“I’d feel honored!” vowed Leverett, unable to believe it.
“I really liked those drawings you did for the trilogy. I’d like to see more like those—as many as you feel like doing. I mean to spare no expense in publishing this. And those stick things…”
“Yes?”
“Scotty told me the story of those. Fascinating! And you have a whole notebook of them? May I see it?”
Leverett hurriedly dug the notebook from his file, returned to the manuscript.
Dana paged through the book in awe. “These are totally bizarre—and there are references to such things in the manuscript, to make it even more fantastic. Can you reproduce them all for the book?”
“All I can remember,” Leverett assured him. “And I have a good memory. But won’t that be overdoing it?”
“Not at all! They fit into the book. And they’re utterly unique. No, put everything you’ve got into this book. I’m going to entitle it Dwellers in the Earth, after the longest piece. I’ve already arranged for its printing, so we begin as soon as you can have the art ready. And I know you’ll give it your all.”
· vii ·
He was floating in space. Objects drifted past him. Stars, he first thought. The objects drifted closer.
Sticks. Stick lattices of all configurations. And then he was drifting among them, and he saw they were not sticks—not of wood. The lattice designs were of dead-pale substance, like streaks of frozen starlight. They reminded him of glyphics of some unearthly alphabet—complex, enigmatic symbols arranged to spell…what? And there was an arrangement—a three-dimensional pattern. A maze of utterly baffling intricacy…
Then somehow he was in a tunnel. A cramped, stone-lined tunnel through which he must crawl on his belly. The dank, moss-slimed stones pressed close about his wriggling form, evoking shrill whispers of claustrophobic dread.
And after an indefinite space of crawling through this and other stone-lined burrows, and sometimes through passages whose angles hurt his eyes, he would creep forth into a subterranean chamber. Great slabs of granite a dozen feet across formed the walls and ceiling of this buried chamber, and between the slabs other burrows pierced the earth. Altar-like, a gigantic slab of gneiss waited in the center of the chamber. A spring welled darkly between the stone pillars that supported the table. Its outer edge was encircled by a groove, sickeningly stained by the substance that clotted in the stone bowl beneath its collecting spout.
Others were emerging from the darkened burrows that ringed the chamber—slouched figures only dimly glimpsed and vaguely human. And a figure in a tattered cloak came toward him from the shadow—stretched out a claw-like hand to seize his wrist and draw him toward the sacrificial table. He followed unresistingly, knowing that something was expected of him.
They reached the altar, and in the glow from the cuneiform lattices chiselled into the gneiss slab he could see his guide’s face. A moldering corpse-face, the rotted bone of its forehead smashed inward upon the foulness that oozed forth…
And Leverett would awaken to the echo of his own screams…
He’d been working too hard, he told himself, stumbling about in the darkness, getting dressed because he was too shaken to return to sleep. The nightmares had been coming every night. No wonder he was exhausted.
But in his studio his work awaited him. Almost fifty drawings completed now, and he planned another score. No wonder the nightmares.
It was a grueling pace, but Dana Allard was ecstatic with the work he had done. And Dwellers in the Earth was waiting. Despite problems with typesetting, with getting the special paper Dana wanted—the book only waited on him.
Though his bones ached with fatigue, Leverett determinedly trudged through the greying night. Certain features of the nightmare would be interesting to portray.
· viii ·
The last of the drawings had gone off to Dana Allard in Petersham, and Leverett, fifteen pounds lighter and gut-weary, converted part of the bonus check into a case of good whiskey. Dana had the offset presses rolling as soon as plates were shot from the drawings. Despite his precise planning, presses had broken down, one printer had quit for reasons not stated, there had been a bad accident at the new printer’s—seemingly innumerable problems, and Dana had been furious at each delay. But production pushed along quickly for all that. Leverett wrote that the book was cursed, but Dana responded that a week would see it ready.
Leverett amused himself in his studio constructing stick lattices and trying to catch up on his sleep. He was expecting a copy of the book when he received a letter from Stefroi:
Have tried to reach you by phone last few days, but no answer at your house. I’m pushed for time just now, so must be brief. I have indeed uncovered an unsuspected megalithic site of enormous importance. It’s located on the estate of a long prominent Mass. family—and as I cannot receive authorization to visit it, I will not say where. Have investigated secretly (and quite illegally) for a short time one night and was nearly caught. Came across references to the place in collection of 17th-century letters and papers in a divinity school library. Writer denouncing the family as a brood of sorcerers and witches, reference to alchemical activities and other less savory rumors—and describes underground stone chambers, megalithic artifacts, etc. which are put to “foul usage and diabolic pracktise.” Just got a quick glimpse, but his description was not exaggerated. And Colin—in creeping through the woods to get to the site, I came across dozens of your mysterious “sticks”! Brought a small one back and have it here to show you. Recently constructed and exactly like your drawings. With luck, I’ll gain admittance and find out their significance—undoubtedly they have significance—though these cultists can be stubborn about sharing secrets. Will explain my interest is scientific, no exposure to ridicule—and see what they say. Will get a closer took one way or another. And so—I’m off!
Sincerely,
Alexander Stefroi
Leverett’s bushy brows rose. Allard had intimated certain dark rituals in which the stick lattices figured. But Allard had written over thirty years ago, and Leverett assumed the writer had stumbled onto something similar to the Mann Brook site. Stefroi was writing about something current.
He rather hoped Stefroi would discover nothing more than an inane hoax.
The nightmares haunted him still—familiar now, for all that their scenes and phantasms were visited by him only in dream. Familiar. The terror that they evoked was undiminished.
Now he was walking through forest—a section of hills that seemed to be those close by. A huge slab of granite had been dragged aside, and a pit yawned where it had lain. He entered the pit without hesitation, and the rounded steps that led downward were known to his tread. A buried stone chamber, and, leading from it, stone-lined burrows. He knew which one to crawl into.
And again the underground room with its sacrificial altar and its dark spring beneath, and the gathering circle of poorly glimpsed figures. A knot of them clustered about the stone table, and as he stepped toward them he saw they pinioned a frantically writhing man.
It was a stoutly built man, white hair disheveled, flesh gouged and filthy. Recognition seemed to burst over the contorted features, and he wondered if he should know the man. But now the lich with the caved-in skull was whispering in his ear, and he tried not to think of the unclean things that peered from that cloven brow, and instead took the bronze knife from the skeletal hand, and raised the knife high, and because he could not scream and awaken, did with the knife as the tattered priest had whispered.