The cursed thing sniffed his corpse with tattered nostrils, found nothing. It plucked him from the palings and tossed him down. The mist parted for a moment as he struck the water, then rolled back and eddied as before .. .
Dawn was only a minute or two away and the dead thing knew it. He also knew where the fugitive had been, or at least where he had come from. Like treacle his body dissolved and flowed through the bars on top of the wall, and down into the embrasure where he quickly reassembled. And following the fugitive's old route, the monster flowed forward in darkness, along the passage to the vaults, through them to the upward-leading steps.
Here the thing paused as it felt the first waves of some unknown force, the presence of a Power. But dawn was coming, and the Elixir remained to be found. It flowed forward up the steps, flowed like smoke through the open door and into the five-sided room — and paused again.
Yes, the Elixir was here. Somewhere. Here! But something else was here too. The Power was stronger, unbearably strong .. .
Moora Dunda Sanusi crossed the floor to the second door, leaving no footprints. But at the door he paused a third time before something which angered him to a frenzy of hate, something he could not see, something in the air and in the stone and filling the very ether. And in that same instant the sun's first rays struck on high, dusty windows and penetrated them, falling in splintered beams within — beams with all the colours of the rainbow!
Dawn and the light it brought increased the unseen Power tenfold. Moora Dunda Sanusi's magic began to fail him. Unwanted solidarity returned and gave him weight, and faint prints began to show in the dust where he staggered backwards, driven back into the five-sided room and across its stone paving. He reeled against the pedestal and displaced the bowl's sheet, and a flailing hand fell for a moment into the gleaming water.
Agony! Impossible agony! The thing which Dunda was should feel no pain for it had no life as such — and yet there was pain. And Moora Dunda Sanusi knew that pain at once, and knew its source — the Elixir. The Elixir, yes, but no longer contained, no longer safe.
The thing snatched its mummied claw from the water, reeled toward the steps which led down into darkness and safety. But the place was sanctuary no longer. Not for such as Moora Dunda Sanusi, dead for more than two hundred and seventy years. Striking from above through many high-arched, stained-glass windows, the sun's rays formed a fiery lattice of lances, stabbing down into the five-sided room and converging on the undead thing, consuming it even as the Elixir consumed its arm.
Clutching that melting member to him, the zombie crumpled in reeking silence to the flags, foul smoke billowing outwards and bearing his substance away. In a moment the fires in his eyes flickered low, and in the next blinked out, extinguished. The final, solitary sound he made was a sigh of great peace long overdue, and then he was gone.
A breeze, blowing in under the doors of the ancient church, scattered what was left and blended it with the dust of decades.
* * *
The sun came up and London's mists dispersed. Dawn grew into a bright December day.
A local vicar, hurrying along the riverside streets, paused to glance at his watch. 10:00 a.m. – they would be waiting. He made his legs go faster, clucked his tongue against his teeth in annoyance. It was all so irregular. Very irregular, but hardly improper. And of course the family were well-known church benefactors. And maybe it wasn't so irregular after all; for all of the line's children had been christened in the old church for several centuries now. A matter of tradition, really...
Turning a corner away from the river, the vicar came in view of the church, saw its steeple rising against the sky, where many slates were loose or missing altogether; its beautiful windows, some broken, but all doomed now to demolition, along with the rest of the fine old structure. And they called this progress! But it was still consecrated, still holy, still a proper house of God. For a few weeks more, anyway.
He saw, too, his verger, sneaking along the street with his collar up, coming away from the church – and the vicar nodded grimly to himself. Oh, yes? But he'd told him to see to the old place a full week ago, and not leave it until the last minute.
Approaching, finally the verger saw him, saw too that he was identified. His frown turned to a smile in a moment; he came directly forward, beaming at the vicar. 'Ah, vicar! All's prepared; I've spent the better part of two whole hours in there! But the dust and cobwebs –incredible! I did come round earlier in the week, but such a lot to do that—'
'All is understood,' the vicar nodded, holding up his hand. And: 'Are they waiting?'
'Indeed they are — just arrived. I told them you'd be along directly.'
`I'm sure you did,' the vicar nodded again. 'Well, I'd best be seeing to it then.'
A moment later the churchyard was in view, and there up, the path between old headstones, just inside the arched, impressive entrance, where the massive doors stood open, the couple themselves and a handful of friends. They saw the vicar hurrying, came to greet him; the normal pleasantries were exchanged; the party entered the towering old building. The vicar had brought the books with him and all preliminaries and signatures and counter-signatures were quickly completed; the little ceremony commenced without a hitch.
Finally the vicar took the crucifix from around his neck and hung it from the hook over the font, held out his arms for the child. He'd done it all a thousand times before, so that it was difficult these days to get any real meaning into the words; but of course they had meaning anyway, and in any case he tried.
And at last all was done. The vicar dipped his hand into the water, sprinkled droplets, made the sign — and the church seemed to hold its breath...
But only for an instant.
Then the five-sided room came alive in a glow like burnished gold (the sun, of course, moving out from behind a cloud, burning on the old windows), and smiling, the vicar passed the child in his christening-gown to his father.
`So there we have you, said the proud, handsome man, his voice deep and strong; and he showed the child to his mother.
A rose of a woman, she gazed with love on the infant, kissed his brow 'Those eyes, she said, 'with so much still to see. And that little mind, with so much still to fill it. Look at his face — see how it glows!'
'It's the light in here,' said the vicar. 'It turns the skin to roses! Ah, but indeed a beautiful child.'
'Oh, he is!' said the mother, taking him and holding him up. 'He is! So pure, so innocent. Our little Titus. Our little Titus Crow.. .'
LORD OF THE WORMS
IF I HAD to choose the definitive Titus Crow story, it would have to be Lord of the Worms. It had been 'writing itself' for something like a year, between other stories and novels, when I first mentioned it to Paul Ganley. The way I remember it, he wanted to see it at once. Which meant I had to finish it at once. I think it took me about three weeks to get all the bits together and type it up, following which it was too long and too fresh in my mind for me to read objectively. So I simply sent it to Paul. He found one basic error and corrected it, and the story appeared in the next Weirdbook. And I breathed a sigh of relief when finally I read it.
I think this novelette says a lot about the difference between H. R. Lovecraft's 'heroes' and mine. Crow doesn't faint and he doesn't run away. In fact, I didn't even allow him a single gibber in his unrelenting battle with the monstrous
Lord of the Worms.
Twenty-two is the Number of the Master! A 22 may only be described in glowing terms, for he is the Great Man. Respected, admired by all who know him, he has the Intellect and the Power and he has the Magic! Aye, he is the Master Magician. But a word of warning: just as there are Day and Night, so are there two sorts of Magic — White, and Black!