For what seemed like hours Spellman fought his losing battle, and then Yibb-Tstll—tiring of the game and aware of the shortness of time—tried a different tactic. While he had yet a good distance to go to the center of the clearing, Spellman saw The Thing stop Its turning; and then, without warning, the horror threw back its cloak to release the hellish “pets” beneath!
Spellman could only fight one thing at a time, and Yibb-Tstll was not going to allow him to escape this time into wakefulness. Even knowing he was dreaming Spellman was at the mercy of his dream. He screamed voicelessly, lashing out at the flapping, blank-faced, vile-bodied night-gaunts as they buffeted him with skin-and-bone wings and tried to shove him off his feet. Finally they won and he fell, cowering down and wrapping his arms about his head as he felt himself swftly borne forward on his nightmare’s ghost-drift. When the noisome activity about him ceased, he fearfully looked up—and found himself at the feet of the colossal Thing in the green cloak!
Again those awful eyes—those red eyes that were not fixed in their places—the eyes that moved quickly, independently—sliding with vile viscosity over the whole rotten surface of Yibb-Tstll’s pulpy, glistening head!
Mercifully distracted from the horror before him, he saw suddenly that he was not alone. There were others with him—twelve of them—and even in the dream the features and shapes of some of the twelve were twisted, and some of them slavered and their eyes were strange, making their identities obvious.
Larner!—and the rest of Hell’s inmates—a complete coven, now, come to worship at the feet of a lunatic “God,” the loathly Yibb-Tstll!
Still kneeling, sickly turning his face away, Spellman saw a book lying open before him on the rotting ground. The Cthaat Aquadingen, Larner’s copy, and open at the Sixth Sathlatta!
“No—oh, no!” Spellman screamed voicelessly in sudden understanding. Why?—to what end should this—Thing—be allowed to walk upon Earth?
Larner got down beside him: “You know, in your heart, Nurse Spellman. You know!”
“But—”
“No time,” Larner cut off his protest. “Midnight is almost here! You’ll join us in The Calling?”
“No, damn you—no!” Spellman cried his mental denial.
“You will!” answered a booming, alien voice in his head, “Now!” And Yibb-Tstll reached out from under His cloak a green and black thing that might have been an arm, with a hand and fingers of sorts, pushing the tips into Spellman’s mouth and ears and nostrils—deep into his mind—searching and squeezing in certain places….
When the great Ancient One withdrew his slimy fingers Spellman’s eyes were very vacant and his mouth, trickling saliva, hung slack. Only then, at midnight—as if at a spoken command though none was given, simultaneously and in perfect unison—did the coven begin the invocation; with Spellman sitting bolt upright in his bed, and with the others below in their cells.
• • •
It was early February before the furor at Oakdeene died down, by which time the events of the night of 1st January 1936 had been carefully examined—as best they could be—and chronicled for future reference in various reports. By then, too, Dr. Welford had resigned; he had been unfortunate enough to be Duty Officer of the night in question; and while it was generally recognized that the responsibility had in no way been his, his resignation seemed to appease directors, newspapers and the relatives of many of the inmates alike.
Certainly, had Dr. Welford been a man without scruple, he might have turned at least part of the result of that night’s happenings to his advantage; for in the following month five of Hell’s inhabitants—three of them previously “hopeless” maniacs—were released as perfectly responsible citizens! Alas, five others, of which one was Larner, had been found dead in their cells shortly after the midnight disturbance—the victims of “frantic lunatic convulsions.” The remaining two—survived—but in states of deep and constant catatonia.
Such had been the upheaval at Oakdeene on the morning of the 2nd January, that at first it was believed Barstowe’s ghastly death on the lonely road between the sanatorium and Oakdeene village had been brought about by a madman escaped in the confusion. For some reason the squat nurse had not waited until morning to leave—perhaps he had some premonition of the horror to come—but had departed on foot with his case shortly after eleven that very night. Apparently Barstowe had tried to fight back before succumbing to his attacker: a black telescopic stick with a silver tip—an instrument that could be opened out to make a pointed weapon some nine feet long—was found near his body, but his efforts had been of no avail.
As soon as Barstowe’s body was discovered, a count of Oakdeene’s inmates, living and dead, served to put down any rumors that might have arisen in respect of the institute’s security; but certainly the squat nurse had suffered some sort of maniacal attack. No sane man, not even any ordinary sort of animal, could have savaged him so and chewed away half his head and brain!
In all, the occurrences of the night of the 1st-2nd January 1936 could have filled a whole chapter in Spellman’s book—had he ever finished that book. He did not finish it, nor will he ever. Having suffered a terrible reversal, Martin Spellman, now in late middle-age, still occupies the second cell on the left in Hell; and because, even in his more lucid moments, he only babbles and drools and screams, for the most part he is kept under sedation….
Born of the Winds
In late 1972, early ’73, I wrote BOTW. Agented in America by Kirby McCauley, at 25,000 words it was too long for Ed Ferman’s “Fantasy & Science Fiction” and had to be reduced by some 5,000 words. By the time I had completed the work on it I was a Staff Sergeant serving in Celle in Germany, writing evenings or whenever I could find some spare time. This novella first saw light of day in the December 1975 issue of “F&SF,” and at once earned itself a World Fantasy Award nomination—I suspect for its originality. Alas that it didn’t win the award! Reprinted two years later, in “The Horror at Oakdeene,” and having twice seen print in the quarter century gone by since then, it remains one of my personal favourites…
I
Consider: I am, or was, a meteorologist of some note—a man whose interests and leanings have always been away from fantasy and the so-called “supernatural”and yet now I believe in a wind that blows between the worlds, and in a Being that inhabits that wind, striding in feathery cirrus and shrieking lightning storm alike across icy Arctic heavens.
Just how such an utter contradiction of beliefs could come about I will now attempt to explain, for I alone possess all of the facts. If I am wrong in what I more than suspect—if what has gone before has been nothing but a monstrous chain of coincidence confused by horrific hallucination—then with luck I might yet return out of this white wilderness to the sanity of the world I knew. But if I am right, and I fear that I am horribly right, then I am done for, and this manuscript will stand as my testimonial of a hitherto all but unrecognized plane of existence…and of its inhabitant, whose like may only be found in legends whose sources date back geological eons into Earth’s dim and terrible infancy.