma of tobacco permeated the woodwork. His
attention was drawn to a section of the bookshelves that jutted out a bit and
he walked quickly to the section. He pushed against the shelf and it slid open,
revealing a set of stairs made of stone and leading down into a large
passageway. After shining his light down the steps as far as he could see, he
gathered his courage and began to descend the cold, damp slabs. On the fourth
step, his foot made contact with something soft and he stifled a yell when the
flashlight beam shone on a large, gray rat scampering down into the lower
portion of the passageway to nurse its wounds. He shivered slightly and started
to back up a step but slipped on the wet, moss-covered stone barely keeping his
balance. He was sweating profusely now and his hands tightened
around the flashlight so as not to lose it if he slipped again. Carefully, he
continued down the steps. The staircase circled the exterior of the house and he
could see the tops of the window frames sticking our slightly into the
passageway. When he reached the bottom, he stopped, peering into the pitch
darkness and trying to get his bearings. The darkness seemed to lift as his eyes grew
accustomed to the surroundings and he began to perceive the walls of the
basement. A huge, concrete door barred by a tremendous, hand-hewn section of
solid wood dominated the wall closest. He shone his light on all four walls and
shook his head, disgusted that the basement was empty. Slowly, almost as an afterthought, he turned to the concrete door and tried to move the wooden brace. Discovering it to be heavier than he had thought, he threw his weight against it until he felt it give slightly. Beads of perspiration were swelling on his face as he worked the beam back and forth, straining at its every movement. When the beam finally broke free of its supports, he heaved a sigh of relief and let it fall to the floor. The door handle appeared to have been chiseled out of the solid block and he grasped it with both hands, pulling hard and using his leg to brace himself against the wall. The door gave slightly and then ground to a halt.
He jerked on the handle furiously, but the door would
not budge. With one final effort, the thief flung his body against the door,
returning it to its original position and then jerked on the handle again with
all the strength he could muster. This time the door creaked open wide enough
for him to wedge his body behind it and push with both hands. With considerable
effort, he forced the door open sufficiently to gain access to the room it
guarded. |
Peering into the blackness, straining his eyes against
the dark, he retrieved the flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on,
shining the beam into the room. With the exception of a single table and an old,
oversized book, the room was an exact duplicate of the one he had been standing
in, to include a carbon copy of the concrete door, barred by a huge piece of
timber. His first instinct was to leave the house, beaten by
its lack of valuables, but curiosity brought him forward and he directed the
light onto the book. It was a rich-looking volume, tooled by hand in thick
leather and virtually free of the dust that seemed to cover everything else in
the Lovecraft House. He opened it slowly and the hand
printed letters, thickly drawn with quill and ink, seemed to leap off the pages
at him. Although he could not recognize the language of the book, he noticed an
unusual grouping of words underlined on most pages. His lips moved slowly as he
sounded the words aloud like a first grader learning to read. "Fulfild of fayerye and deeth." He felt a sudden twinge of pain shoot up his left leg
and instinctively shook it. Something felt odd and heavy about his foot and he
looked down from the book. The thief screamed as he realized the source of the
pain and he struck at the large rat with his flashlight. The red eyes shone up
at him and he brought the flashlight down in a small arc, intent on crushing
the powerful jaws of his attacker. His blow struck the rat squarely on the head
and it scurried away into the darkness. A wave of revulsion swept over the thief
as he knelt to inspect his wound. He began to feel claustrophobic in the cramped room
and he rose quickly, grabbing the book and leaving the area. Once in the outer
room, he pushed the door to, leaning against it with his back and pushing with
his legs. He considered returning the wooden beam to its position over the
door, but decided against another struggle with the massive timber, opting
instead to leave it lying on the cold stone floor of the cellar. He shone the
flashlight up the stairs searching for rats and deciding it was clear, he began
to ascend. Halfway up the staircase, a peculiar feeling came over
him. He
began to sense a crowd watching his movements as if he were a performer on a
stage. He saw himself marching, staring ahead at a distant, smoking altar and
he began to hear screams, both male and female, emanating from the crude, stone
table. Furtively, he glanced in the direction of the concrete
door and thought of its mate inside the other room. In the corner of his eye,
he noticed a faint movement. The thief forced a slight grin and, nursing his left
leg, he climbed the stairs. Once safe from the dampness, he hurriedly left the
house and walked across the crowded woods to his car. The
Citroen felt comfortable to him; like an extension of the safety of his home.
He glanced at the antique volume of strange words and crude drawings, tossed it
onto the passenger seat, gunned the engine to life, and left the Lovecraft House looming in the distance. As the thief entered the side door to his home, his
mind raced back to the night's events. Uppermost in his mind was tending to the
rat bite on his leg and he headed for the bathroom, lofting the book gently
toward the couch. After dressing his wound, he ambled toward the living room, pausing to pour a couple of fingers of bourbon into a glass. Flopping
down into the large, overstuffed couch, he opened the volume and began to study
it intently. The words were still strange to him, although some of
them resembled English, but he was enchanted with the numerous drawings
scattered throughout the pages. Skipping through the book, he paused at each
new sketch and studied it thoroughly before moving on to others. The sketches
were crude and, in some cases, child-like; leading him to believe the drawings
were the work of two different artists. He turned the pages with care, taking pains not to
damage any collector's value the volume may have and as he turned, his thoughts
flashed back to the room wherein he had discovered the book. Suddenly, he stopped on a page showing the huge,
concrete door he encountered in the Lovecraft House.
Underneath the sketch were the words, "Fulfild
of fayerye and deeth"
emphasized by a series of bold underlines. The
second door. That's the one.
His dreams that night were filled with visions of
riches from behind the second door of the Lovecraft
House's stone cellar and yet, permeating his dreams were scant traces of the
procession of half-clothed men wearing painted masks. The men stood chanting;
their eyes rooted on a stone altar. At one point during the night, he felt half-awake and
sensed a burning sensation in his legs. Crying out, he sat up in bed and peered
into the darkness of the room, half-expecting to be greeted by one of his
prehistoric imaginings. Laughing at his nightmare, he drifted back to sleep,
his dreams becoming swirling and meaningless. And over the days, the dreams came back.
They were filled with the sights and sounds of the
strange parade and its masked participants drifting around mounds of gold and
silver, blending into the Lovecraft House through a
kaleidoscope of images. And he awoke remembering the screams.
As the days progressed, the thief found himself
dreading the night, fearful of his excursions into fantasy. Exactly one week after the day he had broken into the Lovecraft House, he decided he could tolerate it no longer.
He took the book from its resting place on his end table and, unable to stand
its presence, tucked it under his arm and drove to Once rid of the volume, he drove back to the Lovecraft House following the same route he had used the
last time, but instead of lurking behind the Shrubbery, he drove directly to
the front door via the huge, circular driveway. Switching off the ignition, he
reached into the luggage compartment of the Citroen and grabbed a tire-changing
tool. The thief ran to the front door of the house and with one deft movement,
prized the door open with the heavy metal bar. He took the steps to the cellar
quickly this time, ignorant of any danger from either his surroundings of the
small inhabitants of the dank, dark dungeon. His heart pounded as he pulled on the door handle of
the first concrete slab and he felt surprise when it opened quickly and
easily. Rushing inside the room, he
grabbed the wooden timber barring the second door and shoved it off its
supports effortlessly. He jammed the flat end of the tire iron between the
stone and concrete of the second door and pushed with every ounce of his
strength. The door groaned, but would not open. His face twisted with the
strain of movement and perspiration began to drip from the tip of his nose. His
hands began to feel unreasonably warm and he thought he could sense the tire
iron bending under the force of his struggle. The thief grew light-headed from
the exertion, but he strained against the door even more, determined to fund
the house's treasures he was certain lay just beyond the massive slab of concrete.
The muscles in his forearms bulged and his limbs began to ache, but he
continued pushing against the bar, hoping his antics would free the door and
allow him access to the inner room. Gradually, his body begged him to stop the fruitless
effort and he complied. His grasp on the tire iron slackened and he winced as
it clattered to the stone floor. The thief turned and slumped against the door,
beaten. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and pushed
away from the victorious door, casting a glance at the tire iron on the floor
in front of him. He started to bend forward and retrieve it, but found himself
unwilling to expend the effort. The thief started for the stairs, but turned instead
to face the door one final time. He mumbled, "Fulfild
of fayerye and deeth,"
as he stood there shaking his head. The door burst inward. In the distance, the stone
altar was smoking from still another human sacrifice. XXX
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