The Macabre Tales of Young Edgar

November eleventh, 1841

'Are you Devil?' I asked.

'No,' the thing replied. 'I am not Devil, nor demon, nor any other kind of evil spirit.'

'Then what are you?'

'I simply am.'

I remember it only in snatches. I stood in a cavern, vast and dripping; cold and clammy. The wind that swept through it was as chilly as the grave, that strips the flesh as maggots strip it from the bones, and chills them also.

A bat had flown me there, I recalled, as I peered out through a banded mist, which veiled memory as much as it did matter. On wings of beating leather, belonging to a wondrous contraption, I had first through myself carried. That was until I saw the fine bones, as clearly as if they had belonged to one of the mobiles strung up in my room.

The animal had come in through my window, like an owl knocking in the night, but larger and much more beastly. It had presented me with a letter tied to one leg, and in that letter were written these words:



The letter struck me as peculiar for a number of reasons. What, to begin with, was to be made from 'Kraken on Anchor'? That place had appeared an earlier dream of mine, too. Further, what was the meaning of my own moniker- 'Lord'? I am not a Lord, nor would I ever seek to usurp one. Lastly, I could not guess at the riddle in note itself.

'Into nothingness I plunge,' I read aloud, thinking back to my first dream at this Manor. 'Into death I plunge...'

I was still puzzling when the bat gave a piggish squeal, flapping its wings for attention. I wasn't sure, in my dream state, how I understood the cue, but I did. Together, we proceeded to the wide, open window, where the curtains had been drawn back and were fluttering ominously, as if with the breath of phantoms. The wind outside was strong enough to move them, but not to stir the branches of the trees that scraped the glass on windier nights.

The finest twigs on those claw-like branches, I saw, were like the bones that ribbed the wings I was about to trust with my life. The membrane was so thin that it seemed unable to support even the frail weight of the creature itself, let alone my much greater bulk.

How would we overcome our disparity? I wondered. Would I meet my death that night?

Through the foggy lens of my dream reasoning, I could not see the absurdity of it all. I could not see, and could only feel.

Nevertheless, I managed, somehow, to clamber onto the back of the creature. Either it must have grown much larger, or I must have become smaller than I had been. Then, it spread its wings like amber windowpanes before a desperate sunset, and we took flight.

Only then, as we flew, did I realise why we were going, if not where. Cold facts slipped into my consciousness like falling icicles, as, somehow, reality spoke directly to me. They had you, my Lord. You were captive, or else already dead. This bat was one of yours, and it must have known. So, I, too, knew. It spoke to me in bat-thoughts as I clung to its fur, digging the bones of my ankles into the space behind its joints.

There was a chittering in my brain, as of rats that breed in tombs, but it was a soothing chattering, as if I had never known the language of those rats before, and the fearful rather than frightening things they spoke of. For, certainly, there are worse things to be found in tombs than rats.

The bat-chittering spoke to me of concepts only. I could not distinguish the meaning of any individual sounds. Ideas flooded into me as the words now flow from me- without pause or explanation, lacking nothing in context, but seeking much by the way of comprehension. There was insufficient space in my human mind for the level of detail they contained- the smells, and oh!, the sounds! Yet, also, I sensed that there was no room in the head of any bat for the things that humans cherish. There were no sights, for bats, as you know, are mostly blind.

I heard the echoes of water dripping, and other, secret, subterranean things slithering around what must have been a cave. I heard the eons-long formation of rocks, which is invisible and inaudible to humans. I felt the pulse of the water, which was like a drum for the other echoes, and sounded as different from the solid rock as the air did. For air, as well as wind, had a sound and a texture in the bat world.

Most earthshattering of all, however, were the events communicated. It was some kind of kraken, my mount and guide was saying. It was a kraken like the one on your family crest, whose ropey limbs wrap themselves not only around your coat of arms, but around each of the solid bars blocking entrance to the sewer from your basement. There, they clutch the bars as if to demonstrate that they could crush or tear them to splinters, as easily as the rocks of their domain splintered my ship. So, also, like slippery hooks for a hapless fish such as myself, they wrapped themselves around my heart.

A kraken, or its controller, had taken you hostage, and kept you in the place to which those sewers lead; a place that only bats know. Because I could not sense absurdity, as I say, I believed. The absurd became urgent and grew terrifying in my unknowing mind. This time, I did not guess that I was dreaming.

We circled over the highest, spindliest spires of the Manor, which were like blackened spear-tips thrust into the bleeding sky. Crows cried mournfully, wheeling at the stab wounds. We turned away from the withered skeletons of trees that were like wooden witches, and the moors where ghosts took leave to walk about in the fog.

Leaning on wingtips, we looped over the rooftop, where the loose tiles were crumbling into the gutters, and the lichen-covered gargoyles always wept in the rain. We dipped down from the steep eaves. Then, we swooped into a hidden passageway that was like a gaping drain cut into the side of the building, or a darkened maw, curtained by long tendrils of ivy.

A thin, putrid trickle of green slime ran along the bottom of the passageway, which was not flat, but curved. It was not a tunnel, but rather an enormous pipe through which we raced, as though we were a carriage and it a monster's highway. The brick walls on either side of us became a reddish smear, and the drippings from the ceiling flew in my face. The luminescent fungi that grew in clumps and clusters, leaning on stalks to form umbrellas for the cockroaches, offered us no protection. They, too, swept by in a blur.

We seemed to be going downhill. The air grew colder, and thicker to breathe. Each lungful of it filled my chest like water. It rasped in my throat. That was nothing, however, compared to the things that filled my mind.

It was as though somebody had prised it open, and was now pouring in the thing I most dreaded hearing. My mind was held as open as my eyes would be, were they unlidded. Though I could not stomach what I knew, I could do nothing for it. I could not bear to watch, and yet, I could not look away.

The thing I most dreaded hearing, my Lord, was yourself, in a state of panic.

Here! you seemed to call me. Your disembodied voice rang in my ears, not coming from a particular direction, but growing louder as we grew closer. Here! I'm over here! Why can't you see me?

I cursed beneath my breath. Why indeed? I wished for nothing more than a visible clue of your state, though I guessed it might be sorry. By life, limb and liberty, I thought, I will not stand for this!

I dug in my heels as though riding a horse, and the bat, which seemed to read my intention, beat faster. It screeched as we dived out of the end of the pipeline, ducking under a sheet of ice-cold overflow.

We were in a wide canal, I saw, where the progress of the thick, murky water was slow, as though it were a great, slimy glacier that moved there in its bed. I saw the grates set into the far walls, with their bars and slices of dim torchlight glowing between them. I thought it odd, for you never light the torches, but it was not the oddest thing.

The tentacles that had been cast in iron around your bars and fittings when I had been awake now writhed, glistening from that oily, foul-smelling water. Slick and sinewy, they coiled about the bars, and quivered like tongues as they probed into the dry basement beyond. Some tested the grates, jerking them experimentally. I thought I heard a crack!, and gasped when I saw some of the masonry crumble with a splash! into the untellable depths of that reservoir. The tentacle had been successful. That grate was now free.

I was suddenly very afraid of the water, more afraid even than I had been when the bat-vision gave me an uncanny glimpse of its timbre. My fear of it, however, did not trump my fear for you.

Onwards we sped, until the sewer gave rise to a vast, seaside cavern, like a mouth set into the cliffs on which this Manor rests. I could see daylight through its opening, where the stalactites hung unevenly, like broken teeth. I could both see and hear the turbulent, muddy mass that swirled and frothed where the sewer contents spilled into the underground harbour.

I saw the rotting pier, with an abandoned dinghy still in tow, half-filled with water and bobbing on the restless waves. It had been tethered to one of the two remaining posts, both black with spilled oil and covered in oysters, whose shells were ajar as they struggled to breathe. Most unsettling of all, however, were the chains. These were shackled to the bare rock, just above the waterline. While the tide slapped menacingly around them, they also seemed pulled by something beneath the inky depths.

Something was anchored there.

Then I realised, or perhaps the bat, whom I seemed to have become, understood. The smashed planks of the pier were my first clue. The deep, underwater humming was my second.

This wasn't a harbour, it was a container. It was a cage.

As I thought it, bubbles began to form on the surface, small and sudden at first, then large and steady, as though the dank cavern was swallowing the seawater in huge, noisy gulps. Some blisters were as large as watermelons. They lingered on the surface before they popped, throwing sticky, viscous black slime into the air.

It was ink. Actual ink, such as might be found in a fountain pen, splattered me, and made my progress down the ill-hewn steps towards the water tricky. It was ink, but it had a salty, fishy odour.

It was the ink of squids.

Slowly, a mound began to rise from the ring of bubbles that had been growing ever more violent. It was engorged and lumpy with the red of inflammation, like a diseased sun. It was followed by two eyes, as round and yellow as harvest moons, with pupils larger than my fists. The mound became the bulbous rear of a head, and a sloping beak came out of the water in place of a nose and mouth.

There were two more crashes as two of the chains pulled away from the rock, sending a landslide into the sea. Then, two much longer tentacles, which ended in flatter tips like crude hands, shivered out of the water. Its arms held aloft so that I could see their terrifying length, the kraken spoke.

You will find him, it said. Or else, we will find you.

The intensity of its projected thoughts caused me a stabbing headache. I clutched at my forehead, and at my eyes, which had gone blind. I could only fumble in the darkness.

You will find him beneath the water, the kraken intoned. If he yet lives, and you, his young heir, are not already a Lord. I heard my own cry of despair ringing in my ears. You will dive, or he will perish. Find him- find your Master!

My heart beat faster, but, as the kraken spoke, I also heard another voice. It was the bat, chittering in a language that had become innate to me. It's a trap! it squeaked. It wants to drown you!

I braced myself, and made up my mind.

'Are you Devil?' I asked.

No. The thought syllables seemed to hover mid-air. I am not Devil, nor demon, nor any other kind of evil spirit.

'Then what are you?'

I simply am.

'No! No! You lie. This is a trap!'

I stood up, knees shaking, and tried to make myself bold and defiant. I thought of what the jungle explorers had said to me in another dream- had they warned me of this same creature? As I paused, I listened for the sound of those terrifying tentacles swooping down on me, but I could not predict from which direction the blow would come.

'No,' I said again, more certainly. 'I will not do as you command. This is a dream, and you have no power over me here.' I doubted the truth of those words even as I said them, but there was another slopping sound. The kraken seemed to be withdrawing back underwater.

You will do what I ask, it hissed.

'No!' I shouted.

You will, the thing promised. You have no choice, so many nightmares can I give to you, the worst of which happen in waking.

'You have no power over me,' I repeated, including an element of prayer this time.

I have more power than you can know. The worst nightmare is waking. You could have solved all your anxieties tonight, but I will send you back to waking now, instead. There, you will wither and die.

'No...' I repeated, clinging to the word like a lifeboat. 'No.'

It was already too late. The blackness of my open eyes had become the blackness of my closed ones. The blackness of my empty bedroom was to follow it.