The Source by Brian Lumley

When she spoke again her voice was cold. ‘Harry, if you insist on staying … I cannot be held responsible.’ Before he could answer she stood up, swept out of the great hall, disappeared from view in that regal way of hers. Harry had not followed her before, had not spied on her in any depth. But the time had come and he knew it.

‘Where is she going?’ he asked the long-dead cartilage creatures where their corpses fashioned the stack’s decor. A carved bone handrail following stairs between the upper levels answered him:

She descends, Harry, to her larder. Her hand falls on me even now.

‘Her larder?’

Where like Drama! Doombody before her, she keeps a number of trogs in store, hibernating.

‘She told me she had set her trogs free, sent them home.’

But not these, the handrail, once a trog itself, answered. These are for fashioning, and in times of siege for eating!

Harry went there, two levels down, saw Karen flow in through a dark niche doorway and followed her. A trog had been activated, brought out of its cocoon. Harry stayed in the shadows, guarded his thoughts. He watched Karen lead the trog to the table. The creature, shambling, only half-awake, enthralled, lay down, bent back its ugly prehistoric head for her.

Her mouth opened, opened – gaped! Blood dripped from her gums where scythe-teeth sprouted to poise over the creature’s sluggishly pulsing jugular. Her nose wrinkled, flattened back on itself, and her eyes were crimson jewels in the twilight room.

“Karen.r Harry shouted.

She snapped upright, hissed at him, cursed him long and loud – then swept by him in a fury and was gone. There was no putting it off any longer; knowing what he must do, Harry went again to the garden . . .

He trapped her at sunup while she slept in her windowless room. He put silver chains on her door, which he left open no more than four or five inches, and arranged potted kneblasch plants whose stink sickened even him. Their smell woke her up and she cried: ‘Harry, what have you done?’

‘Be calm,’ he told her from outside, ‘for there’s nothing you can do about it.’

‘Oh?’ she raged, rushing all about her room. ‘Is it so?’

She sent commands to her warrior: Come, free me! But there was no answer.

‘Burned,’ Harry told her. ‘And the trogs in your larder activated, all fled. And your siphoneer – that pitiful, monstrous thing – dead from the water which I poisoned in your wells. Your gas-beasts, too, themselves poisoned with unbreathable gasses. Now there’s just you.’

She wept and pleaded with him then. ‘What will you do with me? Will you burn me, too?’

He made no answer but went away . . .

He checked on her, every three or four hours returning to test the chains on her door, or water the kneblasch plants, but never letting her see him. Sometimes she was asleep, moaning in her red dreams, and at others she was awake, raving and cursing. Harry slept in the aerie only once at that time – and on that occasion woke up to find himself at her door, called there by Karen! It strengthened his resolve.

Another time: she was quite naked, telling him how she loved him, wanted him, needed him. But he knew what she needed. He ignored her lustful, luscious writhings and went away.

Five more sunups came and went, and Karen sank into delirium. And when it was sundown again she slept and could not be brought awake. It was time.

Harry cleared away the kneblasch but kept the chains on the door; as before, he left only a small gap. Then he went to the garden and fetched a piglet, which he slaughtered into a golden bowl. He made a thin trail of blood from the door of Karen’s room, into the great hall, where he laid the bowl on the floor in the centre of the room. The poor creature lay there, stiff in an inch of its own blood.

And then Harry waited, sitting in the shadows, quiet as never before and guarding his thoughts. And it was just like his dream, but worse. For this time he was there, and he was the one with the cleaver. Except it wasn’t a cleaver.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *