At length, gathering his thoughts, Carstairs said: 'Mr Crow, I shall be away tomorrow morning, probably before you are up and about. I will return about mid-afternoon. I hesitate to leave you alone here, however, for to be perfectly frank you do not seem at all well.'
'Oh?' Crow hoarsely mumbled. 'I feel well enough.'
'You do not look it. Perhaps you are tasking yourself too hard.' His eyes bored into Crow's along the length of the great table, and his voice assumed its resonant, hypnotic timbre. 'I think you should rest tomorrow, Mr Crow. Rest and recuperate. Lie late abed. Sleep and grow strong.'
At this Crow deliberately affected a fluttering of hiseyelids, nodding and starting where he sat, like an oldman who has difficulty staying awake. Carstairs laughed.'Why!' he exclaimed, his voice assuming a more casualtone. 'Do you see how right I am? You were almost asleepat the table! Yes, that's what you require, young man: a little holiday from work tomorrow. And Friday should see you back to normal, eh?'
Crow dully nodded, affecting disinterest — but his mind raced. Whatever was coming was close now He could feel it like a hot wind blowing from hell, could almost smell the sulphur from the fires that burned behind Carstairs' eyes...
Amazingly, Crow slept well and was awake early. He remained in bed until he heard a car pull up to the house, but even then some instinct kept him under his covers. Seconds later Carstairs parted the alcove's curtains and silently entered; and at the last moment hearing his tread, with no second to spare, Crow fell back upon his pillow and feigned sleep.
'That's right, Titus Crow, sleep,' Carstairs softly intoned. 'Sleep deep and dreamlessly — for soon your head shall know no dreams, no thoughts but mine! Sleep, Titus Crow, sleep . .' A moment later and the rustling of the curtains signalled his leaving; but still Crow waited until he heard the receding crunch of the car's tyres on the gravel of the drive.
After that he was up in a moment and quickly dressed. Then: out of the house and around the grounds, and upstairs to spy out the land all around. Finally, satisfied that he was truly alone, he returned to the library, opened the secret bookcase door and descended to the Stygian cellar. The narrow stone steps turned one full circle to leave him on a landing set into an arched alcove in the cellar wall, from which two more paces sufficed to carry him into the cellar proper. Finding a switch, he put on subdued lighting — and at last saw what sort of wizard's lair the place really was!
Now something of Crow's own extensive occult knowledge came to the fore as he moved carefully about the cellar and examined its contents; something of that, and of his more recent readings in Carstairs' library. There were devices here from the very blackest days of Man's mystical origins, and Titus Crow shuddered as he read meaning into many of the things he saw.
The floor of the cellar had been cleared toward its centre, and there he found the double, interlocking circles of the Persian Mages, freshly daubed in red paint. In one circle he saw a white-painted ascending node, while in the other a black node descended. A cryptographic script, immediately known to him as the blasphemous Nyhargo Code, patterned the brick wall in green and blue chalks, its huge Arabic symbols seeming to leer where they writhed in obscene dedication. The three remaining walls were draped with tapestries so worn as to be threadbare, which could only be centuries old, depicting the rites of immemorial necromancers and wizards long passed into the dark pages of history; wizards robed, Crow noted, in the forbidden pagan cassocks of ancient deserta Arabia, lending them an almost holy aspect.
In a cobwebbed corner he found scrawled pentacles and zodiacal signs; and hanging upon hooks robes similar to those in the tapestries, embroidered with symbols from the Lemegeton, such as the Double Seal of Solomon. Small jars contained hemlock, henbane, mandrake, Indian hemp and a substance Crow took to be opium — and again he was given to shudder and to wonder at the constituents of Carstairs' wine ...
Finally, having seen enough, he retraced his steps to the library and from there went straight to Carstairs' study. Twice before he had found this door unlocked, and now for the third time he discovered his luck to be holding. This was hardly unexpected, however: knowing Crow would sleep the morning through, the magician had simply omitted to take his customary precautions. And inside the room ... another piece of luck! The keys to the desk dangled from a drawer keyhole.
With trembling hands Crow opened the drawers, hardly daring to disturb their contents; but in the desk's bottom left-hand drawer, at last he was rewarded to find that which he most desired to see. There could be no mistaking it: the cleanly sliced margins, the woodcut illustrations, the precise early 19th Century prose of one Charles Leggett, translator of Ludwig Prinn. This was the missing section from Leggett's book: these were the Saracenic Rituals, the Mysteries of the Worm!
Closing the single window's shades, Crow switched on the desk lamp and proceeded to read, and as he read so time seemed to suspend itself in the terrible lore which was now revealed. Disbelievingly, with eyes that opened wider and wider, Crow read on; and as he turned the pages, so the words seemed to leap from them to his astonished eyes. An hour sped by, two, and Crow would periodically come out of Ms trance long enough to glance at his watch, or perhaps pass tongue over parched lips, before continuing. For it was all here, all of it — and finally everything began to click into place.
Then ... it was as if a floodgate had opened, releasing pent-up, forbidden memories to swirl in the maelstrom of Crow's mind. He suddenly remembered those hypnotically-erased night visits of Carstairs', the conversations he had been willed to forget; and rapidly these pieces of the puzzle slotted themselves together, forming a picture of centuries-old nightmare and horror out of time. He understood the mystery of the paintings with their consecutive dates, and he knew Carstairs' meaning when the man had hinted at a longevity dating back almost three and a half centuries. And at last, in blinding clarity, he could see the part that the wizard had planned for him in his lust for sorcerous survival.
For Crow was to be the receptacle, the host body, youthful haven of flesh for an ancient black phoenix risen again from necromantic ashes! As for Crow himself, the Identity, Titus Crow: that was to be cast out — exorcised and sent to hell — replaced by the mind and will of Carstairs, a monster born of the blackest magicks in midnight ruins by the shore of Galilee in the year 1602 . . . !
Moreover, he knew when the deed was to be done. It was there, staring at him, ringed in ink on Carstairs' desk calendar: the 1st day of February 1946.
Candlemas Eve, 'the day ordained'.
Tomorrow night!
X
That night, though he had never been much of a believer, Titus Crow said his prayers. He did manage to sleep —however fitfully and with countless starlings awake, at every tiniest groan and creak of the old place — and in the morning looked just as haggard as this last week had determined he should look. Which was just as well, for as the time approached Carstairs would hardly let him out of his sight.