Beside this Medieval sorcerer’s chant, on the wide, yellowed margin, Claude Ashur’s spidery script confided: “There has been no news from the Priory, but I am certain the spell will work. The portrait is completed. Before long, I shall know victory; I shall have what I want…”
I cannot say for certain what wild conjectures seethed through my mind in that instant. I only know that some instinctive, fearful hatred warped my hand into the vicious claw that ripped the veil from the painting on the easel. A terrified cry snagged in my throat, and I staggered backward, staring sickly at the festering, noisome thing my brother had created. To this day, here in the white-walled sanctuary of my asylum cell, there are hideous moments in the night when I lay horrified, on the paralytic brink of sleep, while the loathsome creatures of that canvas of the damned writhe against the dark curtains of my eyelids. I pray God no other mortal eye shall ever be seared by any such horror as I beheld that night in Pickham Square.
In the slimy colors of some subterranean spectrum, Claude Ashur had wrought cancerous images of the slobbering, gelatinous beings that lurk on the threshold of outer night. Diabolically smiling, amoebic, gangrenous creatures seethed in the shadows of that hateful canvas, and slowly, as I watched, there emerged from its crawling depths, the portrait of what once had been a man. The visage that confronted me was barely covered with discolored, maggot-eaten skin. Its blue-tinted lips were twisted in agony, and in their corrupted sockets, the eyes held a pitiful, pleading expression. Not one feature of that ruined face was whole, and yet there was something terribly familiar about it. I took an unsteady step toward the picture, then stopped. Awful suspicion reeled madly in my head as I noticed for the first time the tiny scarlet globules that oozed from that decaying skin. It was as though every pore had exuded a dew of blood!
“You always were an incurable busybody, Richard…”
Echoing icily in the dim corners of that low-ceilinged room, the sibilant hardness of the voice seemed unreal. Only when I had turned to find Claude’s angular, dark-suited figure framed in the doorway, was I certain that my confused brain wasn’t playing tricks on me. There was no mistaking the malevolent reality of the half-smile that curled my brother’s lips. Sunken in his pallid, immobile face, onyx eyes flashed with caustic humor.
“I’m afraid my little creation gave you rather a turn,” he murmured. “You know, Richard, it’s always best for sensitive souls to mind their own business.”
The old, impotent rage blurred my vision; Claude’s venomous smile faded and grew horribly clear again. When my voice came, it was thick and ill-controlled: “You’d better do your packing, now. I’ve made reservations on the midnight train for Inneswich…”
We reached Inneswich Priory at noon the following day. A winter storm had swept inland, and gray, needling rain made the ivy-choked walls glisten evilly. There was a fire on the library hearth; before it, Doctor Ellerby stood waiting for us. One look at his face, and the vile suspicion that had been spawned last night in that dark, narrow room, blazed into putrescent reality. In that instant, I knew who had been the subject of the hellish portrait in Pickham Square. I knew my father was dead.
Claude made no display of pretended grief. He made no secret of his eagerness to have the will settled. There was whispering in the village; the simple, superstitious people of Inneswich spoke of daemons and the consorts of hell who could laugh in the face of Death. My brother’s terrible, inhuman cheerfulness became a festering legend muttered by witch-hunting nonagenarians. Only the brave, the few who had been closest to the Church and my father, attended the lonely burial service, and even they departed in haste, glancing apprehensively backward at the figure of Claude Ashur, black against the bleak and threatening sky. Two weeks after the interment, one week after the reading of the will, Claude cashed a check for the full amount of his monetary inheritance and disappeared.
V
YOU CAN MAKE A RELIGION OF ESCAPE. YOU CAN RUN AWAY from the memory of horror, and hide yourself in willful forgetfulness. You can fill your life with feverish activity that crowds out the shadows of diseased evil. I know. I did just that for nearly eight years. And, in a certain measure, I succeeded. Having acquired a modest, white-stuccoed cottage on the outskirts of a southern Jersey resort, I divided my time between it and the Priory. I made new friends. I forced myself to mingle with worldly society as I’d never done before. After a time, I was able to resume my neglected literary career. I told myself I had escaped. Actually, I was never able to pass that carven, padlocked door in the East Wing without having to suppress a nauseous chill. There were still moments when, alone in the dusk-dimmed library, I broke into a cold sweat and Claude Ashur’s voice echoed demoniacally in the shadowed corners of the room. At worst, however, these terrible sensations were transient illnesses that could be cured by friendly laughter or concentrated creative work. Somewhere, I knew, the malign genius of my brother still existed, but I hoped and slowly grew to believe that he had passed out of my life forever. I never spoke his name. I knew and wanted to know nothing about him. Only once, in all those years, did I have any direct news of Claude.
By a lucky chance my first book excited friendly interest among certain groups, and I found myself on the invitation lists of the literati. I attended countless cocktail parties and dinners, and it was at one such soirée that I met Henry Boniface. He was a small man, almost effeminate, with a sandy top-knot and straggling beard to match. He shook my hand timidly, but I fancied a sudden brightness in his pale eyes as he repeated my name. I wanted to get away from him. Thinking of what my hostess had said of Henry Boniface as she guided me toward him through the crowd, I felt a sudden oppressive apprehension close in upon me. He was a surrealist painter who just returned from the West Indies, and, a few years back, he had taught at Miskatonic University.
“Ashur,” his soft, persistent voice murmured. “But, of course! I knew I’d heard that name!” That odd, brilliant interest blinked in his eyes again. “You must be Claude Ashur’s brother…”
For years no one had referred to me in that manner. The loathsome phrase whispered in my head maliciously. Claude Ashur’s brother. The sound of it seemed to throw open some tremendous portal within me; all the ancient deliberately forgotten terror swelled in my chest like a rising, slimy tide. “Yes,” I said thickly. “That’s right…”
It seemed to me that Boniface’s gaze narrowed, biting into my face. His tone was light, diffident, but mercilessly probing. “I suppose you haven’t heard from Claude in some time? No. I daresay not. Well, in that case, I have a bit of news for you…”
I wanted to tell him to shut up, to quit opening old cancerous sores with his rotten chatter. I only stared at him.
“Yes… The fact is, I heard about Claude while I was in the Indies. Amazing. He was always a most amazing fellow. I knew him quite well while he was at Miskatonic. He was in one of my art classes. Said he wanted to learn to paint so that he could do some sort of portrait…”
Cold beads of perspiration coated my palms. The worm-eaten monstrosity of Pickham Square reeled evilly in my brain. Henry Boniface droned on.
“But, to get back to the Indies. The blacks there told me of a white man who was living in the back-country among their witch-doctors, studying voodoo. Seems he’d wormed his way into their confidence. He’d been admitted into the cult and took part in all those repulsive doings at the humfortt. They… ah… They said his name was Claude Ashur…” Boniface shook his tiny head slowly. “Amazing. Extraordinary fellow, indeed. What strikes me is how he can go on living there in immunity. He was never what you’d call robust, was he? And there are all sorts of horribly fatal diseases in the back-country… It’s a miracle he’s alive.”