Read The Lonely Shadows: Tales of Horror and the Cthulhu Mythos for Free Online

they had stepped through the wrought-iron gate, the metal twisted into strange, cabalistic designs, closing it carefully behind them, it was as if they had, by that simple action, cut off all sound around them. Calder felt his taut muscles beginning to jerk spasmodically. He thought queerly that it was dreadful that any place could be so silent. Even the odour of the place had changed subtly but horribly, since he had last been there. Then there had been the smell of rain on wet leaves underfoot, of growing things—now there was an overpowering stench of cold, damp earth and stone.
    It was impossible for Calder to describe the feeling that went through him at that moment as he stood there beside the doctor, staring into the cold, clammy darkness. The intense quiet had something to do with it, he felt sure—and that strange, sickly, cloying smell which persisted in his nostrils. Tensely, he found himself wishing that some sound would break in on that awful silence; the crush of their feet on the damp leaves beneath their feet on the gravel of the drive, thickly overgrown with weeds. But for what seemed an eternity, they stood absolutely still, feeling around with their eyes and ears, alert for the slightest movement or the faintest sound.
    Woodbridge turned his head. “You’re sure that you still want to go on with me?” His voice sounded eerie and unnaturally low in the clinging stillness. “God only knows what will happen when we get there and I don’t want you to—”
    “I’ll stay with you,” said Calder tightly. He could feel the coldness on his face and the muscles of his body seemed numb. “I’m not sure what it is you expect to find up there.”
    “Neither do I. But whatever it is, the sooner we know about it, the better.”
    “Don’t you think we ought to call the house first and see Charles Belstead? After all, I feel a little like a criminal walking through someone else’s grounds like this, completely uninvited.”
    “No.” Woodbridge’s voice was harsh and decisive. “That will do no good. I want to go through with the first part of this without him knowing anything about it. Besides, I’m sure that the evil emanates, not from the house itself, but from that place on top of the hill.”
    They went forward into the dimness. There was a moon lying low on the horizon, a great fiery red ball, touching the tops of the trees with a lurid glow like fire. He shivered. Ordinarily, he regarded the moon as a warm and friendly thing. Now there was fear in it, and terror. It was something strangely unreal and grotesque, abnormal, like a huge red eye that watched them from the heavens as they moved deeper into the trees, where they crowded in thickly on all sides, the shadows long and huge and dark. Calder glanced about him out of the corner of his eye, not quite knowing what to expect. The trees themselves did not seem quite right. The trunks looked too thick and grotesquely big for normal growth, with strange nodules sticking from their roots and the branches were twisted into ugly, fear-haunted shapes that clawed at the scudding clouds, almost, he thought inwardly, trembling a little, as if they were sucking something dark and poisonous from the ground.
    He shrugged as he followed the tall shape of the doctor, pulling himself together. This was all part of his overwrought imagination, he tried to tell himself fiercely. He was nervous and on edge. Jumpy. All of this running around the countryside on a night such as this, with a storm brewing somewhat on the western horizon, was not good for a man of his age. He shuddered convulsively for a moment and noticed that his hands were trembling more than usual.
    The branches of the trees, twisted and gnarled, swept down against their faces and there was too much silence in them for Calder’s liking. Over everything, there lay a curious sense of restlessness and unease, a haze of the grotesque and the unreal, as if something had been changed here, something