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1 The Summons

I suppose under the circumstances it is only natural that the police should require this belated written statenition of hly nervous condition and my totally unwarranted confine up without supervision But while every kindness has been shown ly protestwhat I noould voice the same protest in respect of detention in any prison or institute anywhere in Scotlandanywhere in the entire British Isles

Before I begin, let es have been levelled againstthat in so doing I may well extend my stay in this detestable place I can only hope that upon its reading, it will be seen that I had no alternative but to follow the action I describe

You the reader e My actual sanity -if indeed I a, s

I was in New York when the letter from my uncle&039;s solicitors reached reat road which reaches steep and cobbled to the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle itself, the large, sealed manila envelope had all the hallmarks of officialdom, so that even before I opened it I feared the worst

Not that I had been close to ht me out of Scotland as a small child, on the death of my father, and I had never been back) but certainly I re I remembered him better than I did my father; for where Andrew McGilchrist had always been dry and introverted, Uncle Gavin had been just the opposite Warenerous to a fault, he had spoiltto the letter, he was dead and I was named his sole heir and beneficiary; and the envelope contained a voucher which guaranteed h from anywhere in the world

And then of course there was the letter itself, the contents of which further guaranteed my use of that voucher; for only a fool could possibly refuse my uncle&039;s bequest, or fail to be interested in its attendant, though at present unspecified, conditions

Quite si myself at the offices of Macdonald, Asquith and Lee in Edinburgh, I would already have fulfilled the first condition toward inheriting my uncle&039;s considerable fortune, his estate of over three hundred acres and his great house where it stood in wild and splendid solitude at the foot of the Pentlands in Lothian All of which seemed a very far cry from New York

As to what I was doing in New York in the first place: Threealone in Philadelphia in the home where iven , run off andhad iht-hearted love story into a dooless somewhere in the transformation, and ended up in my waste-paper basket That was that I sold up andto share his apartment until I could find a decent place ofaddress, however, which explained the delayed delivery of the letter from my uncle&039;s solicitors; the letter itself was post-marked March 26th, and from the various marks, labels and redirections on the envelope, the US Mail had obviously gone to considerable trouble to find me And they found me at a time when the lives of both myself and my artist friend, Carl Earl and Carl was not drawing, and despite the arrival of summer our spirits were on a rapid decline

Which is probably why I juh, as I have said, certainly I would have been a fool to ignore or refuse the thingOr so I thought at the tirasped at the chance with both hands His funds were low and getting lower; he would soon be obliged to quit his apart less ostentatious; and since he, too, had decided that he needed a change of locale - to put some life back into his artwork - the s and headed for Edinburgh

It was not until our journey was over, however - ere settled in our hotel room in Princes Street - that I re, delivered to me deliriously but persistently from her deathbed, that I should never return to Scotland, certainly not to the old house And as I vainly atte and the fact that it was late evening while all my instincts told me it should now be day, so my mind went back over what little I knew of my family roots, of the McGilchrist line itself, of that old and ra house in the Pentlands where I had been born, and especially of the peculiar reticence of Messrs Macdonald, Asquith and Lee, the Scottish solicitors

Reticence, yes, because I could almost feel the hesitancy in their letter It seemed to me that they would have preferred not to find ave me this i in the way it was phrased, perhaps - in the dry, professional idiom of solicitors -which too often seems to me to put aside all matters of emotion or sensibility; so that I felt like a small boy offered a candyand warned simultaneously that it would ruin my teeth Yes, it seeht actually be apprehensive about my acceptance of their conditions - or rather, of ar to an addict suffering fro, seeing the conditions of the will as the root of the vague uneasiness which niggled at the back of my mind The worst of it was that these conditions were not specified; other than to say that if I could not or would not meet them, still I would receive fifteen thousand pounds and my return ticket home, and that the residue of my uncle&039;s fortune would then be used to carry out his will in respect of &039;the property known as Te old seat of the McGilchrists where it stood locked in a steep re-entry; and the Pentland Hills a grey and green backdrop to its frowning, steep-gabled aspect; with so more of Renaissance Scotland, and an aura of antiquity all its ohich, as a child, I could still reo and the place had been ht; at least until the death ofat all

But I did rerey pool where it lapped at the raised, reinforced, east-facing garden wall -the pool and its ring of broken quartz pillars, the re back over the years to my infancy, I wondered if perhaps the pool had been the reason my mother had always hated the place None of the McGilchrists had ever been swimmers, and yet water had always seemed to fascinate them I would not have been the first of the line to be found floating face-down in that strange, pillar-encircled pool of deep and weedy water; and I had used to spend hours just sitting on the wall and staring across the breeze-rippled surface

So ht, I turnedretired late, so we rose late, Carl and I; and it was not until 2 pm that I presented myself at the office of Macdonald, Asquith and Lee on the Royal Mile

2 The Will

Since Carl had climbed up to the esplanade to take in the vieas alone when I reached h a door of yellow-tinted bull&039;s-eye panes, passing into the cool welcome of a dim and very Olde Worlde anteroo air of charm and quiet sincerity about the place A clerk led me into an inner chamber as much reh fro been introduced to the firm&039;s Mr Asquith, I was offered a seat

Asquith was tall, slender, high-browed and balding, with a mass of freckles which seemed oddly in contrast with his late middle years, and his handshake was fir various docue and bewilderingly cluttered roo cabinets, cupboards and three srossly disordered - still Mr Asquith quickly found what he was looking for and seated himself opposite me behind his desk He was the only partner present and I the only client

&039;Now, Mr McGilchrist,&039; he began &039;And so we ed to find you, did we? And doubtless you&039;re wondering what it&039;s all about, and you probably think there&039;s so of a mystery here? Well, so there is, and for me and my partners no less than for yourself&039;

&039;I don&039;t quite follow,&039; I answered, searching his face for a clue

&039;No, no of course you don&039;t Well now, perhaps this will explain it better It&039;s a copy of your uncle&039;s will As you&039;ll see, he was rather short on words; hence the mystery A more succinct document - which nevertheless hints at so much more - I&039;ve yet to see!&039;

&039;I, Gavin McGilchrist,&039; (the will began) &039;of Temple House in Lothian, hereby revoke all Wills, Codicils or Testamentary Dispositions heretofore made by me, and I appoint my Nephew, John Hamish McGilchrist of Philadelphia in the United States of America, to be the Executor of this, my Last Will and direct that all my Debts, Testamentary and Funeral Expenses, shall be paid as soon as conveniently ive and bequeath unto the afore I possess,Condition: namely that he alone shall open and read the Deposition which shall accompany this Will into the hands of the Solicitors; and that further the Owner, shall destroy Te this Condition In the event that he shall refuse this undertaking, then shall h, become sole Executors of my Estate, who shall follow to the letter the Instructions simultaneously deposited with thened in h a second tiaze fixed intently upon me

&039;Well,&039; he said, &039;and didn&039;t I say it was a e as his death&039; He saw the ie in inning to fray &039;I&039;m sorry,&039; he said, &039;so very sorry - for of course you know nothing of the circumstances of his death, do you? I had better explain:

&039;A year ago,&039; Asquith continued, &039;your uncle was one of the most hale and hearty men you could wish to meet He was a ooddata for a book Ah! I see you&039;re surprised Well, you shouldn&039;t be Your great-grandfather wrote Notes of Nessie: the Secrets of Loch Ness&039;, and your grandmother, under a pseudonym, was a fairly successful romanticist around the turn of the century You, too, I believe, have published several romances? Indeed,&039; and he smiled and nodded, &039;it appears to be in the blood, you see?

&039;Like your great-grandfather, however, your Uncle Ga-vin McGilchrist had no romantic aspirations

He was a researcher, you see, and couldn&039;t abide a mystery to remain unsolved And there he was at Temple House, a bachelor and time on his hands, and a reat mystery to unravel&039;

&039;Faraphy of a family? But which fauessed it, of course,&039; he said &039;Yes, he was planning a book on the McGilchrists, with special reference to the curse&039; And his s from nowhere, fanned my cheek &039;The curse? My family hada curse?&039;

He nodded &039;Oh, yes Not the classical sort of curse, by any ht so Perhaps he wasn&039;t really serious about it at first, but towards the end-&039;

&039;I think I knohat you mean,&039; I said &039;I re, by thrombosis My mother mentioned them on her own deathbed A curse on the McGilchrists, she said, on the old house&039;

Again Asquith nodded, and finally he continued &039;Well, your uncle had been collecting material for many years, I suspect since the death of your father; from local archives, historical annals, various chronicles, church records, military museums, and so on He had even enlisted our aid, on occasion, in finding this or that old docuo, you see, and we&039;ve had many McGilchrists as clients

&039;As I&039;ve said, up to a tio, he was as hale and hearty a ary, Roend He brought back ed man He had become, in a matter of weeks, the o on March 22nd, he left his will in our hands, an additional set of instructions for us to follow in the event you couldn&039;t be found, and the sealed envelope which he ive that to you in a illie returned to Temple House from a short holiday-&039;

&039;He found my uncle dead,&039; I finished it for hie circumstances?&039;

&039;For a man of his years to die of a heart attack " Asquith shook his head &039;He wasn&039;t old

What? - an outdoors un, with both barrels discharged, and the spent cartridges lying at his feet just outside the porch? What had he fired at, eh, in the dead of night? And the look on his face - monstrous!&039;

&039;You saw him?&039;

&039;Oh, yes That was part of our instructions; I was to see him And not just myself but Mr Lee also And the doctor, of course, who declared it could only have been a heart attack But then there was the post-mortem That was also part of your uncle&039;s instructions&039;

&039;And its findings?&039; I quietly asked

&039;Why, that was the reason he wanted the autopsy, do you see? So that we should knoas in good health&039;

&039;No heart attack?&039;

&039;No,&039; he shook his head, &039;not him But dead, certainly And that look on his face, Mr McGilchrist - that terrible, pleading look in his wide, wide eyes&039;

3 The House

Half an hour later I left Mr Asquith in his office and saw h the anteroorey castle In the interiiven its contents a cursory scrutiny, but I intended to study them minutely at my earliest convenience

I had also offered to let Asquith see the contents, only to have hi, he said, for my eyes only Then he had asked me what I intended to do now, and I had answered that I would go to Temple House and take up temporary residence there He then produced the keys, assured me of the firm&039;s interest in my business - its complete confidentiality and its readiness to provide assistance should I need it - and badeon the esplanade wall and gazing out over the city Directly below his position the castle rock fell away for hundreds of feet to a busy road that wound round and down and into thethe city centre He started when I took hold of his arht This fantastic view; I&039;ve already stored away a dozen sketches in my head Great!&039; Then he saw ? You don&039;t quite look yourself&039;

As we h place I told hi with Asquith and all that had passed between us, so that by the time we found a cab (a &039;taxi&039;) and had ourselves driven to an auto hi a car and driving out to Teh with Carl driving our Range Rover at a leisurely pace, and within three-quarters of an hour turned right off the main road onto a narrow strip whose half-ht as an arroard the loorey dorown shale to cast their sooty, mid-afternoon shadows over lesser mounds, fields and strearew tiny in the frowning presence of the hills

I was following a s station (a &039;garage&039;), for of course the district was co Scotland - and protected by erated fears at that, which hardly ever let ht - I had never been allowed to stray very far froain the nauedead

Now the road narrowedround a rocky spur

The ground rose up beyond the spur and forully or re-entry which guarded Temple House lay on the far side of this final rise I knew that e reached the crest the house would coe Rover&039;s wheels bit into the cinder surface of the track

&039;There she is!&039; cried Carl as first the eaves of the place becareystone walls, and finally the entire frontage where it projected froully&039;s wall And now, as we accelerated down the slight decline and turned right to follow a course running parallel to the stream, the whole house cae old house in the silent gully, where no birds ever flew and not even a rabbit had been seen to sport in the long wild grass

&039;Hey!&039; Carl cried, his voice full of enthusiasm &039;And your uncle wanted this place pulled down?

What in hell for? It&039;s beautiful - and it must be worth a fortune!&039;

&039;I shouldn&039;t think so,&039; I answered &039;It et inside Its foundations aterlogged twenty years ago There were always six inches of water in the cellar, and the panels of the lower rooms were mouldy even then God only knohat it must be like now!&039;

&039;Does it look the way you remember it?&039; he asked

&039;Not quite,&039; I frowned &039;Seen through the eyes of an adult, there are differences&039;

For one thing, the pool was different The level of the water was lower, so that the wide, grass-groall of the daotten about the dam, without which the pool could not exist, or at best would be the merest pebble-bottomed pool and not the small lake which it noas For the first time it dawned on me that the pool was artificial, not natural as I had always thought of it, and that Te mound where it extended to the steep shale cliff of the defile itself

With a skidding of loose chippings, Carl took the Range Rover up the ramp that formed the drive to the house, and a h-arched porch We dis away - alht - into cool roo back tothe atmosphere of the old place, just inside the doorway to the house proper

&039;But this is /&039; he cried from somewhere &039;This is for me! My studio, and no question Coood light You&039;re right about the damp, I can feel it - but that aside, it&039;s perfect&039;

I found hiolden clouds of dust he had stirred up, motes illumined by the sun&039;s rays where they struck into the rooive the place a good dusting and sweeping out,&039; I told him

&039;Oh, sure,&039; he answered, &039;but there&039;s a lot wants doing before that Do you knohere the master switch is?&039;

&039;Uht,&039; he frowned impatiently at me &039;And surely there&039;s an icebox in the kitchen&039;

&039;A refrigerator?&039; I answered &039;Oh, yes, I&039;m sure there isLook, you run around and explore the place and do whateverto potter about and try to waken a few old drea the next hour or thile I quite literally &039;pottered about&039; and faain with this old house so full of memories - Carl fixed himself up with a bed in his &039;studio,&039; found the , exaerator and satisfied hi order, then searched any-panelled study upstairs to tellinto Penicuik to stock up with food

Froo, until the cloud of dust thrown up by his wheels disappeared over the rise to the south, then stirred s to be done - things I must do for myself, others for my uncle - and the sooner I started the better Not that there was any lack of time; I had three whole months to carry out Gavin McGilchrist&039;s instructions, or to fail to carry the of urgency inshadows, took out the envelope left for me by my uncle - that envelope whose contents, a letter and a notebook, were for enerations of McGilchrists, and began to read

4 The Curse

&039;My dear, dear nephew,&039; the letter in an,&039;-so much I would like to say to you and so little tirown in between since last I saw you

&039;When first you left Scotland with your h her, but she forbade it In early 1970 I learned of her death, so that even my condolences would have been six months too late; well, you have them now She was a wonderful woht to take you away out of it all If I&039;ht in what I now suspect, her woman&039;s intuition will yet prove to have been nearer the uessed, and-

&039;But there I go,as usual; and such a lot to say Except - I&039;in! I suppose the plain fact of the matter is quite si this is for onewher?, and how to explain?

&039;The fact is, I cannot tell it all, not and make it believable Not the way I have come to believe it Instead you will have to be satisfied with the barest essentials The rest you can discover for yourself There are books in the old library that tell it all - if a man has the patience to look And if he&039;s capable of putting aside all ic; capable of unlearning all that life has ever taught hio eren&039;t such a race of da witches in these parts then, and if they had suspected of anyone what I have corounds

&039;Your mother may not have mentioned the curse - the curse of the McGilchrists Oh, she believed in it, certainly, but it&039;s possible she thought that to tell of ityou she ht, for unless my death is seen to be entirely natural, then certainly I shall have brought it down upon myself

&039;And what of you, Nephew?

&039;You have three uaranteed Even three , but I pray not Of course you are at liberty, if you so desire, si over and done with In ht-hand drawer of my desk, you will find sufficient fuses and explosivedown the wall of the defile on to the house, and the house itself into the pool, which should satisfactorily put an end to the thing

&039;Butyou had an enquiring mind as a child If you look where I have looked and read what I have read, then you shall learn what I&039;ve learned and know that it is neither advanced senility nor ence which leads me to the one, inescapable conclusion - that this House of the Temple, this Temple House of the McGilchrists, is accursed Most terribly

&039;I could flee this place, of course, but I doubt if that would save me And if it did save me, still it would leave the final questions unanswered and the riddle unsolved Also, I loved my brother, your father, and I saw his face when he was dead If for nothing else, that look on your father&039;s dead face has been sufficient reason for ht to seek it out, to know it, destroy it - but now

&039;I have never been ious man, Nephew, and so it comes doubly hard for me to say what I now say: that while your father is dead these twenty years andif he is truly at rest! And ill be the look onis over, one way or the other? Ask about that, Nephew, ask how / looked when they found me

&039;Finally, as to your course of action from this point onward: do what you will, but in the last event be sure you bring about the utter dissolution of the seat of ancient evil known as Tereat deserts and mountains of the world, and others sunken under the deepest oceans, which never were meant to exist in any sane or ordered universe Yes, and certain revenants of i men One such has anchored itself here in the Pentlands, and in a little while I oes wellBut then you should not be reading this

And so the rest is up to you, John Hamish; and if indeed man has an immortal soul, I now place mine in your hands Do what must be done and if you are a believer, then say a prayer forUncle- Gavin McGilchrist&039;

I read the letter through a second tithened beyond the reach of the study&039;s electric lights Finally, I turned to the notebook - a sliht be purchased at any stationery store - and opened it to page upon page of scrawled and at first glance sees, references, abbreviated notes and ic? Witchcraft? The &039;supernatural&039;? But what else would you call a curse if not supernatural?

Well, my uncle had mentioned a puzzle, ahe had tracked down almost to the finish And here were all the pointers, the clues, the keys to his years of research I stared at the great bookcases lining the walls, the leather spines of their contents dully agleahts Asquith had told htabroad

I stood up and felt ed to lean on the desk until the feeling passed The mustiness of the deserted house, I supposed, the closeness of the room and the odour of old books Booksyes and I ers over titles rubbed and faded with age and wear There orks here which seemed to stir faint memories - perhaps I had been allowed to play with those books as a child? - but others were ale to the place, whose titles alone wouldturned These must be those volumes my uncle had discovered abroad I frowned as I tried toof their less than commonplace names

Here were such works as the German Vnter-Zee Kulten and Feery&039;s Notes on the Necronomicon in a French edition; and here Gaston le Fe&039;s Dwellers in the Depths and a black-bound, iron-hasped copy of the Cthdat Aquadingen, its harsh title suggestive of both German and Latin roots Here was Gantley&039;s Hydrophinnae, and here the Liber Miraculorem of the Monk and Chaplain Herbert of Clair-vaux Gothic letters proclaimed of one volume that it was Prinn&039;s De Vermis Mysteriis, while another purported to be the suppressed and hideously disquieting Unaussprechlichen Kulten of von Junzt - titles which seemed to leap at me asstupefaction

What possible connection could there be between these ancient, foreign volumes of elder madness and deliriuentlemen, officers and scholars?

There see a book at randoen and returned with it to the desk The light outside was failing now and the shadows of the hills were long and sooty In less than an hour it would be dusk, and half an hour after that, dark

Then there would only be Carl and I, and the night And the old house As if in answer to unspoken thoughts, settling tih the n below in the sharp shadows of the house, the dull green glint of water caught ht and the old house-

And the deep, dark pool

5 The Music

It was almost completely dark by the time Carl returned, but in between I had at least been able to discover my uncle&039;s system of reference It was quite elementary, really In his notebook, references such as &039;CA 121/7&039; sien, page 121, the seventh paragraph And in the work itself he had carefully underscored all such paragraphs or ite the Cthdat Aquadingen occurred in his notebook, and as night had drawn on I had exaless to lyph completely beyond lish which I could transcribe with comparative ease One such, which seemed a chant of sorts, had a brief annotation scrawled in the e I refer to, as nearly as I can remember, went like this: Rise, O Na, Through Thy Spells & Thy Magic, Through Dreams & Enchantry, May know Thou art come They rush to Thy Pleasure, For the Love of Thy Masters- -the Spawn of Cthulhu

And the acco annotation queried: &039;Would they have used such as this to call the Thing forth, I wonder, or was it simply a blood lure? What causes it to come forth now? When will it next co references and text in this fashion that I began to get a gli its title I saw that I had probably guessed correctly &039;Cthaat&039; frankly baffledof the pre-Nacaal Kthatans; but &039;Aquadingen&039; was far less alien in its sound and fors&039;, or &039;things of the waters&039;; and the - Cthaat Aquadingen was quite si water sprites, nymphs, demons, naiads and other supernatural creatures of lakes and oceans, and the spells or conjurations by which they ht be evoked or called out of their watery haunts

I had just arrived at this conclusion when Carl returned, the lights of his vehicle cutting a bright swath over the dark surface of the pool as he parked in front of the porch Laden down, he entered the house and I went down to the spacious if so shelves and cupboards and stocking the refrigerator with perishables This done, bright and breezy in his enthusiasm, he enquired about the radio

&039;Radio?&039; I answered T thought your prime concern was for peace and quiet? Why, you&039;ve ot here!&039;

&039;No, no,&039; he said &039;It&039;s not my noise I&039;m concerned about, but yours Or rather, the radio&039;s I mean, you&039;ve obviously found one for I heard theif ever I saw one, and quite capable of displaying a Viking&039;s te when he asked&039;Are you playing games with me, John?&039;

&039;No, of course I&039;m not,&039; I answered him &039;Nohat&039;s all this about? What htened and he snapped his fingers &039;There&039;s a radio in the Range Rover,&039; he said &039;There has to be It etting Bucharest or soo back outside

&039;Bucharest?&039; I repeated him

&039;Hypsyish stuff Ta around campfires Look, I&039;d better switch it off or the battery will run down&039;

&039;I didn&039;t see a radio,&039; I told hih the porch and on to the drive

He leaned inside the front of the vehicle, switched on the interior light and searched ht out with an emphatic click He turned to me and his jaw had a stubborn set to it I looked back at him and raised my eyebrows &039;No radio?&039;

He shook his head &039;But I heard the music&039;

&039;Lovers,&039; I said

&039;Eh?&039;

&039;Lovers, out walking A transistor radio Perhaps they were sitting in the grass After all, it is a beautiful suain he shook his head &039;No, it was right there in the air Sweet and clear I heard it as I approached the house It ca?&039;

&039;Nothing,&039; I answered, shaking my head

&039;Well then - darinned &039;I&039;ve started hearing things, that&039;s all! Skip itCome on, let&039;s have supper&039;

Carl stuck to his &039;studio&039; bedroom but I slept upstairs in a room adjacent to the study Even with the s throide open, the night was very warm and the atmosphere sticky, so that sleep did not come easily

Carl must have found a similar problem for on two or three occasions I awakened fro about downstairs In theover breakfast both of us were a little bleary-eyed, but then he led h into his room to display the reason for his nocturnal activity

There on the ht with him, Carl had started work on a pictureof sorts

For the present he had done little round, which was clearly the valley of the house, but the house itself wasfrom the picture and I could see that the artist did not intend to include it The pool was there, however, with its encircling ring of quartz columns complete and finished with lintels of a like lowed luures writhed, at present insubstantial as sround the flames of a small fire were driven on a wind that blew from across the pool

Taken as a whole and for all its sketchiness, the scene gave a vivid ie indeed considering that as yet there seemed to be so little in it to excite any sort of emotion whatever

&039;Well,&039; said Carl, his voice a trifle edgy, &039;what do you think?&039;

I&039;m no artist, Carl,&039; I answered, which I suppose in the circu too much

&039;You don&039;t like it?&039; he sounded disappointed