Free Xenograffiti by Robert Reginald Page B

sucking noise emanating from the swampy lake behind the house and smells a hideous stench pouring in through the window. In the midst of the spell, he realizes that something is watching him, physically or psychically, that some presence in the lake is casting a hypnotic net over his soul, seeking to destroy his willpower and draw him into its grasp. With great difficulty, he manages to pull away, and leaves the house the next morning.
    Meanwhile, back in the city, Locke’s cousin Phillida has eloped with Ethan Vere. At first suspicious of the man, Locke gradually comes to see his true worth and to accept Phillida’s judgment of her lover. With some consideration of their plight (they have no money, and Phillida’s mother disapproves of the match), he offers them the use of his rural estate in return for their assistance in refurbishing the house and lands, both of which are in a state of decay. They accept, and Locke is pleased to find on his next visit that the couple has worked miracles with the three-hundred-year-old house, making it into a warm, pleasant retreat.
    Locke continues to be disturbed through his second sojourn by the returning wraith of the girl, whose spirit he has grown to love in spite of himself, and more frighteningly, by the Thing lurking in the ooze beyond the house. The creature’s malevolent intelligence is directed entirely at subduing Locke’s will and drawing him through the barrier between man’s world and the other plane to become its slave. The Thing is implacable and unwavering; however much Locke might resist, he cannot resist forever, and the being in the lake will wait as long as necessary to capture his soul. The continuing presence of the girl as part of the puzzle mystifies Locke until he discovers an old diary in the house. The seventeenth-century journal details the sordid events surrounding the life of Desire Michell, a daughter of the old Michell family who had built the house centuries before.
    Desire had first dabbled with the love-struck men around her and then with the black arts, with calamitous results. After murdering a lover by witchcraft, she had embraced necromancy completely, determined to call up a creature from the beyond to act as her all-powerful avenging servant. There was a barrier between men and the other orders of beings which neither could breach by himself; but with the proper incantations and with the assistance of one from this realm, the breach had been made, and the colossal, formless intelligence issued forth into the world. Unable to control what she had called forth, Desire Michell was destroyed by the Thing, which then occupied the ruined foundations of the house, later covered by a lake. A new house was built by the survivors of the family nearby. In the ensuing centuries, there were several other descendants with the name Desire Michell, each one becoming a tool that the creature used to enslave men, each one meeting a final horrible end. Only one member of the family now remains, the current Desire Michell, a girl whom Locke has seen fleetingly on several different nights, and with whom he has fallen in love.
    After a near brush with death, Locke determines to resolve the situation, and with the help of Phillida and Vere, he captures the current Desire, discovering that she is a living being fully aware of the creature’s menace and anxious to warn Locke away. Locke, however, must have his Desire, so the two couples prepare themselves for a last struggle against the creature. A vicious storm destroys the lake, freeing the creature to advance on the house; waves of icy psychic foulness break over the frail human beings as the Thing demands obeisance as its price for their continued life. Locke offers his life in exchange for the girl’s, thereby freeing her from the spell it holds over her; Vere calls upon God to thrust the creature back into its realm. In a mighty, cataclysmic flash, the breach is healed, the Thing returned to its world, and