dreams in the plush house

8/14/2019 Dreams in the Plush House

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Dreams In the Plush House

From the notebooks of H.P.Lushcraft, edited and re-typedby Simon Barber.

It is true what they say: that I have blasted the body of mybest friend to its constituent atoms with a colossal charge of

aluminised RDX high explosive - one great enough to break thewindows of the nearest cottage, three miles away on that lonely moorwhere the deed was done. But it had to be: I pray to the gods of theouter dimensions that it was enough, and that it was done in time !For otherwise I shall be seeing Josiah Mytholmroyd again, and I willrecognise him despite what he has become.

Josiah was an artist: I was an engineer, though since cubhoodwe had been the closest of friends despite our differing natures. Wegrew up together in the small grey-stone town of Osgaholme, tuckedbeneath a wing of the towering moor that writhed its stone-thewedway up to the Border and the newly rebuilt wall that Hadrian firstbuilt two centuries before. Both our families were of that place:

bloodlines ran long and deep rooted, back to the days when theNorthland was home to species now long extinct. In my caninefeatures and his there was the proud "Osgaholme Look", the slightlyreptilian cast to the features that was the gift of many bolddamsels who sought out dragons in their lairs. Both of us have bonynodules under our fur, where our long-distant ancestors boresplendid spinal crests.

But it was no shadow out of the past that stretched out itspadded paws to seize my friend. Indeed, we had both left the clearair of our native town, with its cheerful priestesses and healthyopen-air ceremonies each season on the great stones of the moortop.To the South we both fared, to start our careers in the wider world.And for two years we scarcely saw each other, he to his Art and me

to study Vague Engineering (a variation of Precision Engineering,but more laid-back.) Letters became fewer and more routine as ourschedules filled, until it had been six months since we had spoken.

The telephone rang in the small hours of the morning. I hadretired what seemed like a few minutes earlier, after a full eveningat the local pub, the Merry Terrorist. My head swam as I reachedtowards the shrilling phone, ready to pour wide-awake invective downthe optic fibre for anything less than a full emergency.

"Helmsley," came a gasp. "Now.... or it'll be too late....".There was a heaving, gasping sound, as if he had just run amarathon, and his tongue was hanging out in heat stress. For Irecognised Josiah's voice at once, despite the strange - change -

that seemed to have come over it. "You MUST come. You know the place? The one I told you about in the last letter ... the new house ...the one I was doing so well in ..." He broke down, and again camethat odd gasping breath.

I looked at my watch: three ten a.m. Outside the window wasflowing with icy rain: the address in my databook translated asthirty miles away. But my ears went down like our wolven ancestors'at the scent of a lurking sabretooth as I recalled what I had almostforgotten: Josiah was not a late-night person.

"Stay there," I said firmly. "I'll be right over."


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Half an hour later, the wheels of my trike hissed on the wettarmac outside an unfamiliar house. Despite the urgency of thesummons, I took a minute to calm my nerves and look around at thesleeping street under the orange late-night glow. Rain hissed andspat on the white-hot expansion nozzle of the bike: tarmac burnedwith a fatty crackle as the hydrogen peroxide seeped out of thehairline crack in the T-Stoff line that I had been meaning to fixfor a week now.

Josiah had rented the odd house of the street. Number Twenty Awas unlike the others, unlike the stout grey stone houses thatreminded me of home.

Gods, but the place was new ! I shuddered at the raw barenessof the place, its ageless angles grated hard against mysensibilities. Unknown centuries had passed, long years of brooding,stony silence had lain on this land - before ever this place wasbuilt.

"It must date back only to the nineteen-seventies..." Iregarded the PVC framed windows with horror. "Gods! That's only afew generations... there's folk who saw this place built, who'restill alive ...". I steeled myself, and strode towards that dreadportal of veneered chipboard that loomed featurelessly before me.

Some doors I knew had the calming passage of Time graven on them, inreassuring shell scrapes, or the long-since rusted dots where afoe's flayed hide had been nailed there in the carefree days on old.

I knocked, suppressing a shudder at the thin boom my scale-knuckled paw made on the twentieth-century thing. The knocker was ofplastic, not yet even blushing with the decades. Above me, thereproduction carriage lamps glowered down mockingly. There was noteven the familiar looming shadow of a Gambrel roof to break themonotony.

Footsteps answered, slow, dragging steps that seemed to takeeternity to reach the door. With a soundless sweep of stainlesssteel hinges forged in the dread smithies of Taiwan, the dooropened.

"Helmsley..." the voice was a strangled tone, thick-soundingand muffled through a thick hood: I could barely see his face. Onlyhis eyes were visible, and I realised he was wrapped in bandagesalmost like one of the mummified felines folk dig up in Aegypt, tillthe funereal deities get annoyed and make them put them back "Youcame ... but .. I ... I didn't dare bring you into this before ...bring anybody in ... but it'll happen anyway .. got to be stopped.."His voice was rising and falling in odd jerks, as if it wanted to bea high-pitched squeal, that he was forcing back to some semblance ofnormality. "You, I can trust ... this has to be ... ended. Here."

"Jose!" I grabbed him as he staggered: he flinched away,shrinking from my touch. In that one instant, he had felt oddlysoft, as if his fur had got much thicker beneath the robes than I

remembered. "What's wrong ? You sound terrible - I'll get a doctor.""No !" For a second his voice was strong. Then he pulled the

door shut on the night, and I shivered as I looked around the room.Josiah had told me about the "fantastic inspirations" he had

been getting in the place he had rented so cheaply. But his noteshad soon become guarded, and the last few had only wanted to talkover old times back in the North country.

There was something strange about the room. I looked around, myfur rising under my clothes. It was nothing the eye could reallyfocus on - but there was a bizarre sensation that the angles of thefloor and walls all came together in exact ninety degree joints, as


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if the architect had been wholly ignorant of the wonderful spatialdislocations a real house had - or had chosen to deliberatelysuppress them.

Josiah slumped on a sofa, which seemed almost as new as thehouse itself. "The whole thing is," he said wearily "that is there'salmost nothing definite and concrete I can tell you - it's alldamnable hints, and suggestions, and coincidences. But .. I'll haveto start at the beginning."

He stared around the room, its plasterboard walls seeming toleer mockingly at us. "The place was cheap, you know that. I wantedsomewhere near Town - with plenty of room to work in. The Agent sentme the keys, and told me to look round - there was something in hervoice I didn't like. But, it WAS cheap."

"I first saw the place in sunlight, bright sunlight. It's anice neighbourhood: you've seen the houses around it ? When I gotthere the place was - well, it was as if it was just waiting for me.I didn't mind it not having any of the usual features - you can getprivate firms to dig tunnels and such, install secret doors andclose off attic rooms, no problem. So I came in - and I stayed."

He gave a shudder. "It all went unbelievably well at first. Yourecall that piece I told you about, the three by four metre

tryptich, "The Feaster From The Dark ?" I finished that in two weeksflat, working here. I sold it, too - and I decided to take a longlease on the property. Then I really started to work."

He rose, and shuffled towards a wholly rectangular door, thatled into a dining room. As I followed, I noticed something odd abouthis gait, as if he was wearing shoes that were far too big for him -and again I wondered about why he covered up so. He stopped in thecentre of the room.

"You remember how I used to have to go to bed early, I justcouldn't stay awake after midnight ? Played havoc with most of thetemple services, I know. Oh, the caffeine and Benzedrine I used toget through....... but that all changed. I found myself painting upto all hours. It was - different. I'd sort of half fall asleep, but

my hand kept working - sometimes I'd just wake up, and find myselfon the floor. Always - there." He pointed to a spot in the corner ofthe room, by the window. Looking closely, I saw that the peculiarlypink nylon carpet was scuffed and worn away, despite being well awayfrom where you might expect anyone to walk.

As I turned round to face him, out of the corner of my eye Ialmost saw something. You know, those stop-motion films, where yousee plants blossoming in seconds ? Imagine if you filmed a wetblanket covered in cress seeds, sprouting stealthily in thedarkness, white groping tendrils reaching up. Searching. It was likethat - but nothing actually moved. Nothing actually happened. Onlythe .... the sensation, of how it would be, if it very silently andsuddenly began to move.

Josiah stopped, and from beneath his hood he fixed me with ableak, penetrating gaze. "You saw it too ? That's the spot I keepfinding myself drawn to - I go to bed upstairs, and wake up there.And the Dreams ......"

"Sometimes it's not so bad. I'm walking through a landscape,and it's like a badly developed film. All the colours are just thatbit off - there's nobody there. But sometimes - there is." Hegrabbed my wrist, and almost dragged me out of the room, slammingthe door shut. I noticed that he left the light shining brightly onthat place.

"I dream, Helmsley, but it's not LIKE a dream ! I see -


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rounded, soft things, and the colours they have - it's nothing likeI've seen in any sane five dimensions. They .... they squeak."

"Squeak ?" I felt the fur on the back of my neck beginning tobristle. He nodded.

"And there's a castle. It looks all right from a distance -full of underground passages, dug right into the earth - thegargoyles, even, look fine till you come right up to them. And thegeometry ..... is DIFFERENT. The ground floor is on scale, but the

upper stories - each one gets smaller as you climb, as you see fromthe outside. But from the inside, you know it's not really likethat. Each upper storey is angled further and further away from ourreality, so the topmost tower looks as if it's a kilometre away -and it is. But not in the place you think !"

"It was only last week, the dreams changed. I found myselfgoing right into the castle. The walls are pastel hues, and thegreat and terrible stairways are of injection-moulded plastic. Itwas full of sounds. Squeaks, and giggles, and a horrible softbumping noise from behind the locked doorways. Higher, every time Iwent higher - and then I was almost at the top. There was a barredgate, and something beyond it - something I just had to have. It wasas if hundreds of people were standing right behind me invisibly,

holding their breaths - all looking expectantly at my back, willingme to go through the doorway. But I'm not going !"

He collapsed back in the chair. I expected to hear him pantingfor breath with emotion, but all I heard was the creak of the sofa.For a heartbeat's space, I felt that I was alone in the room - therewas such a terrible and total silence, between his words.

"You, Josiah, have GOT to get out of here." My ears dipped as Ifaced him. "I don't care how good it is for your art - this place iskilling you."

The figure on the couch gave a weak laugh. "Oh. Oh, don't Ijust wish that was all of it." There was that strange and utterbreathless silence. "If I go, it won't help me. I just know I'llfind myself back here again - They didn't say so, but I know, now.

And ...." he gestured to the bare walls. "When I knew you werecoming, I burned the works I'd made recently. They'd got into them,you see. And someone else will fall into the same trap - maybesomeone they can make more use of."

I sprang to my feet. "You can't Know that. Come away, now, andwe'll find a priestess - someone who'll know what to do." My gripwas firm on his shoulder - and then there came the horror thatcrashed my wetware completely, as for the first time in my life Ifainted dead away. For my grip had sunk deep into a spongy, softboneless mass, and dislodged the hood from that which had beenJosiah Mytholmroyd.

Fear had felled me, horror awakened me. There was a timeless

stretch, where I looked up at the light shining in my eyes. I was inthat room, that nylon-floored place where the corner lay unquiet onthe twentieth-century house. For an instant I lay petrified, thenjerked myself out of there with the urgency of an ant struggling outof a burning glass' focus.

"Josiah !" I shouted. There was no reply. From room to room Iraced, frantically searching - from ground floor to fibreglass-lagged loft, I was alone. Hurrying to the door, I saw that the firstglimmer of grey dawn was in the sky, and that my trike remainedfaithfully outside.

"He must be on foot," I told myself, then stopped, frozen once


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more in shock.The chain was still on the door. He had not left me that way -

and both the kitchenette door and all the windows were similarlybolted. But he was gone.

I left the house, first scouring it for evidence. In the gardenwas a burned mass of paper and plastic where he had destroyed someworks that he had recently produced. I stood there, the filthy scent

of burning plastic stinging my nose in the rain-wet dawn, andthought about our long friendship. Someone must know about this, Idecided - and I decided to find out.

The housing agent was being most cooperative, I decided, so Islackened the barbed wire holding him down. Normally, I managewithout the techniques I learned in the Cub Scouts, but most days mybest friend hasn't been taken by a force that someone let him walkright into without a word of warning.

"I'll talk ...." the hyena gasped, as I let go of his throat."The house is safe - there's not a physical thing wrong with it -there's nothing illegal about it..."

I gestured again with the soldering iron. He swallowed

nervously."But ... we've had trouble with it before," he hurried on

"Nobody stays for more than a few months, and there were a few -suicides. Not IN the house, but folk who'd just left it. Rathersuddenly. So, as a policy decision, we decided not to decrease itsrental potential by .." his voice ended in a shriek as I appliedpersuasion.

"I'd like whatever history you have on the place," My voice Iheld level, as I looked down at him. "And it'd better be everything- because if I find out you're holding back, I'll take you there andleave you. I'm sure you know where."

It's amazing what people can do for you, given the rightmotivation.

Back on the trike, I returned home to bath and eat, and tookstock. Just as I was finishing breakfast, there was the thump of theday's post arriving on the doorstep. I leafed through it - andfroze. The handwriting I recognised instantly, though the postmarkwas the day's before. Feeling through the packet, I recognised theshape of the strange diaries that Josiah had always used. Andopening it, I began to be afraid. Very afraid.

"January 12th. A dark day. Was working on epic scale "Devourerfrom The Blackness", when something odd happened. Part of the canvasseemed to grow translucent - as if I was holding it up to the light.But the view I can see is NOT what's on the real far side of this !

Will ask next door if their pentacle is leaking. Strange, though -looks quite unfamiliar. My model didn't see a thing. Felt ill atease all day."

"January 14th. Phone call from art sales director, demanding toknow why I'd changed the designs from that agreed. I told him Ihadn't - we argued for awhile. Went round to see him after lunch,full of righteous indignation.

Horrors. He's right. There is something there, peeking slylyround the back of the fifth ghoul on the left, that I didn't draw.But I did - the style's mine, and the rest of the composition seemsto have almost flinched away from it, as if the canvas had puckered


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up to let it squeeze into the picture. Apologised, and promised todraw more carrion over it to cover it up. Gave me quite a shiver.

Dreams again. Where from ?""January 20th. Woke up again in the corner, paint brushes still

wet, head aching like I'd had ten pints of Kreakstone's Kamikake.Thing on canvas. Goddess ! It's like nothing I've ever drawn before.Maybe primal memories seeping up from somewhere ? I looked at thecolours, and at my palette - and realised. I don't know how to

produce colour like that. Nobody does - I hope !""Jan.22 . Am played out with painting: nothing but things that

are best left undreamed of come out of my brushes. Decided to takeup sculpture instead: plenty of scrap metal around. Can use thepatio as workshop, and surely rusty steel can't be twisted into whatcomes into my dreams - and out of them !

Into town twice today. First time round, bought bigoxyacetylene cutting torch. The house seemed Happy, for the firsttime since New Year ! Realised I'd forgotten everything else I'dgone in to get. Torch is a bit big and clumsy for the job, but itwas an impulse buy. Saw it, just had to have it, you know ? I'm sureI'll find a use for it."

There was a break, where pages had been torn out. Only two moreentries were left in there - both dated yesterday. As I read them, Iwas struck by the deterioration - and more, the curiousTRANSFORMATION, of the handwriting. Had I not seen in that one soul-searing instant what doom had come at last to Josiah, I would bepuzzling about nervous diseases or other sane and explicable causes.But as I read, I understood.

"Feb. 15th they are almost here now. Last night I caught areflection in the mirror - right behind me ! Not when I turnedround, of course. That's how they do it. I should have guessed, lastweek. Every time I took up the torch to practice, I got bored - muchtoo quickly ! Attention span - they're breaking it up, I hear their

squeaking even now. And if I didn't use the torch, why was thecylinder half empty ? Or DID I use it ?

SHE comes to me every night now. There is no way of keeping herout. This place - she told me what it was built for, and what theyintended to do with it. The regular walls won't stop them - even thespecial wall was only meant to keep them from breaking through tilleverything was ready.

She is soft, all over. Except for her eyes, where she wearscontact lenses - I saw her without them, and even in the mirror....! From two dimensions to three .... into my dreams, into thepicture, feeding on being thought about. And last week I knew itwasn't a dream - there was pink fur on the sheets, I could stillscent where she'd lain. And I knew where they'd been before.

What was it that everyone in the last half of the twentiethcentury identified with ? From two dimensions then, into three. Andwhole temples reared to them in daylight, though nobody knew whatthey really were. But I found out. Goddess, but didn't I just ! Thetemple in Europe was destroyed, but there were - backups created, insecret, where they could come through again, as soon as theygathered strength.

She says they're strong again. But they want to keep some ofus, just the way we are. She says I'll be one of them soon, and I'llgo down and wait - until I can open the Gate for them. That's why Ican't leave - I'm mostly made of the same stuff they are now, have


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to stay near the Opening like a plant in sunlight. Even though it'snot sunlight, and it's coming from below."

Feb 15th - afternoon. It's getting dark outside. I didn't thinkit'd happen so fast - the change is accelerating ! It won't be inthe corner of the room I wake up tomorrow - and it won't really beme, any more. Helmsley will know what to do .... ask Hepworth forthe picture, so he'll SEE."

There was only a scrawl at the bottom: it was undated.

"Helmsley - for the sake of everything, if it's not me you talkto - if I say it's all right, if IT says sorry to trouble you - KILLIT ! It's still got enough real matter in it, before the Change isfinished - after, you won't be able to. And if you find me - after -remember the seived sponge. It'll take more than that. Will put thisin last post, pray you get it. You've got to Understand ! Hepworthsuspects, but doesn't believe. Analyse the concrete - check the GATE!"

Here the diary ended. And just as I pulled my trike leatherson, came the thump of the second post, with the estate agent'sinformation. I looked at it. And knew how little time there wasleft.

"Hepworth" was Josiah's art director: his address was listed inthe front of the diary. I pulled off the autobahn still doing ahundred and twenty K, and was in front of his office just as he wasopening it up.

"Josiah Mytholmroyd," I looked him in the slitted eye.He took one look at me, and his goat ears went flat. "You're a

- friend - of his ?"I gave a grim nod, and his nostrils flared nervously. "Come in.

He said he'd got a picture you were to look at - said it'd explainthings." He shivered as he led me into the back room. "Youunderstand, it's not the kind of thing we exhibit in public." Therewas a covered canvas hanging in an alcove: Hepworth just pointed atit and withdrew silently.

I had already seen the worst - or so I thought. But as I pulledthe cover away, I realised I had been deceiving myself. On thesurface, it was an everyday street scene - ghouls feeding under agibbous moon, tentacled citizens coruscating fantastically to eachother in a cheerful manner. But then I looked again, and the detailscrawled out of the background like worms out of a flooded lawn.

There were - things, gleefully lurking round every corner, onevery rooftop. Sometimes they were just hinted at - a protrudingfluffy rump, a heart-shape rune glimpsed through a darkened window.But in the foreground, hidden from view of the rest of the cast,something stared boldly at the "camera", as if the time for hidingwas almost over. It was - indescribable. Short, rounded, pink, softas a bathroom sponge - its unnaturally plushy form was moulded in

mockery of a female shape, and its chubby paw beckoned the viewerseductively. This was what had come to Josiah in darkness - and Iknew that it was no figment of a diseased imagination, but DRAWNFROM LIFE !

That night, I returned to the house, prepared. I took up thecarpet in the shunned dining room, and discovered what I haddreaded. The concrete underneath was smashed to fine gravel, and myentrenching tool made short work of it.

Houses of that age were not built with a metre and a half ofsolid concrete under internal floors. But this one was - and I


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nodded grimly as I fed a chunk of the unexpectedly dense stuff intothe pocket analyser I had borrowed from the Vague Engineeringdepartment.

"Barium and iron shot aggregate," I read out on the screen."They use it for reactor shielding." And for what else, I askedmyself rhetorically. I knew I was about to find out.

I uncovered the body of my friend at the bottom of the plainconcrete layer. He lay on what at first I took to be a plain grid of

reinforcing rods, an empty set of gas cylinders and a cutting torchnext to him. He was light as I lifted him: he had no scent but amusty odour, as of cotton waste beginning to mildew. Around him, theiron bars were almost cut through - and they were iron, not steel,as my analyser confirmed.

"Pure, unalloyed, cold iron," I felt my ears drop as I staredin disbelief at the readout. "I've never even seen it in anengineer's catalogue - there's no demand." But then I recalled theother uses cold iron was reputed to have, against things that steelblades were powerless against. Looking down into the excavation, itreminded me of a castle portcullis: the frantic, final exhortationwritten in Josiah's diary came back to warn me. That was a Gate, allright, and it would only take a little more work to open it fully.

With that thought firmly fixed in mind, I steeled myself to do whathad to be done.

The corner shop was closed early, so I made my way to the unlitGirl Scout hut on the corner of the playing field. Breaking inquietly, my conscience twinged even as I dropped a handful of goldsovereigns into the charity box. Rummaging in the supplies locker, Iextracted about sixty kilos of stabilised P.E.T.N., some cycloniteblocks, and the requisite detonators and blasting cord. They wouldnever notice it was gone - but if I failed, then they would all findout - sooner or later.

An hour on the trike, driving slowly, brought me to the first

hill crest looking out towards our ancestral Northlands. I could gono further - Josiah's body was looking more unnaturally fluffy bythe minute, and I recalled his warning about the "seived sponge". Ifyou take a living sponge and force it through a fine seive, thesundered cells will reunite once more into its own form - I prayedto the howling dark between the stars, that I was in time to destroythis thing, before it rose again undying !

"Josiah," I looked down at the foreshortened face for one lasttime, remembering out cubhood playing on the wide moors and smoke-fragrant altars of our home. "Old friend - goodbye." With that, Iplaced the last cyclonite slab over the top, and wound anotherlength of blasting cord around it. When detonated, the massivecharge would blow inwards, with a force sufficient to trigger an

old-fashioned fission bomb. It would just have to be enough. I hopeand pray it was !

As I stood there on the moor, my ears ringing from the colossalblast a thousand metres away, shielded by an overhang from the rockydebris raining down, my thoughts were not restful. Laid to restthough my friend was (or so I still hope), this business was not yetat an end. I thought of what the property agent had said, of therecords he had sent.

Far on the outer rim of the world had this horror awoken, to


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spread first its image and then to rear its temples. First inCalifornia, then in Florida, and then - tentacles had stretched backacross the world. There had been such - images - brought to life inas convincing manner as mortal men had best managed, made flesh inmechanism and costume.

Gods ! If only they had known ! If those who had walked thoseplastic streets had been granted one glimpse of what lurks andgibbers behind it all, of the softness and squeaking that lies

behind life, waiting to squeeze its paws through towards us. If theyhad only known, they might have gone mercifully mad then and there .A luxury I am denied.

For the facts speak for themselves. Of one Hiram LaxenbirgerJr. the Third, who had come to our land carrying dark secrets andthe wealth long-garnered in nameless ways. Of how he had the housebuilt - only, it WASN'T A HOUSE ! It was a hatchway - a false shellcovering what mattered, the Gateway that he had caused to yawn. Yetthat gate was built closed, for the things that are beyond it areimpatient, and take it ill that mortals impose upon their schedules.So the barium and cold iron, intended to hold the lid on for a fewshort years - and that site was destined to be the heart ofplushiness in our land, before the War that brought all such things

to an end.For years the Gate had been closed, except where sensitive

minds had lain too close. And then Josiah, the artist - how theymust have giggled and tittered, down there ! There was creativeenergy and to spare: they had fastened on him and grown strong,while their Cuteness waxed strong enough to punch through iron andconcrete, reaching up to take him as one of their own.

The police took my story, and as they always do, believed everylast word of it. I am told that the place is being torn down, and Ifor one will not be sorry to see that Newness gone forever. But ifonly I could be sure ... we mortals are such damnably curiousthings. If I could only go down there and see with my own eyes that

the half-severed rods of iron are seamlessly welded shut, that theconcrete is poured once again, and that it is spiked with enoughradioisotopes to mercifully kill anyone foolish enough to lingerthere, at least for the next few centuries.

But if just one technician stays behind - if he falls asleep,and nobody spots him in time.... welding torches may cut as well asweld, and gates may open that should forever be closed.

[End of account #342]

dreams in the plush house

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