The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales by Mark Samuels Read Free Book Online

of antiseptic. Someone in a white coat was leaning over him and taking his pulse.
    “ No sudden movements, please,” he said, “you’ve taken a nasty bump to the head. Concussion is quite likely.”
    Barclay’s mind raced. He wanted to believe that the horrific images that assailed him were a nightmare brought on by the damage he’d sustained. He longed to believe that none of what he’d seen had been real. His blurred vision denied him a clear view of the face of the doctor who was close at hand. He could not make out the man’s mouth as being anything but vague black smear, too indistinct to be discerned as either normal or monstrously decayed.
    “ I’m Doctor Pearce,” he said, “you’re in University College Hospital. Can you see how many fingers I’m holding up?”
    Barclay squinted. It looked like three to him. The fingers swam in and out of focus. Three, well, maybe four.
    “ Swallow these tablets,” the doctor said, “they’ll put you to sleep for a while and we’ll talk again in the morning. I want you to stay in overnight for observation. Just to be on the safe side.”
    He lifted Barclay’s head, put a couple of pills into his mouth and then brought a paper cup half full of water with which to wash them down.
    Barclay gurgled, swallowed the tablets and fell into a deep sleep shortly afterwards.
    •
    When he awoke, his head felt clearer and his vision had cleared substantially. He found himself in a deserted hospital ward. The beds were unmade and had been slept in and then abandoned only recently. He got up, clutched the white gown in which he was clad tightly to his body, and wandered barefoot across the cold linoleum on the floor. There was no-one behind the nurse’s desk in the middle of the ward. The only noise he could hear was coming from the corridor. As he approached the source, he recognised it as the sound of a television programme, and it seeped through the windowed door of a patients’ recreation room. He opened the door and found himself inside a dingy space with several chairs and their occupants, all facing a television set mounted two-thirds of the way up the far wall.
    The occupants, all patients in hospital gowns, were staring at the screen and miming along to the words being spoken by a newsreader. This broadcaster was talking, Barclay was certain, in Thyxxolqus. His mouth was deformed as if eaten away by decay. Moreover, the mouths of the patients listening were the same; like a soggy hole in a crumpled sheet of paper. Now he realised what the Thyxxolqu language reminded him of, as he listened to the swarm of people speaking it all at once. It was like the buzzing of infuriated bluebottle flies.
    Barclay felt a hand grasp his shoulder. He turned around and the man in the white coat who stood behind him leant forward and whispered into his ear. It was Doctor Pearce.
    “ Let’s get out of here and find somewhere where we can talk.”
    They exited, took a couple of turns, and then Pearce let Barclay into an office. Once they were inside, he locked the door after him and slumped down into a wing-backed chair behind a desk. He drew out a packet of cigarettes from a drawer, offered Barclay one (who refused it) and then lit up. His hands were trembling and he coughed after the first drag. It looked as if he’d not smoked for a very long time.
    “ What do you think is going on?” the doctor said.
    “ What do I think is going on?” Barclay replied, suddenly feeling, given the circumstances, ridiculously self-conscious in his patient’s gown. He was arrested by the thought that this might be an examination of his own mental state. Had the doctor seen what he had seen?
    “ I’ve known nothing like it. The disease, or whatever it is, appears to be airborne, attacks orally and causes rapid and massive cellular degeneration,” Pearce said.
    Barclay exhaled, letting out an audible sigh of relief.
    “ I’m not even sure,” Pearce continued, “that it’s a disease at all.