Yet, in direct opposition to all my brother’s glib explanations, that night was the worst; for Julian gibbered and moaned in his sleep, making itimpossible for me to get any rest at all; so that when I arose, haggard and withdrawn, late on the morning of the 13th, I knew I would soon have to take some definite action.
I saw Julian only fleetingly that morning, on his way from his room to the cellar, and his face seemed pale and cadaverous. I guessed that his dreams were having as bad an effect upon him as they were on me; yet rather than appearing tired or hag-ridden he seemed to be in the grip of some feverish excitement.
Now I became more worried than ever and even scribbled two letters to Dr. Stewart, only later to ball them up and throw them away. If Julian was genuine in whatever he was doing, I did not want to spoil his faith in me—what little of it was left—and if he was not genuine? I was becoming morbidly curious to learn the outcome of his weird activities. None the less, twice that day, at noon and later in the evening, when as usual my fears got the better of me, I hammered at the cellar door demanding to know what was going on in there. My brother completely ignored these efforts of mine at communication, but I was determined to speak to him. When he finally came out of the cellar, much later that night, I was waiting for him at the door. He turned the key in the lock behind him, carefully shielding the cellar’s contents from my view, and regarded me curiously from behind those horrid dark glasses before offering me the merest parody of a smile.
“Phillip, you’ve been very patient with me,” he said, taking my elbow and leading me up the cellar steps, “and I know I must have seemed to be acting quite strangely and inexplicably. It’s all very simple really, but for the moment I can’t explain just what I’m about. You’ll just have to keep faith with me and wait. If you’re worried that I’m heading for another bout of, well, trouble—you can forget it. I’m perfectly all right. I just need a little more time to finish off what I’m doing—and then, the day after tomorrow, I’ll take you in there”—he nodded over his shoulder—“into the cellar, and show you what I’ve got. All I ask is that you’re patient for just one more day. Believe me, Phillip, you’ve got a revelation coming which will shake you to your very roots; and afterwards—you’ll understand everything. Don’t ask me to explain it all now—you wouldn’t believe it! But seeing is believing, and when I take you in there you’ll be able to see for yourself.”
He seemed so reasonable, so sensible—if a trifle feverish—and so excited, almost like a child about to show off some new toy. Wanting to believe him, I allowed myself to be easily talked around and we went off together to eat a late meal.
• • •
Julian spent the morning of the 14th transferring all his notes—great sheaves of them which I had never suspected existed—together with odds and ends in small cardboard boxes, from his room to the cellar. After a meagre lunch he was off to the library to “do some final checking” and to return a number of books lately borrowed. While he was out I went down to the cellar—only to discover that he had locked the door and taken the key with him. He returned and spent the entire afternoon locked in down there, to emerge later at night looking strangely elated. Still later, after I had retired to my room, he came and knocked on my door.
“The night is exceptionally clear, Phillip, and I thought I’d have a look at the sky…the stars have always fascinated me, you know? But the window in my room doesn’t really show them off too well; I’d appreciate it if you’d allow me to sit in here and look out for a while?”
“By all means do, old fellow, come on in,” I answered, agreeably surprised. I left my easy chair and went to stand beside him after he crossed the room to lean on the windowsill. He peered through those strange, dark lenses up and out into the night. He was, I could see, intently studying the constellations, and as I glanced from the sky to his face I mused aloud: “Looking up there, one is almost given to believe that the stars have some purpose other than merely making the night look pretty.”
Abruptly my brother’s manner changed. “What d’you mean by that?” He snapped, staring at me in an obviously suspicious fashion. I was taken aback. My remark had been completely innocuous.
“I mean that perhaps those old astrologers had something after all,” I answered.
“Astrology is an ancient and exact science, Phillip—you shouldn’t talk of it so lightly.” He spoke slowly, as though restraining himself from some outburst. Something warned me to keep quiet, so I said no more. Five minutes later he left. Pondering my brother’s odd manner, I sat there a while longer; and, as I looked up at the stars winking through the window across the room, I could not help but recall a few of those words he had mumbled in the darkness of my bedroom so long ago at the onset of his breakdown. He had said:
“That in time, when the stars are right, they may perform the Great Rising…”
There was no sleep at all for me that night; the noises and mutterings, the mouthings and gibberings which came, loud and clear, from Julian’s room would not permit it. In his sleep he talked of such eldritch and inexplicable things as the Deep Green Waste, the Scarlet Feaster, the Chained Shoggoth, the Lurker at the Threshold, Yibb-Tstll, Tsathoggua, the Cosmic Screams, the Lips of Bugg-Shash, and the Inhabitants of the Frozen Chasm. Towards morning, out of sheer exhaustion, I eventually nodded off into evil dreams which claimed my troubled subconscious until I awoke shortly before noon on the 15th.
Julian was already in the cellar, and as soon as I had washed and dressed, remembering his promise to “show me” what he had got, I started off down there. But at the top of the cellar steps my feet were suddenly arrested by the metallic clack of the letter-box flap in the front door of the house.
The diary!
Unreasonably fearing that Julian might also have heard the noise, I raced back along the passage to the door, snatched up the small stamped and addressed brown-paper parcel which lay on the inside door-mat, and fled with the thing to my room. I locked myself in and ripped open the parcel. I had tried Julian’s door earlier and knew it to be unlocked. Now I planned to go in and drop the diary down behind the headboard of his bed while he was still in the cellar. In this way he might be led to believe he had merely misplaced the book. But, after laying aside the diary to pick up and read the stapled sheets which had fallen loose and fluttered to the floor, I forgot all about my planned deception in the dawning knowledge of my brother’s obvious impending insanity. Walmsley had done as he had promised. I cast his brief, eagerly enquiring letter aside and quickly, in growing horror, read his translation of Julian’s cryptical notes. It was all there, all the proof I needed, in neat partially annotated paragraphs; but I did not need to read it all. Certain words and phrases, lines and sentences, seemed to leap upon the paper, attracting my frantically searching eyes: