Strange Eons (3 page)

10 Barnes Street,
Providence, R.I.,
October 13, 1926

My dear Upton:

I write in some trepidation. In view of what you disclosed to me in Boston—verbally, and above all, visually—I feel it imperative that we meet again as quickly as possible. I must indeed see that other work you hinted about. Never in my wildest imaginings did I dream of the existence of such . . .

The calligraphy ended abruptly at the jagged edge of the ripped fragment, and Keith glanced up to meet Waverly’s stolid stare.

“My dear Upton,”
Waverly said slowly. “Now are you convinced?” He nodded. “There was such an artist, and Lovecraft knew him.”

“But there’s no signature. How do you know Lovecraft wrote this letter?”

“His address is on it. And anyone who has ever seen a specimen of his handwriting can recognize it instantly.” Rising, Waverly moved to a bookshelf behind his chair and took down a small volume with a yellow dust jacket. Keith caught a glimpse of the title—
Marginalia
—and of a cover illustration of an ancient house set off by a frame; bordering it was a weed-choked background, beneath which a bearded creature crouched and gazed apprehensively up toward the framed dwelling.

Waverly flipped the volume open to a coated page, bearing a photostatic reproduction of a lettersheet covered with handwritten notations.

“Look at this,” he said. “A ground floor plan of Lovecraft’s study, dated May 2nd, 1924, in his own hand.” Waverly turned the pages to other photostats—a pen-and-ink sketch of a house, with writing beneath; a postcard; a hand-drawn map; a specimen page of a story revision.

Keith glanced skeptically at his companion. “I admit the writing seems similar, but you can’t rule out the possibility of forgery.”

“Look at this paper.” Waverly held the torn sheet to the light. “Yellow and crumbling. See how the ink has faded? This letter was written more than fifty years ago, when Lovecraft was unimportant and unknown. Why should anyone want to forge his handwriting then?”

“Perhaps it was done recently,” Keith said. “Somebody got hold of a blank sheet of old stationery—some practical joker—”

“We’re not dealing with a joke here. There’s nothing funny about a savage and perverted murder.” Waverly’s sensitive eyes blinked behind the dark glasses as he stepped back from the harsh glare of the light overhead. “The killer—or killers—had a deadly serious purpose.”

“To rob the store?”

Waverly shook his head. “They weren’t interested in antiques—they wanted those boxes Santiago bought from that old warehouse in Boston. And they wanted to get rid of him before he could reveal what he had, or where it came from. Remember how his files and desk were ransacked? I think they were after sales slips, check stubs, bills of lading—anything which indicated where the purchase had come from. And those empty cartons that we saw must have contained the material they were looking for.”

“What kind of material?”

“I think it was the stored and unclaimed personal effects of R. Upton—his books and a collection of letters he’d received. Letters like this one, from H.P. Lovecraft.” Again Waverly held up the fragment of stationery. “They must have torn and dropped part of a page, which wasn’t noticed because the spindle fell and covered it.”

Keith’s forehead furrowed. “I can’t buy that. Why steal some old books and correspondence owned by an artist nobody ever heard of?”

“Maybe to keep him from being heard of,” Waverly said. “We’ll find the answer—”

Keith rose abruptly, running a hand across his haggard face. “I’ve got to get some rest.”

“Want to stay here? I can put you up in the spare bedroom if you like.”

“No, I’ll get on home.”

“Sure you’re up to driving?”

Keith glanced over at the window. “Still too early for morning traffic. I’ll be all right.”

Waverly led him along the hall to the front door. “Call me tonight. Then we can decide on our next step.”

Keith shook his head. “I don’t want to take any more steps,” he said.

“We can’t stop now!”

“Oh yes we can.” Keith’s voice was firm. “This is where I quit. I don’t want to hear any more, I don’t want to know any more.” He opened the door and started across the threshold into the early morning light. “All I want is to forget the whole crazy business. And that’s just what I’m going to do.”

As Waverly stared after him, Keith strode down the driveway to his car.

There was resolution in his movements as he drove off; a fixed determination that overcame his weariness as he sped along the empty crosstown streets and threaded his way up the winding roads leading to the hilltop home above the canyon. Only after the Volvo was parked in the garage and the front door opened did he permit himself the luxury of relaxation.

It was good to be home once more in the hushed house. As Keith moved down the hall toward the bedroom, the events of the past twelve hours seemed like a bad dream, a nightmare from which he had at last awakened, safe and sound.

Then, passing the open doorway, Keith glanced into the den, and safety and soundness were shattered.

The den was dim. Nothing had been disturbed, and the room was still, but the tabletop on which the ghoulish canvas had rested was utterly bare.

The painting was gone.

Twilight cloaked the looming hills beyond as Keith indicated the window of the den.

“They got in through here,” he said. “See these marks on the lock where they forced the window?”

Waverly nodded, his eyes grave behind the tinted glasses. “You’re sure nothing else was taken?”

“Positive.” Keith gestured toward the jade and ivory figurines in the cabinet. “This stuff is worth a small fortune, but not a piece is missing. They came for the picture.” He shook his head. “But who are they, and how did they know the painting was here?”

Waverly stepped back from the window. “The answer’s obvious. They’re the same people who went to Santiago’s and got hold of his accounts records. He must have listed his sales for the day, including the painting. Then they found your personal check with your address on it.”

Keith grimaced. “Didn’t waste any time, did they?”

“It’s a good thing you were still at my place when they came here,” Waverly told him. “After seeing what happened to Santiago—” He broke off. “Have you seen the papers?”

“No, but I caught the early news on TV. Police found the body this morning after some deliveryman came to the back door of the shop and walked in. The report didn’t mention anything we don’t already know, just that they’re investigating.” Keith frowned. “I suppose they’ll check on fingerprints.”

“You’ve never been involved with the FBI, have you?” Waverly said.

“Of course not.”

“Neither have I. So our prints aren’t on record. We’re home free.”

“Free?” Keith stared at the table where the canvas had lain. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel free again.”

“You will, when we find out what’s behind all this.”

Keith shook his head. “I told you I was calling a halt. Let the police handle it. And I still think we should tell them what we know.”

“Tell them what? That you discovered a murder last night and failed to report it—but now someone has stolen a portrait of a ghoul and you want it back?”

“Then let’s drop the matter, just as I suggested.”

“It’s too late for that now. Whoever did this knows who you are.” Waverly took a deep breath. “I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist, but if I were you I’d clear out of here for a few days. Take a room at a motel and keep a low profile. I don’t think they’ll come back now that they have the painting, but you never know.”

“That’s just it. We know nothing about these people—or this person, if there’s only one involved. And we don’t even have a clue.”

“I think we can find one.” Waverly moved to a chair and picked up a small parcel resting on the seat cushion. Carrying it to the table, he removed the wrapping to reveal a half-dozen books. “I brought these along,” he said. “You can read them at the motel. But please be careful—no coffee stains. Some of this stuff is extremely valuable.”

Keith moved to the table and sorted through the volumes, reading off the titles to himself.
“The Outsider and Others, Beyond the Wall of Sleep—”

“Lovecraft’s collected stories,” Waverly told him.
“Marginalia,
that one in the yellow dust wrapper you saw last night. The rest are biographies and memoirs—de Camp’s
Lovecraft,
Long’s
Dreamer on the Night-Side,
and Conover’s
Lovecraft At Last.
I suggest you read the fiction first, then the factual material.”

“But how will that help?”

“Seekers after horror haunt strange far places,” Waverly said. “That’s what Lovecraft wrote in one of his stories, and I think you’ll find he was right. Somewhere in his work or in his personal background we may come across the answer we’re looking for.”

“I’m not sure I want to find that answer.”

“It’s no longer a matter of choice.” Waverly’s face was grim. “Our very survival may depend upon being able to discover what’s behind all this. Read these books, my friend. Read as if your life depended upon them. Because it does.”

The motel was everything Keith despised; a sterile functional simulacrum of plastic comfort and impersonal modernity. But during the next three days he scarcely noticed his surroundings, for with the aid of the books Waverly had given him he was exploring another world.

It was the New England world of the 1890s into which Howard Phillips Lovecraft had been born, the only child of genteel parents whose fortunes declined. His father died when Lovecraft was eight, and he spent his formative years with a mother whose eccentricities gradually lapsed into severe mental illness. Poor health drove him to refuge in reading, so that he became largely self-educated. As a young man he felt alienated from contemporary society and, identifying with the past, he affected the outlook and mannerisms of the eighteenth century. An outsider in his own time, he was still keenly interested in modern science; he produced a journal of astronomy and involved himself with amateur press associations. Soon he began to correspond with other writers.

And when Lovecraft himself started a writing career, he chose the field of fantasy. His early poetry was modeled on classical lines, his early prose contained elements comparable to the work of Dunsany.

But in the 1920s, following the death of his mother, Lovecraft took up residence with two elderly aunts, and the diminishing trickle of inherited income forced him to enter another world. He became a ghost-writer, revising the work of others, then began professional publication of his own stories.

Gradually he ventured forth into society. The solitary night prowler of the streets of Providence now traveled along the Atlantic Coast to seek out ancient landmarks and took residence in New York. But after a few years, during which he married and separated from a successful businesswoman, he retreated again to Providence where he continued revision work, correspondence and his own writings until death from cancer cut short his career in 1937.

In his lifetime Lovecraft’s tales were little-known, for they appeared only in the pages of pulp magazines. No major publisher ventured to issue a novel or collection, then or posthumously. Two younger writers, August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, finally formed a publishing house of their own to issue
The Outsider and Others
and
Beyond the Wall of Sleep
in small editions sold by mail-order. Still fame eluded Lovecraft even in death; sales moved slowly and reviews were scarce.

But gradually stories were reprinted in anthologies. Derleth took over the publishing venture and put out volumes by other writers who had been members of the so-called “Lovecraft Circle” of correspondents, and belated recognition came. The work of the man whom his friends called “HPL” grew to become a sort of underground classic. The old magazines and early books containing his stories commanded fabulous prices as collectors items. Finally, in the 1960s, Lovecraft moved into prominence, and the 1970s produced widespread critical attention here and abroad.

All this Keith learned from the biographies, which, in spite of Waverly’s suggestion, he read before turning to Lovecraft’s fiction. And as he entered Lovecraft’s private personal world, there were many elements with which he himself could identify.

Keith too had been an only child who scarcely knew his father—though divorce, not death, brought about that circumstance. He too had chosen the life of an introvert and had experienced a short-lived marriage and an amicable divorce. Fortunately his own health was good and his comfortable inherited income allowed him to live as he wished, to travel widely and indulge in collecting the curious and grotesque items that intrigued his fancy. Under similar conditions, perhaps, Lovecraft’s life might have paralleled his own. Reading, Keith began to experience a strong sense of empathy with HPL.

But there were other aspects he couldn’t understand. The three biographies were widely dissimilar. Willis Conover wrote a memoir of a man he’d corresponded with as a teen-age fan: a kindly, erudite grandfather figure.
Lovecraft At Last
was the Lovecraft of the 1930s.

Long’s
Dreamer on the Night-Side
concentrated on the 1920s and the New York years when the two men spent time together. His tall, lean, lantern-jawed HPL was a father figure, painted in the warm colors of affectionate reminiscence.

De Camp’s lengthy book dealt with yet another HPL. The two men never met, but
Lovecraft: A Biography
was an intensive study of an entire life span and life-style. His portrait of Lovecraft included warts and all; an examination of eccentricities and affectations, which probed the psychological background responsible for the fantasies.

Taken together, the three books posed paradox and contradiction. And all three paled before the black brilliance of Lovecraft’s fiction.

Keith read the early poetic efforts, but soon he found himself enmeshed in darker themes—the terrors of decadence in old New England towns, and the still more frightening decadence of their inhabitants.