Inheritance

George Campbell, the seventeenth Earl of Rawcliffe, one time playboy dilettante and hedonist, had suddenly become a withdrawn and nervous man after the advent of his twenty-first year. The change occurred abruptly the week of his birthday and he had since shunned all social company excepting that of my own. When first I visited him after his most inexplicable and singular change in character, I noted with a vague unease that he had dismissed all of his servants and now sat alone in the huge and disquieting manor house that was his ancestral home. Whereas such normal visits had once consisted of incessant, cheerful discursives on current affairs or more meaningful preambles on the subjects of philosophy and art, our nights together occluded a rather strained atmosphere. Gone was the joyful, lively George with a zest for the finer points in life. All that remained was a trembling, macabre shell of his original form. It took immeasurable effort to hold his attention on any one subject, yet even when he did talk an observer would no doubt have agreed with my perception that he was always pausing to listen to something other than his friends' narratives. Never, though, could I decern any esoteric sounds other than those that typically accompany such immense and ancient constructions as was the manner of his vast and historic family home.

Yet although it was a very trying experience when I visited him, I could not desert poor George. We had both attended at Oxford University where we had delighted within each others company because of our exquisitely similar interests and thoughts. He had been there to support me when my father had died suddenly in India, and I was not about to ignore him now. Both of his parents had died in a freak carriage accident when he had been merely seven years of age, living the rest of his youth under the guardianship of his aunt in the old house until he dismissed her at his coming of age. I was truly glad he had been there to share my own pain with me all those years ago. He was my friend and companion, and as long as I believed he needed my company then I would provide it. I was sure I could be of some help to him should he wish to share his burden.

George was entering his twenty-seventh year when he finally did.

One typical November night I arrived at the house at the usual eight o’clock in the evening, just after completing my rounds among more familiar patients. When the gaunt and dishevelled appearance of George answered the door he held a strangely positive relief about his manner as to my presence, which perplexed me somewhat considering for years his general disinterest at anything other than his own brooding thoughts. He ushered me in with a strange yet forced politeness, scarred by the self-agitation of his manner, as he then lead myself into a familiar room.

As we sat in the study where we had always met together, surrounded by a vast array of dusty antiquarian volumes, he somewhat nervously opened his vacillating mind to me. "It was the evening of my twenty-first birthday that I discovered that which has terrified me for so long, as you may have obviously discerned," George began as he visibly searched my face as if for confirmation. He continued in an ominous tone; "It was the letter you see. When I came into my inheritance, the family lawyer, Sedgewick, discoursed that amongst numerous family artefacts bequeathed to me was a curiously old envelope, on the front of which had read an addendum in a relatively modern English: 'For the attention of all the Earls of Rawcliffe upon attaining manhood.' It was opened already, and inside was yet another envelope, apparently containing a letter from my deceased grandfather. There was a most peculiar and cryptically inviting message on the front that read:

'If any subsequent Earl of Rawcliffe should obtain this letter, I must warn forthwith that it's contents are very disturbing as abhorrent information about our family is enclosed herein. That the frightening contents of this letter may lead to madness upon the reading of it is not a notion to be taken superficially, though I am duty bound to present it so that you may choose to deal with it as you wish,

William Edward Charles Campbell,

Fifteenth Earl of Rawcliffe

"Now, I never met my grandfather," George continued, "for he had been institutionalised well before my time, according to my father. Why he himself did not read it, I can only guess. Maybe my father did not see it, or perhaps my grandfather extracted a promise from him never to touch it. Whatever the cause, he was spared the terrifying and horrific knowledge I must bear," George stated, pausing some moment as I waited patiently for him to collect his thoughts. George looked at my face, I believed as if to search for any hint of scorn or derision, and then observing my obvious interest in his story, he resumed; "You know how foolishly headstrong and curious I was! I dismissed the warning on the envelope as tomfoolery. How I wish I hadn't! The burden of it's contents!" George implored with a strange and unrestrained passion. He noticed my inquisitive stare and thus quickly composing himself he said to me; "Please, I need to tell someone, yet it is so terrible to behold. If ... if you do not wish to bear it with me then I will more than understand. It has almost destroyed me as it is!"

Seeing my good friend decay from a fresh faced youth to a withered and gnarled old man almost overnight had my curiosity burning for his secret, though I wish on reflection, as he did, that I had not inquired further. I bade him continue.

George nodded, whetting his tongue as he restrained his breath and manner. "Anyway, within the envelope was a letter that discoursed what I found to be the most monstrously preposterous idea!" George laughed with a nervous agitation. "Though in my youth what else could I think? It ... it stated that somewhere within our lineage something had gone terribly wrong. Well, what it described was far worse than any of the mental or physical degradation’s that had blighted other families of nobles due to 'inbreeding', as they call it. No, this was a thousand times worse!"

I found myself having to calm George, for his voice was undulating to a rather hysterical pitch. "Please, keep on," I encouraged with a patient ear.

"But you cannot understand!" George violently exclaimed; "I was too sceptical and incredulous at what I read then! I did not realise what I would face!"

I realised that I needed to distract him from his current reasoning, for George was becoming far too animate. I assumed that his mind had raced ahead of his tale and I really did need to hear of it. I wanted to understand the true cause for his almost total withdrawal into himself. "George," I said, "I beg of you to tell all. I do so need to know why you changed. Pray tell what was in the letter."

George’s features grew dark yet he relaxed back into his chair, his voice becoming very manner-of-factly as he almost immediately began speaking; "Apparently it happened during the last years of the previous century. It appears that the then Earl of Rawcliffe, being the thirteenth of our line from that historic charter, was begat twins by his wife, and that the new arrivals were intended to be playmates for an already present and healthy brother. The letter stated non too dramatically that the midwife had fled screaming at what had been delivered just before the new mother had died from the physical shock. Apparently, though one twin was perfectly normal in all ways superficially, the other was deemed too hideous for humanity to behold and was thrown upon a fire by the very Earl himself. As for the surviving twin, it was brought up happily until a very young age when it began to display a degenerative mental capacity. What this was exactly the letter does not state, for I knew you have more than a personal interest in the science of medicines. Suffice to say these abnormalities of the mind were deemed severe enough to warrant its imprisonment in the large cellar underneath the west wing of the house. The Earl was then called to be an officer to campaign against the Americans as they strove for their independence, the poor fellow dying from dysentery as the British forces chased vainly after a slighting foe. The Earl’s eldest son, however, returned to the manor only to find that his younger brother had been neglected in their absence and forgotten. Expecting to find only a corpse, he stumbled into a terror so horrifically unimaginable as to be kept a secret within the heirs for almost a century! A terror that I have had the misfortune to witness!" George declared with a trembling lip.

George then lowered his eyes and seemed again with growing trepidation to be listening for that ever elusive sound. He looked up suddenly and I was slightly startled by his motion, and for but a tangibly brief moment I thought this made him smile. His composture returned, and engrossed as I was, I motioned for George to continue.

"What happened to the surviving twin I can only conjecture to be some hitherto unknown cell decay or even complete metamorphosis. Whatever the cause, there now resides in that cellar an abomination against nature, a wretched cosmic insanity! This I know because I have seen it!" George ranted as he gulped for air between exclamations. "It is still alive and living down there! Believe me, when I first read of it and all its implications I scoffed and derided the commentary as being from a sickly unbalanced mind," he said, his voice becoming calmer in explanation. "However, it gave directions to the cellar which had lain bricked up and hidden by someone previously. So, adventurous that I was, I followed the directions and found the secret portal revealed in the writing, yet how I now wish that I had not succeeded in my task! Removing the bricks and opening the rediscovered cellar door I was immediately flushed with a singularly obnoxious and foetid smell. Managing to resist the temptation physically and mentally to abandon my task, I descended along the wet stony cellar steps with the aid of an electric torch. I noted a strange dark glistening on the floor and a curious sucking ... or perhaps a gurgling sound. I tried to convince myself that it was merely some obscure natural phenomena and somehow I reached the last step. That's when ... that is when I finally comprehended what the sweeping light from my electric torch had revealed. The glistening I had noted on the floor was in fact an uneven and highly disturbing amorphous black mass which was covered all over its entire form by thousands of straining and tendrillous flagellae! And it moved! Slowly but surely it moved towards my direction with an utterly hideous sucking noise that caused me to shiver to my very marrow! I audibly screamed as the realisation hit me of what I was observing and it is only with an extreme force of will that I was able to break free of a terror that froze my entire body. I do not remember ascending those stairs, though I do remember re-cementing the broken bricks with mine own hands before night came upon the house. Yet despite the terror of it all, the sight of that secret part of my lineage was not the worst horror! Oh, no! It was far, far worse! For in the letter it had stated that the horrifically animated remains of the twin were still of similar dimensions to a man, yet when I saw it it filled the entire cellar floor! I think that it is growing and feeding, though I know not on what, and I fear so incredibly for when the time comes for it to seek release! Do you now understand the horror of it all as I faced it and now understand the maddening solitude I had to endure! Please answer!"

George sat there, twitching erratically, looking almost pleadingly for some affirmation as to my believing his tale. All I could do was look sadly upon him. I finally realised that my dear friend had gone mad.

I did not stay much longer, and my poor friend appeared obviously very distressed at my attitude of incredulity. I left in low spirits, debating as to whether I should inform the authorities as to his condition or leave him to harmlessly reside within his ancestral home. I took pity and decided the latter would be kindest, and thus I left him, though in the light of recent information I believed that I erred.

As you may remember, the summer of last year was an unusually dry one. I had not seen George for some months after our tumultuous meeting, and I read with great sorrow the news that Rawcliffe Manor had collapsed and that my dear friend was presumed to have died within. I do not marvel at the cause: that a sinkhole, a subterraneous water chamber rendered unstable and weak by the depletion of its stored water, had existed underneath the manor house and could no longer carry the weight of the immense structure upon its weakening cavernous walls.

However, what does arrest my attention and causes my sleep to be less restful are two things. The first is the fact that it happened mostly under the west wing of the building, directly if I may add, under the old cellar. The second is that the only trace they found of poor George was a small pile of clothes. The clothes had apparently been ripped from the inside out and were covered in an unidentifiable black slime.