Sunday 29 July 2012

Part III
The Patient

The following morning, after a breakfast of limp toast, surprisingly tasty jam and weak, watery, unsatisfying coffee, I decided to take the Professor's advice, and pay a visit to Jack Woolley up at The Lodge. It was a pleasant enough drive, the sun peering out from behind the benign and fluffy cloud formations that drifted across the bucolic sky. On this morning, Borsetshire was a delightful place, and it was the easiest of things to dismiss from my mind the shapeless, formless terrors that had haunted my sleep, or indeed the vague sense of unease that had so far rested on my shoulders since my arrival in Ambridge. Surely these things were all in the mind, for what horror could possibly withstand the glory of an all-too-rare English summer's day?

Writing this from my cell in the Clinic, I am amused almost to laughter by the remembrance of my sunny disposition on that fateful morning, for I have discovered that the world is a cruel and unknowable place, filled with horrors and terrors the like of which none could imagine, and only a cursed few such as myself will ever encounter. And Borsetshire, despite its cheerful demeanour that morning, is no exception- indeed, it may be that it is one of the most egregious examples of the universe's heartless and fickle nature, that it may fool us with its surface beauty, while deep beneath lies the reality- a cold, harsh place, in which humanity, all blissfully imagining its superiority among species, is in fact among the lowest of the low, a mere trifle for the eldritch and monstrous beings which rule all.

But to return to my tale, though it is with a sense of growing dread that I approach this part of it, I was greeted at reception by a very personable young orderly, who told me Mr Woolley was uncommonly lucid today, but that for a man in his condition it was impossible to say for how long this would last. I would be allowed to speak to him in private, but the orderly would wait outside in case he became confused or flustered. They assured me his confusion had never led to him becomign violent, but that he would often need ministration and comfort on those occasions where he became unaware of where he was. I thanked her, and then let her lead me to his room, aware that I was being watched with interest by a shabbily-dressed elderly fellow who appeared to have been leaving, but had chosen to loiter when he had heard Mr Woolley's name mentioned.

Mr Woolley was in reasonably good spirits, given his circumstances. I introduced myself, and told him I was an old and distant friend of the family's, who had heard of his predicament and decided the gentlemanly thing to do would be to pay him a visit. He greeted me warmly, and for the next five minutes or so we discussed village life, with much bluffing and hedging on my part, until he himself was the first to mention Lower Loxley. At this point my questioning began in earnest- or it would have, had not the simple question "were you and Nigel good friends?" been sufficient to unleash a torrent of information. His face darkened, he beckoned me closer, and in a hushed voice began to tell me of his "meetings" with the late Mr Pargeter.

As he spoke, however, his grasp on reality seemed to slip away with every word. I ascertained that the dead man had visited him here on many occasions, and that before that they had maintained a correspondence over several years. Mr Pargeter, he said, had been fond of visits to Borchester Library, where he had taken a particular interest in certain old texts. So far, this chimed with what the Professor had said, but afforded me very little in the way of new information. He had, he assured me, tried to warn Mr Pargeter away from his studies, and at this a look of unbearable sadness crossed his old, but still dignified, face, and I felt a terrible wave of melancholy myself at the cruelties that can be committed upon good men by the vicissitudes of fate and mental degeneration.

"Why, Mr Woolley?" I pressed him. "Why did you try to stop him reading about these things?"

He paused for a long moment, during which I became concerned that he may be drifting away on tides of forgetfulness once more, and then responded in a voice so calm, so clear, it almost sounded rehearsed.

"They're coming back, you know. The Elder Gods. The Great Old Ones. They're all coming back. All of them. It'll all be over soon, Peggy. All over soon."

And then his face clouded over once more, and I knew I'd lost him. "Peggy?" he cried in confusion. I rose and went to the door, but the orderly, efficient and diligent, was already entering to calm him down. I bade him goodbye, and returned to reception to await the orderly and get signed out.

"I'm sorry about that, Mr Shanks, he gets terribly confused sometimes". I assured her it was no trouble at all, and that it had been a most pleasant meeting.

"Other than his wife", I asked, "does he get many visitors?"

"He used to get regular visits from that farmer chappy- David, is it? But he seems to have stopped coming now".

I asked for a look at the visitors' register- David Archer's last visit had been December 29th. Two days before he had witnessed the death of Mr Woolley's only other regular visitor apart from his wife. Nigel had died, and the visits had stopped. Coincidence? I suspected probably so, but I had promised Mrs Pargeter a full investigation, and I was looking forward to putting her mind at rest, quelling her suspicions, granting her some closure and putting off my own financial woes, for the time being at least.

I was returning to my car when the man I had seen earlier rushed up to me, a worried smile twisting his thin mouth.

"Could I have a word? It's about Mr Woolley."

I smiled back. "I was really only here to ask Mr Woolley about-"

He interrupted me, his manner friendly but his voice that of a predatory undertaker. "About Nigel? Or about them?"

"Them?"

"Them. The Elder Gods. The Great Old Ones. The evil that lurks behind everything".

"Mr Woolley's delusions, you mean?" I was edging away.

He chuckled. "Ah, I see your confusion. I'm not a patient here. I visit my wife. My name's Ted". He held out his hand. Wondering exactly what I was getting myself into here, I shook it.

"Armitage".

"Pleased to meet you, Mr Armitage." I didn't bother to correct him. "I knew someone would come asking questions about Nigel. Which is why I've spent the last few months getting the answers from Jack". He beckoned me towards a little visitors' cafe at the front of the building. Intrigued, I followed. I bought him, and myself, a coffee, and bade him tell me everything he knew.