On his next visit to Hell one hour later, Martin Spellman tried to talk to the basement ward’s three or four occasionally articulate inmates; to no avail. Even Larner would have nothing to do with him. And yet the student nurse seemed somehow to detect an air of satisfaction; a peculiar feeling of security flowed out quite tangibly from behind those locked doors and padded walls….
• • •
For at least a week after the incident with Barstowe, Spellman felt tempted to mention the man’s odd ways to Dr. Welford; and yet he did not wish to cause Barstowe any real harm. After all, he had no genuine proof that the man was not carrying out his duties in anything other than a proper manner, and the fact that he carried a stick with him whenever he visited the basement ward could hardly be called conclusive evidence of any unprofessional intent; there was no way at all in which Barstowe could put his weapon to any use. It seemed purely and simply that the man was a rather nasty coward and nothing more—someone to be avoided and ignored, certainly, but not really worth bothering oneself about.
Beside, things were bad at that time; Spellman did not want a jobless Barstowe on his conscience. He did ask one or two discreet questions of the other nurses, however, and while it appeared that none of them particularly cared much for Barstowe, it was likewise evident that no one considered him especially evil or even a bad nurse. And so Spellman dismissed the matter….
• • •
Towards the end of November Spellman first heard the news of Barstowe’s projected move into “living-in” quarters; apparently the landlady with whom the squat man lodged was expecting her son home from abroad and needed Barstowe’s room. Only a few days later the unpleasant possibility became reality when the oddly offensive nurse did indeed move into one of the four ground-floor flatlets; and he had hardly settled in when, at the very end of a month, the first hint of the horror came to Oakdeene.
It happened in the small hours of the morning following one of those rare evenings when, unable to endure his surroundings for another night without a break of some sort, Martin Spellman had allowed himself to be persuaded by Harold Moody to go down into Oakdeene village for a drink. Martin was not a drinking man and his limit was usually only three or four beers, but that night he felt “in the mood,” and the result was that when he and Moody got back to the sanatorium just before midnight he was more than amply prepared for his bed.
It was, too, the beer that saved Martin Spellman from possible involvement when the horror came, for at any other time the hideous screams and demented shrieks from the basement ward would most certainly have shocked him from sleep. As it was, he missed all the “excitement,” as Harold Moody had it the next morning when he went into the student’s room to shake him awake.
The “excitement” was that four hours earlier, at about three in the morning, one of Hell’s worst inhabitants had died after throwing a particularly horrible fit. During his attack the man, one Gordon Merritt, a hopeless lunatic for twenty years, had somehow contrived to gouge out one of his own eyes!
It was only later that Spellman thought to enquire which of the nurses had been unfortunate enough to be on duty when Merritt took his last, fatal fit; and an almost subconscious tremor of strange apprehension went through him when he was told that it had been Barstowe!
• • •
For the two weeks following Merritt’s death Barstowe kept very much to himself; much more than ever before, and he had never been much of a mixer. In fact, had he not known better, Spellman might never have suspected that Barstowe was “living-in” at all. The truth was that the directors of Oakdeene had been far from happy at the enquiry, and it was thought that the squat nurse had been given a sound dressing down—something about his responses to the situation on the night of the incident being inefficient and altogether too slow. The general belief seemed to be that Merritt’s seizure might well have been avoided if Barstowe had been a bit “quicker off the mark”….
On the 13th December Spellman again found himself on nightduty, and once more it was his hourly lot to have to patrol the ward called Hell. Until that time he had never realized that there existed in his subconscious the slightest intention of trying to discover more details of the facts surrounding Merritt’s death—he only knew that something had been bothering him for far too long and that there were certain things he would like to know—and yet, on his first visit to the basement ward, he went straight to Larner’s cell and called the man to the spy-hole.
The cells were constructed in such a way as to make every interior corner visible from those small, barred windows; that is to say that each cell was wedge-shaped, with the “sharp” end of the wedge formed by the door itself. Larner had been lying on his bed at the far end of the cell staring silently at the ceiling when Spellman called out to him, but he quickly got up and went to the door on identifying his caller.
“Larner,” Spellman quietly questioned as soon as the other had greeted him, “—what happened to Merritt? Was it—was it the way they say, or—? Tell me what happened, will you?”
“Nurse Spellman, would you do me a great favor?” Larner apparently had not heard the student’s question—or perhaps, Spellman thought, he had simply chosen to ignore it!
“A favor? If I can, Larner—what is it you want me to do?”
“There is a matter of justice to be attended to!” the lunatic suddenly blurted out, so suddenly, with such urgency—with something so very akin to fervor in his voice—that the young nurse took a quick step back from the cell door.
“Justice, Larner ? Whatever do you mean?”
“Justice, yes!” The man peered out at Spellman through the bars, blinking rapidly, nervously as he spoke. And then, in the manner of certain lunatics, he abruptly changed the subject. “Dr. Welford has mentioned how you find the Cthaat Aquadingen of interest. I, too, once found it a very interesting work—but for a long time now the book has not been available to me. I suppose they believe its contents to be…well, ‘not in my best interests.’ Perhaps they’re right, I’m not sure. It’s true that the Cthaat Aquadingen put me in here. Oh, that’s true—quite definitely—yes, that’s why I’m here. I read the Sixth Sathlatta far too often, you see? I almost broke down the barrier completely. I mean, it’s all very well to see Yibb-Tstll in dreams—you can stand that much at least—but to have him breaking through the barrier!…Ah! There’s a monstrous thought. To have him breaking through—uncontrolled!”
As Larner spoke, something he said rang a bell in the student’s mind. Spellman had glimpsed in his brief scanning of the contents of the madman’s book a passage or two containing certain chants or invocations, the Sathlattae, and he made a mental note that later he must go back to that strange volume and discover whatever he could of them…and also of this— creature?—Yibb-Tstll.
But then, speaking again, Larner broke into his thoughts; and again the lunatic’s expression had changed, his eyes being wide and steady now in his white face. “Well, nurse Spellman, would it be possible for you to—to do me a little harmless service?”
“You’ll have to say what it is first.”
“Quite simply—I’d like you to make me a copy of the Sixth Sathlatta from the Cthaat Aquadingen, and bring it to me. No harm in that, is there?”
Spellman frowned: “But haven’t you just this moment blamed your being here on that very book?”
“Ah!” Larner made to explain. “But then I didn’t know what I was doing. It’s different now—except I can’t remember how the thing goes: the Sixth Sathlatta, I mean. It’s been almost ten years….”