The Shorecliff Horror and Other Stories Page 7

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  When I awoke the next morning, bright sunlight was pouring through the drawing room window and Lovecraft was nowhere to be found. I have no idea where he went or how he got out. The doors of the room were closed, the windows locked and the fireplace had been blocked up to prevent the wind from coming down it. It is not impossible that he managed to force the drawing room door open and that it blew closed again after him, but even then I cannot explain where he went to after that. All doors and windows to the outside were closed and bolted and secured tight to protect us from the storms. I scoured the house looking for him. I searched through every cupboard, every possible corner or hiding place he might have crawled into, but there was no sign of him anywhere. I even crawled, precariously up through the rubble that was the upper floor of the house, but to no avail. Lovecraft was gone. Just as quietly and mysteriously as he had arrived in my life all those months ago, so now he had vanished, as completely and absolutely as a dream upon waking or a bubble bursting.

  So involved was I in my search for Lovecraft that I did not for some time even notice the second strange fact of that strange morning. The storm had broken. The winds had died. For the first time in as long as I could remember the sun shone brightly, blue skies breaking in great patches between the high, white clouds. I stumbled quickly down the stairs, threw open the front door and ran out onto the lawn. It was like stepping into a new world. The air was fresh and still, the view clear and perfect. The wreckage and debris caused by the storms of the previous days were scattered all around me, but somehow that didn’t matter. The gales had come and thrown their worst at me, but somehow I had survived it. Even in the midst of my grief at losing Lovecraft, the relief was exhilarating and overwhelming – here was the bright new dawn I thought I might never see again.

  Mixed in with that moment of elation, however, was the knowledge that it could not last. The dark danger that lurked in these cliffs would not be put down for long. Even then, in the middle of that bright morning glow, I could see new storm clouds gathering, black and threatening, out at sea to the North East. Shorecliff would not let me go without a fight, I was sure, and who could say that the worst was not still yet to come.

  This is my chance, I thought. This is the opportunity that Lovecraft, somehow, has opened up for me. This is my chance to escape the fate that Shorecliff has in store for me. Everyone has these chances, these moments to decide, in a split second, what shape of the next part of their story will take. The difficult thing is to recognise them. The difficult thing is to take them.

  I took mine. I owed it to Lovecraft to do that much. Do not follow me, he had told me in my dreams the previous night. I returned to the house and packed a bag full of whatever belongings I had left that I could carry. I walked out of Shorecliff House that very morning and I have never returned.

  The Impossible City