Leverett dropped the card and shuddered. Stefroi’s letter reawakened the old horror, and he wished now he had let the matter lie forgotten in his files. Of course, it couldn’t be forgotten—even after thirty years.
He wrote Stefroi a careful letter, thanking him for his information and adding a few minor details to his account. This spring, he promised, wondering if he would keep the promise, he would try to relocate the farmhouse on Mann Brook.
· v ·
Spring was late that year, and it was not until early June that Colin Leverett found time to return to Mann Brook. On the surface, very little had changed in three decades. The ancient stone bridge yet stood,
nor had the country lane been paved. Leverett wondered whether anyone had driven past since his terror-sped flight.
He found the old railroad grade easily as he started downstream. Thirty years, he told himself—but the chill inside him only tightened. The going was far more difficult than before. The day was unbearably hot and humid. Wading through the rank underbrush raised clouds of black flies that savagely bit him.
Evidently the stream had seen severe flooding in past years, judging from piled logs and debris that blocked his path. Stretches were scooped out to barren rocks and gravel. Elsewhere, gigantic barriers of uprooted trees and debris looked like ancient and moldering fortifications. As he worked his way down the valley, he realized that his search would yield nothing. So intense had been the force of the long-ago flood that even the course of the stream had changed. Many of the dry-wall culverts no longer spanned the brook, but sat lost and alone far back from its present banks. Others had been knocked flat and swept away, or were buried beneath tons of rotting logs.
At one point Leverett found remnants of an apple orchard groping through weeds and bushes. He thought the house must be close by, but here the flooding had been particularly severe, and evidently even those ponderous stone foundations had been toppled over and buried beneath debris.
Leverett finally turned back to his car. His step was lighter.
A few weeks later he received a response from Stefroi to his reported failure:
Forgive my tardy reply to your letter of 13 June. I have recently been pursuing inquiries which may, I hope, lead to discovery of a previously unreported megalithic site of major significance. Naturally I am disappointed that no traces remained of the Mann Brook site. While I tried not to get my hopes up, it did seem likely that the foundations would have survived. In searching through regional data, I note that there were particularly severe flash floods in the Otselic area in July 1942 and again in May 1946. Very probably your old farmhouse with its enigmatic devices was utterly destroyed not very long after your discovery of the site. This is weird and wild country, and doubtless there is much we shall never know.
I write this with a profound sense of personal loss over the death two nights ago of Prescott Brandon. This was a severe blow to me—as I am sure it was to you and to all who knew him. I only hope the police will catch the vicious killers who did this senseless act—evidently thieves surprised while ransacking his office. Police believe the killers were high on drugs, from the mindless brutality of their crime.
I had just received a copy of the third Allard volume, Unhallowed Places. A superbly designed book, and this tragedy becomes all the more insuperable with the realization that Scotty will give the world no more such treasures.
In sorrow,
Alexander Stefroi
Leverett stared at the letter in shock. He had not received news of Brandon’s death—had only a few days before opened a parcel from the publisher containing a first copy of Unhallowed Places. A line of Brandon’s last letter recurred to him—a line that had seemed amusing at the time:
Your sticks have bewildered a good many fans, Colin, and I’ve worn out a ribbon answering inquiries. One fellow in particular—a Major George Leonard—has pressed me for details, and I’m afraid I told him too much. He has written several times for your address, but knowing how you value privacy I told him simply to permit me to forward any correspondence. He wants to see your original sketches, I gather, but these overbearing occult-types give me a pain. Frankly, I wouldn’t care to meet the man myself.
· vi ·
“Mr. Colin Leverett?”
Leverett studied the tall, lean man who stood smiling at the doorway of his studio. The sports car he had driven up in was black, and looked expensive. The same held for the turtleneck and leather slacks he wore, and the sleek briefcase he carried. The blackness made his thin face deathly pale. Leverett guessed his age to be in the late forties by the thinning of his hair. Dark glasses hid his eyes, black driving gloves his hands.
“Scotty Brandon told me where to find you,” the stranger said.
“Scotty?” Leverett’s voice was wary.
“Yes, we lost a mutual friend, I regret to say. I’d been talking with him just before…But I see by your expression Scotty never had time to write.” He fumbled awkwardly. “I’m Dana Allard.”
“Allard?”
His visitor seemed embarrassed. “Yes—H. Kenneth Allard was my uncle.”
“I hadn’t realized Allard left a family,” mused Leverett, shaking the extended hand. He had never met the writer personally, but there was a strong resemblance to the few photographs he had seen. And Scotty had been paying royalty checks to an estate of some sort, he recalled.
“My father was Kent’s half-brother. He later took his father’s name, but there was no marriage, if you follow.”
“Of course.” Leverett was abashed. “Please find a place to sit down. And what brings you here?”
Dana Allard tapped his briefcase. “Something I’d been discussing with Scotty. Just recently I turned up a stack of my uncle’s unpublished manuscripts.” He unlatched the briefcase and handed Leverett a sheaf of yellowed paper. “Father collected Kent’s personal effects from the state hospital as next-of-kin. He never thought much of my uncle, or his writing. He stuffed this away in our attic and forgot about it. Scotty was quite excited when I told him of my discovery.”
Leverett was glancing through the manuscript—page after page of cramped handwriting, with revisions pieced throughout like an indecipherable puzzle. He had seen photographs of Allard manuscripts. There was no mistaking this.
Or the prose. Leverett read a few passages with rapt absorption. It was authentic—and brilliant.
“Uncle’s mind seems to have taken an especially morbid turn as his illness drew on,” Dana hazarded. “I admire his work very greatly, but I find these last few pieces…well, a bit too horrible. Especially his translation of his mythical Book of Elders.”
It appealed to Leverett perfectly. He barely noticed his guest as he pored over the brittle pages. Allard was describing a megalithic structure his doomed narrator had encountered in the crypts beneath an ancient churchyard. There were references to “elder glyphics” that resembled his lattice devices.
“Look here.” Dana pointed. “These incantations he records here from Alorri-Zrokros’s forbidden tome. ‘Yogth-Yugth-Sut-Hyrath-Yogng’—hell, I can’t pronounce them. And he has pages of them.”
“This is incredible!” Leverett protested. He tried to mouth the alien syllables. It could be done. He even detected a rhythm.
“Well, I’m relieved you approve. I’d feared these last few stories and fragments might prove a little much for Kent’s fans.”
“Then you’re going to have them published?”
Dana nodded. “Scotty was going to. I just hope those thieves weren’t searching for this—a collector would pay a fortune. But Scotty said he was going to keep this secret until he was ready for announcement.” His thin face was sad. “So now I’m going to publish it myself—in a deluxe edition. And I want you to illustrate it.”