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

the exact nature of the object.
    That night I retired early. I had not yet fully recovered from my long illness and the long walk along the cliffs, coupled with the hours spent during the past week pouring over the old manuscripts into the early hours of the morning, had tired me more than I had realised.
    My room was in the west wing of the house, high in one turreted tower, the solitary window looking out directly over the small bay alongside the narrow headland. It was reached by a winding stairway of stone, between walls that still ran with dripping moisture in spite of the fires that had been lit.
    I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but was soon haunted by dreams of the most hideous kind. I was standing alone on the windswept cliffs looking down into the twilight sea. The water heaved with a sullen, oily swell, black and fathomless; yet there was something in those dark depths and vasty deeps, something which was straining to the surface, unutterably evil, a thing which was not of Earth, had no part in anything that was sane and normal. There was the vaguest suspicion of moonlight in the sky, and as I turned in my dream to where the house should have stood, I discovered myself staring at a circle of crudely-hewn stones of the most terrifying aspect, lit by the grotesque paleness of the moonlight. There were presences in among the stones, queer, half-visible things that hovered and flitted on the edge of my vision, never coming close enough, nor staying still long enough, to be seen clearly, and all the more frightening because of this abnormal, spectral elusiveness.
    One thing in particular I noticed in my dream. A creature that stood hooded and gowned, on the cliff edge, arms raised as if in supplication. Then it turned, and it was as if I screamed aloud in my dream. It would be wrong to say that this monstrosity, visible as the hood which covered its face fell back at that instant, could not be described in terms understandable by anyone who had knowledge of these black abominations from pits unimaginable and unnameable. There was something human about, it but if anything it was this merest hint of humanness that brought the sense of terror crowding into my sleeping mind. The protruding forehead was ridged and furrowed, and the two bony protuberances gave an unmistakable sense of witnessing some fiendish creature from the lowest pit of Hell. Some instinct warned me, even in the dream, that I was witnessing here had no connection with the present day.
    The being began to mumble and mutter and there was nothing English in the mouthings; indeed, the disjointed phrases seemed to have no earthly connotation, and as they trailed off into nothingness, something stirred deep within the black water below the cliff. There was a swirling as if a whirlpool was forming; a surging, leprous gleaming of spectral whiteness, indistinct at first, then growing clearer as it came up to the surface. I felt my gaze drawn hypnotically to the sea where the waves, whipped to a sudden frenzy, hammered on the belt of sand that fronted the rocks. Then it emerged, dripping, from the sea and whatever horror, whatever frenzy of nightmarish terror I had experienced before, faded into insignificance before the soul-searing fear which took a hold of my sleeping mind.
    Shivering intolerably, with the clammy sweat lying cold on my body, I woke with a start, my heart palpitating wildly in my chest. Hands clutching at my body, I opened my eyes, peered about me.
    The most terrible, the most unbelievable of all mental shocks is that of the totally unexpected. The nightmare was still strong in my mind, the shaking still lay on my limbs from the sheer terror of it, but nothing in that dream could compare with the fear I now felt as I saw what lay about me; not the simple furnishings of my room high in the turreted tower, nor even the long, winding stairway which led up to it—but the rocky, moss-turfed cliffs with the dark silhouette of the