Clay Read Free Page B

across Lazarus Heath’s wasted visage.
    During his professional lifetime, a brain specialist is called upon to diagnose countless horrible cases, yet they are the horrors of the nighted mind, or of blindness caused by a tumor. They are medical things, and can be understood. You cannot diagnose a fetid malignancy that goes beyond medical knowledge, rooting itself in the black soil of ancient hells. There was nothing medical knowledge could do for Lazarus Heath.
    Pushing back revulsion, I made a thorough examination. The massive body, little more than skin and bones, now, gave off a reeking aura of putrefaction, and yet there were no sores. Sopping clothes that hung in tatters, were tangled with dull-green seaweed, stained with ocean salt. But, it was the face that caught and held my attention. The skin, taut and dry, was the color of aged jade, covered with minute, glistening scales. Staring into the candlelight, Lazarus Heath’s pale eyes bulged horribly, and as the great bony head lolled spasmodically from side to side, I made out two faint bluish streaks, about four inches in length, running along each side of the scaly neck, just below the jawline. The lines pulsed thickly with the air- sucking motions of his salt-parched lips. Watery incantations bubbled upward into the dank stillness.
    “They call.... They call for Lazarus Heath.... Zoth Syra bewails her lost one; she bids me come home. You hear? The Great Ones of the Green Abyss hail me! I come, O, beauteous Zoth Syra! Your lost one returneth, O, Weeping Goddess of the Green Nothingness...!”
    Sudden power energized the lax skeleton, so that I had no easy time in holding him to the bed. Pallid eyes stared beyond this world, and Lazarus Heath’s cracked lips warped in a hideous smile. Then, as suddenly, he was calm; the ponderous cranium cocked pathetically to one side, in a grotesque listening attitude.
    “You hear?” the hollow voiced gurgled. “She sings to me! The Song of Zoth Syra!” Inane laughter tittered weakly. Heath’s rasping voice dribbled into a strangely haunting threnody, a song that at once attracted and repelled with its subtly evil intonations.
    “Zoth Syra calleth him who knows the Green Abyss;
    Men of salt and weed are lovers all
    To the Goddess of the Green and Swirling Void
    Come away to Zoth Syra! Come away!”
    “Father!”
    Cassandra’s voice was scarcely more than a distraught gasp, but at the sound of it, the odious, hypnotic smile froze on Heath’s parchment-pale face, then, slowly, decomposed into a twisted mask of sick horror. For the first time something like terrified reason seeped into those oddly protuberant eyes.
    “Cassie! Cassandra!” Heath stared about him frantically like a child lost in the dark; once again he tried to raise himself, but, before I could restrain him, crumpled backward into a voiceless coma.
    *
    Half an hour later, standing in the shadows of the decaying patio, looking eastward to the moon-scorched desert of the Atlantic, I told Cassandra that there was nothing wrong with her father’s mind. Perhaps I should have phrased it more coldly and added: “Nothing that medical science can cure.” But, sensing the free, vibrant life that flowed in the girl’s body and brain, I could not bring myself to tell her that I thought Lazarus Heath was going mad. Too, I was not at all sure of my own diagnosis.
    I told Cassandra that I wanted time to observe her father more closely, and she seemed greatly relieved to know that I would consider the old man’s case. For myself, I confess I could not have done otherwise. Despite the malignant shadow that shrouded Heath House in ageless mystery, I knew that I would come back again and again, not only because I was curious about the singular aspects that accompanied Heath’s apparent twilight madness, but because, as I left her that night, Cassandra held out her hand, and I took it in mine. It was a simple, friendly gesture, and we both smiled. From that moment on, I