Within a minute the alarm was reverberating along the corridors. Driscoll did not care. He was running strongly now, every sense alert.
He was smashing light fixtures too; he was surprised how easily they broke. No one had ever done this before. It was absurdly easy. At the time he hoped that the tunnel section was not guarded; there could be no turning back now. He found his way with difficulty. He must have fused something at the last light installation he smashed, for all these corridors were plunged into darkness.
The small cone of his torch wavered ahead, steadying on the smooth metal surface of the tunnel walls, the heavy bolts and rivets overhead. Here was the place; there was no one about. Water dripped somewhere' up ahead as Driscoll splashed unhesitatingly through the puddles. The strange nostalgic stench was in his nostrils. He adjusted the pack on his back and set off at a staggering run over the last quarter of a mile. His heart was beating a little more unsteadily than he would have liked. Still there was no siren of the emergency squad.
The shafting was in front of him. Driscoll could almost taste the stench in his nostrils. It was not oppressive. On the contrary. He breathed deeply. It brought back things he had forgotten ever existed. Sunlight; wavering corn; clouds moving across a blue sky;~a woman's smile; a child tottering towards an old woman in a white dress.
He stood before Shaft Number 247, noting its massive strength and immense size. Quite without surprise he saw that the hatch of the inspection chamber was half-open. It slid easily beneath his touch. Dance music was reverberating from somewhere; a girl in a bathing suit plunged into blue water, droplets of spray raining downward; there were flowers and with them the fragrant perfume that had been lost for so many decades.
The girl was smiling again. A grave grey-eyed girl, with tawny-gold hair. Driscoll stepped into the inspection chamber. It was cold and he instinctively shrank at the dampness which settled on his face and clothing. A hurdy-gurdy was playing, and he could smell roast chestnuts. A child bounded past on a scooter, his feet making a click-clacking noise on the setts of the paving. There was the distinctive impact of a cricket ball connecting with a ball on a summer afternoon. Driscoll nodded at the ripple of applause.
He could see the point now. Everything down here was negative. He had to know. He thought of Krampf, Deems, and Wainewright; of Hort and Karlson. He had no real friends; hitherto, the only reality was the tunnels burrowing beneath the earth and the remorselessly efficient humming of the machinery.
It did not seem to be enough. Driscoll set his teeth. Perspiration was streaming down his face as he reached out to the interior hatch of the inspection chamber of Shaft Number 247. A child lifted her head and put her arms round Driscoll's neck. He was smiling as he began to turn the bolts.
Black Man With a Horn by T. E. D. KLEIN
The Black [words obscured by postmark] was fascinating - I must get a snap shot of him.
H. P. LOVECRAFT, rOSTC~,RO TO r. HOFFMANN PRICE, 7/23/1934
There is something inherently comforting about the first-person past tense. It conjures up visions of some deskbound narrator puffing contemplatively upon a pipe amid the safety of his study, lost in tranquil recollection, seasoned but essentially unscathed by whatever experience he's about to relate.
It's a tense that says, 'I am here to tell the tale. I lived through it.'
The description, in my own case, is perfectly accurate - as far as it goes. I am indeed seated in a kind of study: a small den, actually, but lined with bookshelves on one side, below a view of Manhattan painted many years ago, from memory, by my sister. My desk is a folding bridge table that once belonged to her. Before me the electric typewriter, though somewhat precariously supperted, hums soothingly, and from the window behind me comes the familiar drone of the old air conditioner, waging its lonely battle against the tropic night. Beyond it, in the darkness outside, the small night-noises are doubtless just as reassuring; wind in the palm trees, the mindless chant of crickets, the muffled chatter of a neighbour's TV, an occasional car bound for the highway, shifting gears as it speeds past the house...
House, in truth, may be too grand a word; the place is a green stucco bungalow just a single story tall, third in a row of nine set several hundred yards from the highway. Its only distinguishing features are the sundial in the front yard, brought here from my sister's former home, and the jagged little picket fence, now rather overgrown with weeds, which she had erected despite the protests of neighbours.
It's hardly the most romantic of settings, but under normal circumstances it might make an adequate background for meditations in the past tense. 'I'm still here,' the writer says, adjusting to the tone. (I've even stuck the requisite pipe in mouth, stuffed with a plug of latakia.) 'It's over now,'
he says. 'I lived through it.'
A comforting premise, perhapsú Only, in this case, it doesn't happen to be true. Whether the experience is really 'over now' no one can say; and if, as I suspect, the final chapter has yet to be enacted, then the notion of my 'living through it' will seem a pathetic conceit.
Yet ! can't say I find the thought of my own death particularly disturbing. I get so tired, sometimes, of this little room, with its cheap wicker furniture, the dull outdated books, the night pressing in from outside ú.. And of that sundial out there in the yard, with its idiotic message. 'Grow old along with me...'
I have done so, and my life seems hardly to have mattered in the scheme of things. Surely its end cannot matter much either.
Ah, Howard, you would have understood.
That, boy, was what I call a travel-experience! – H.P LOVECRAFT, 3/12/1930
If, while I set it down, this tale acquires an ending, it promises to be an unhappy one. But the beginning is nothing of the kind; you may find it rather humorous, in fact - full of comic pratfalls, wet trouser cuffs, and a dropped vomit-bag.
'I steeled myself to endure it,' the old lady to my right was saying. 'I don't mind telling you I was exceedingly frightened. I held on to the arms of the seat and just gritted my teeth. And then, you know, right after the captain warned us about that turbulence, when the tail lifted and fell, flip-flop, flip-flop, well -' she flashed her dentures at me and patted my wrist, ' - I don't mind telling you, there was simply nothing for it but to heave.'
Where had the old girl picked up such expressions? And was she trying to pick me up as well?
Her hand clamped wetly round my wrist. 'I do hope you'll let me pay for the dry cleaning.'
'Madam,' I said, 'think nothing of it. The suit was already stained.'
'Such a nice man!' She cocked her head coyly at me, still gripping my wrist. Though their whites had long since turned the colour of old piano keys, her eyes were not unattractive. But her breath repelled me. Slipping my paperback into a pocket, I rang for the stewardess.
The earlier mishap had occurred several hours before. In clambering aboard the plane at Heathrow, surrounded by what appeared to be an aboriginal rugby club (all dressed alike, navy blazers with bone buttons), I'd been shoved from behind and had stumbled against a black cardboard hatbox in which some Chinaman was storing his dinner; it was jutting into the aisle near the first-class seats. Something inside sloshed over my ankles - duck sauce, soup perhaps and left a sticky yellow puddle on the floor. I turned in time to see a tall, beefy Caucasian with an Air Malay bag and a beard so thick and black he looked like some heavy from the silent era. His manner was equally suited to the role, for after shouldering me aside (with shoulders broad as my valises), he pushed his way down the crowded passage, head bobbing near the ceiling like a gas balloon, and suddenly disappeared from sight at the rear of the plane. In his wake I caught the smell of treacle, and was instantly reminded of my childhood: birthday hats, Callard and Bowser gift packs, and after-dinner bellyaches.