Free The Dark Boatman: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos by John Glasby

hundredfold.
    In 1797, Cecil Warhope, in his fiftieth year, went inexplicably mad and wandered into the village of Morganswode, as it was known then, giving voice to strange dreams and visions of the most terrible sort, which sent a band of men back to the manor bearing flaming torches and carrying any weapons they could lay their hands on. They had found little amiss in the house itself, but down on the narrow stretch of beach at the foot of the cliffs were odd tracks in the sand which had not been washed away by the encroaching sea, although for the sanity of one or two members of the band of men it would have been better by far if the tide had obliterated them entirely before they had been found.
    In the flickering yellow candlelight, seated in the high-backed chair, before the blazing fire, I read through the tattered and fading parchments backed by peeling leather that was cracked and worn, reading of the finding of William Warhope, Cecil’s brother, on the beach, his body and features curiously deformed, oddly grotesque, mindless horror mirrored in the wide-open eyes that stared up at the moon-flooded heavens. Rather than allow such an obviously unhallowed soul rest in peace in the quiet ground of the small churchyard, his body had been hastily buried in the sand of the beach, and on that same morning, the worst storm in the history of that stretch of coastline broke over the cliffs, seemingly centred on Faxted Manor. Certainly it was unlike anything known in living memory. Most vivid of all, apparently, in the eyes of the unknown chronicler, was a belief, rife at the time among the superstitious peasants on the beach, that after the storm had died down late the following afternoon, another set of prints as bizarre and unbelievable as the first had appeared in the sand, running almost parallel with the others which had, by that time, been almost washed away; but in this case the prints led up out of the sea and up the sheer wall of the cliff towards Faxted Manor.
    The horror had returned with a vengeance.
    * * * *
    Such was the history which assailed me and which I absorbed during the first few days at the manor. It must not, however, be imagined that I spent all my waking hours in the library, reading among these ancient, musty tomes of a bygone age. The weather at that time proved to be exceedingly clement even for early October, and I spent much time out of doors, taking as much of the fresh air as possible. Several times I wandered to the edge of the rocks and stared down their almost vertical depths to where the sea crashed onto the boulders in a spuming of white, wind-tossed spray. There was, I noticed, a small promontory where a ridge of cliff thrust itself out into the sea for perhaps fifty yards, forming a natural breakwater there, enclosing a tiny bay where the water seemed calmer than further out, or even a little way along the coast.
    Towards late evening during the second week of my stay there, I often stood on top of the cliffs looking out to the west where some of the most unusual and colourful sunsets I had ever known occurred with an almost clockwork regularity. One particular evening proved no exception. The entire sky to the west was a mass of pinks and scarlet, blending imperceptibly into apple green, blue, and finally purple directly overhead. Lowering my glance from the flaming wonders of the sunset, I chanced to look down at the water immediately below me, and felt an odd edge of surprise to notice that on this occasion, the surface within that the tiny bay was not smooth and unruffled as it normally was. There was something thrusting itself up above the water. From where I stood, in the fading light, it looked rather like a black stone monolith, its lower half hidden by the waves. I wished I had brought my binoculars with me so that I might have examined it more closely, for there seemed to be strange carvings on it, but with the night falling, I had to reluctantly give up any attempt to discover