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

I’ve been up all night, taking blood samples from patients afflicted with it. There’s no trace of invading bacteria, no trace of a virus. And yet the symptoms point towards leprosy or something of that ilk. It’s like the ghost of a disease possessing people.”
    “ The unearthly language they’re speaking,” Barclay replied, “that seems to be the key.”
    “ Do you know,” said Pearce, “I believe that the corruption allows the infected to articulate the language more clearly than uncorrupted mouths. I wonder if it doesn’t go right down into the throat, affecting the larynx and the voice box. What if the language is the disease itself?”
    “ I can’t follow what you’re saying. How can a disease be a ghost, how can language affect the material world?” Barclay, having felt a surge of relief at the fact that Pearce was able to share his comprehension that something had gone horribly wrong with the world, now felt disorientated at the bizarre explanation Pearce had formulated.
    “ I think the process begins in the mind. And then it goes on to alter the brain. You see? If one is able to recognise what’s happening, it is the first sign xxghixh of one’s having been infected. One is first only aware that the language exists, and only later does one begin to comprehend its meaning. You and I must be in the first stages of the disease.”
    “ But what of Thyxxolqu and Qxwthyyothl?”
    “ They are the xxtghzz names for death and disease. Xxguxxh familiar, we are on the edge of a great revelation one that dfgxx immaterialism in an insane mind gzzzh...”
    Pearce’s mouth hung open. His tongue bubbled with a mixture of saliva and blood. One side of his mouth then drooped fantastically, all the way to his jawline. His lower teeth and gums were visible, and had become brownish fragments set in rotting flesh. He put his hand up and rested it over the deformity, covering the awful sight, in an act of denial and self-consciousness. He tried to smoke from the other side of his mouth, and carry on as if nothing were amiss. Barclay was pained by the horror and absurdity of it.
    Pearce got up from behind the desk, walked past Barclay, unlocked the door and opened it wide. He acted silently, and his eyes flashed towards the aperture, indicating that Barclay should leave.
    Once Barclay had returned to the still-deserted ward, he took his clothes from the locker adjacent to the bed he had occupied, dressed, and made his way out of the hospital.
    •
    It was not far from University College Hospital to the British Library, just a six minute walk along the Euston Road. Barclay tried hard to retain his composure as he set off for his destination, and clung to the idea that if he acted normally, then he might keep absolute terror at bay. He told himself it was vital that he consulted the article by De Quincey as he had planned.
    All around him, however, the evidence of unearthly intrusion intensified. The adverts on the side of taxis and buses, the road signs, the foreign restaurants and the language that people spoke into their mobile phones was undiluted Thyxxolqus. It had completely replaced all other languages. He tried to avoid looking at the faces of people, but despite this, was conscious, out of the corner of his eye, that nine in ten of them suffered from deformed mouths.
    He crossed the plaza outside the British Library, with its titanic statue modelled upon William Blake’s drawing of Newton, and entered through the heavy glass doors. He took the escalator up to the first floor Humanities reading rooms and went inside. The attendants at the desk, with mouths like caves, waved him through as usual, casting the merest glance at his pass and it was only as he returned it to his wallet that Barclay noticed that its lettering was no longer in English.
    He collected the book, volume four of the Collected Works of Thomas De Quincey that he’d ordered, and took his place at one of the long rows of the readers’ desks.