THE DWELLER IN THE LAKE

By John Henry Carrozza

I am not certain that the mal de tete which I suffered was brought

about by the force which drew me from the party into the wintry garden that

fateful eve some twenty years ago, but I do know that what I saw that night

in the gardens of Filigree Frost was not of a nature that I have ever

encountered, prior to or hence, in all of my studies and travels as field

biologist and curator for the Wexford Zoological Museum. For the events

which I witnessed have shaken my soul free from its skeletal berth, and

haunt me to this day in my dreams and my inner waking thoughts. Had I not

abandoned the scene when I did that chill December eve, I surely would not

be here today to relate the happenings which have tormented me for a score

of sleepless years.

* * *

I had never been to the estate of Mr. Filigree Frost, the noted

philanthropist whose endowments have sustained Wexford for nearly fifty

years, only heard of its dynastic splendor and of its acres of wild English

gardens, its towering Gothic spires and its effervescing fountains. I had,

however, made the acquaintance of the estate's owner on several occasions,

during his visits to the museum and at a number of promotory dinners over

the span of my eleven-year tenure as the museum's chief curator. Mr. Frost

was a tall, spindly man of about seventy-five years, each month of which

seemed to have added a certain amount of strength to his frame, the kind of

strength which is betrayed not by musculature, but by a kind of aura that

emanates from a man's features, a beam which leaps from his eyes and

slices the protective armour of those around him, a power which Filigree

Frost wielded with a kind of suave agility that made him all at once

admirable and deplorable. His skin clung to his bones, yet he looked more

like a healthy skeleton then a thin old man. His well-groomed hair was the

color of his last name, and his always sombre attire mocked his first. There

were tales of his being everything from a mad old hermit to a powerful

warlock, and all believable, owing to his skeletal appearance, as well as the

fact that he rarely was seen in public, and then only at night. But the thing

which made Filigree Frost a household name was not what he was, but

where he lived. The estate, which is known the world over, is one of the few

of its kind which is still lived in and operated as a private home. The

building itself is a Gothic colossus which covers nearly three acres of the

estate's seven hundred. From a distance it is often mistaken for a cathedral,

due to its four massive towers which rise some one-hundred and twenty feet

above the landscape. The construction was begun when Mr. Frost was still

in school and took some thirty-one years to complete. He now oversees a

staff of twelve maids, fifty-seven gardeners and three butlers. His meals are

prepared by a French chef, whom rumours say turned down two-thousand

dollars a week to cook for the Frost estate. The Herculean structure is

surrounded by a twenty-foot wide clover-shaped moat, a branch of which

bisects the building and runs beneath a glass-floored dining room (which

seats sixty people!) and through an indoor arboretum which houses some

forty-three different species of birds. Yet the most remarkable feature of the

estate, from a biologist's point of view, is the six-hundred and fifty acre

garden, which Mr. Frost has populated over the years with thousands of

species of exotic flora and fauna, including a herd of thirty brindled gnus

and one of three known specimens of the once-thought extinct wooly

rhinoceros. There are tales of sea serpents living in the perpetually mist-

filled hundred-acre lake, as well as stories about unusual cries heard

emanating from the depths of the master's playground. Indeed, only a select

few have tread the halls of the castle, and fewer still have ventured into the

realm beyond the iron gates which separate the grounds from the rest of the

known world. Had I any idea of what secrets lay hidden in that alien

landscape where I found myself wandering alone that chill night a score of

years ago, then I would surely never have trespassed beyond the towering

gates into that land, and probably would not have attended the New Year's

Eve party at the invitation of Mr. Filigree Frost, one of only thirty guests at

the estate that night, and perhaps the only one who wishes never to return.

I felt a sense of dread upon first entering the castle, which was done

by tressing a drawbridge of sorts from the drive, where a man in a black

tuxedo had taken my car to a parking lot, the whereabouts of which I know

not still. No sooner had I passed through the threshold of the place, an

elaborately carved doorway complete with two stone serpents and a

gargoyle, then I became aware of a high-pitched sound - barely audible, yet

… somehow piercing. It did not abate as I moved about the premises that

evening, mingling with the guests, some of whom had come from as far as

Australia, and one man from a high monastery in Tibet, yet never did it

increase in strength or change in pitch. It merely whined somewhere in the

back of my skull in a monotonous drone, making the blood in my veins

pulse abnormally, and causing my head to ache with growing intensity as

the party went on, until at last I was drawn to leave the building and seek

fresh air as a remedy to the pounding on my brain.

I exited the building through an open French pavilion at the rear of

the structure, which led onto a stone patio overlooking the entrance to the

famed gardens, a huge iron gate which was wrought with the shapes of tiny

demons and creatures of the night and seemed to act as a ward against any

random intrusion into the place. The strange sound seemed to diminish as I

left the confines of the Gothic structure, and in fact grew weaker the further

from the facade I progressed, and it was this fact, in addition to my

immense curiosity of the gardens of Mr. Filigree Frost, which prompted me

to venture beyond the gates and into the place where my story becomes so

horrid that it is with great difficulty I relay it to you now.

I felt as though I were in a different world the instant I traversed the

iron threshold. Strange plants grew in the dark of that December night, and

it felt as though their tendrils were reaching across the ground and wrapping

themselves about my legs, pulling me deeper into the gardens, along paths

of dirt and stone which twisted maze-like this way and that, until before I

could halt my random steps, I had become lost among the Acacia trees and

the huge ferns in a place that looked almost prehistoric. I could hear the

sounds of creatures in the distance, and from time to time I thought I felt

eyes upon me; and on several occasions I heard movement in the vegetation

around me or saw giant leaves rattling from the passing by of some animal.

I was able to identify a large number of the species of plant which grew

about me, yet there were some the likes of which I had never seen before, or

at least only in sketches from fossilized remains of the Cambrian Era. In

fact, I was puzzled by the variety of flora which thrived here, in a climate

that was not at all compatible to their biology – as if they were being kept

alive by some form of magic. I suddenly became panicked, and turned to

leave the place, only I could not determine which direction I should go. The

paths wound about in every direction, and I had not been keeping track of

which way I had turned or for how long I had been walking.

I knew that the gates were situated on the northern edge of the

gardens, and so I sought a break in the overgrowth through which I might

discern Polaris, and head at least in the direction I knew to be correct. This

proved to be no easy task, for the foliage in the area seemed to grow

together above me, entrapping me in a reticulum of spindly branches and

snake-like vines — the taller trees, which appeared to be ginkgoes, covering

the openings which the former left plain. At last, I spied a glade ahead of

me where I hoped I would find a lacuna baring the night sky to my thirsty

eyes, and indeed it seemed that a fountain of moonlight poured into the

clearing. As I crept hastily into the space, I glanced to where the moonlight

fell, and stopped in my tracks abruptly, being startled by the vision which

appeared before me to my surprise and ghastly horror. There on the cracked

and pallid earth, blazen by the searing beam of moonlight which fell upon

it, lay the carcass of a small animal – an animal the likes of which I had

never seen, but which made my skin crawl by virtue of its grotesque

features, which were made all the more hideous by the voracious teeth of

maggots and worms. The thing which lay before me was nothing which I

could describe as one of the known classes of animal. It had a body which

seemed to have been covered in scales, indeed it seemed the scales of a fish

— yet from it protruded three legs on each side of its body, which met their

terminus with single-clawed feet. From where I assumed its head should be

instead emerged several muscular tentacles, with suckers along the length of

their insides. Overall, the thing, which was scarcely the size of a small dog,

had the appearance of something alien, and indeed the thought crossed my

mind as I stood in the pale light of distant stars that the creature was not of

this earth. Yet for all of the horror that the sight of this thing aroused from

the depths of my mind, it was merely a passing clown in the parade of

horrors which was yet to come.

Somehow, I managed to avert my gaze from the horrid creature,

seeking with a newfound sense of urgency the north star, that I might escape

from this frightful place with all haste. What I saw in the night sky above

me chilled me to the bone — not by the artistry of the vision itself, for it

was beautiful indeed, but by the unfathomable displacement which the sight

imbued upon me. For there above the sinister gardens wherein I found

myself lost and misgiving, two moons shone in the heavens, gazing upon me

as though the eyes of space itself.

It was then that I began to doubt my own sanity. It was not as though

I felt I had lost all sense of what was real, but that my mind was now

playing tricks upon my conscious by allowing me to see things which were

not there. The corpse could very well have been that of a fox or badger,

eroded into an indistinguishable form by parasites, the moonlight causing it

to glisten as though covered in scales. And the sight of two moons could

clearly be a simple case of double vision, caused by the headache which I

was suffering, and common among cases of delirium and victims of fatigue,

the likes of which I could at the time have been considered among. Yet

these symptoms can not account for that for which I was yet to be privy. A

debilitation of the mind might justify the feeling of tendrils around my

limbs and body as I ran aimlessly from the glade. The shadows of ghastly

shapes which followed me as I paced a random retreat through lanes of

death-scented trees and mocked my fear just beyond the corner of my vision

may surely be attributed to a combination of lassitude and panic. But what

befallen pathways in the confines of my mind could have conjured the

image I saw when I finally broke free from the prehistoric jungle and onto

the shore of the fabled lake which was the center of the famous gardens of

Filigree Frost? If I had not reason to doubt my sanity before, then now it

became crystalline knowledge that my patterns of thought were not as those

of other men.

The lake shone within a pale-yellow haze, and beneath that mist

could be discerned the reflection of the two moons in the sky above, their

brightness diminished only slightly. As a chill breeze swept across the lake,

ripples brushed the surface of the water, and began to morph the image into

what resembled a painting by Van Gogh. At once the larger of the moons

cracked and twisted its shape in an unearthly dance as a vile and dark

tentacle breeched the water's surface, sending splintered fingers of

moonlight fleeing to the edge of the mere, grasping at my feet. I watched in

a frozen state as the moons disappeared completely from view, and a fury of

tentacled limbs crashed upwards through the yellow water, followed by the

maw of a creature so repulsive in every aspect of its being that an attempt to

describe it here would only suffice to diminish its pallor to that of the now

distinguished thing which I chanced upon in the glade. A sound filled the

air that no earthly manifestation could have emitted — a shrill, droning

sound which had qualities of both a clicking and a buzzing, a tone that

surely would have driven me mad after merely a moment's listening, had

not my mind already departed to nether regions the whereabouts of which I

know not still, nor do I wish to discover. A stench was also present in the

mist which rolled horribly off the lake — a smell of a singular nature that

was in every way as repulsive and paralyzing as the sound and sight of the

creature before me. After an eternity had passed, during which time I was

quick to the spot on the edge of the lake, unable to scream or flee, bridled

by a fear of unmatched terror that held me in its vile grip, the sound, which

had been unintelligible buzzing and humming, began to ring of a familiar

quality. The sound itself was still alien in nature, yet somehow the character

seemed that of a kind of voice — a voice which, though of a clearly

unearthly language, I was able to understand. The voice spoke of horrible

denizens which lurked in the spaces which flow between all things; of

ghostly visions that inhabit planets at the edge of our solar system; of

sunken cities where still sleep the gods of ages long since forgotten, waiting

to rise and reclaim the thoughts of those who are rightfully theirs; of ancient

texts whose names I dare not repeat, where the secrets of the Old Ones may

be discovered by those who dare to read them; and at last the creature

spoke, if indeed the ghastly emissions which penetrated my brain could be

defined as speech, of a time in the far distant future and far distant past

which were in fact the same moment in time, and of a certain emissary who

would carry the message of eternal life to the gods of time, a page who was

in fact a denizen of the planet Earth — and it seemed as though the sound

which was conjuring these words upon my brain described a man very near

my own description, and pronounced my own name as that of the emissary

to the gods of time. The very core of my being left me at that moment, as I

am sure that it was devoured by the lacustrine dweller which assaulted me

then, and had planted such unimaginable horrors upon my mind, and what

was left of my frame bolted instinctively upon trembling limbs in a

direction which I only know was away from the lake, and I ran a gauntlet

that seemed to be governed by a force beyond my comprehension, until at

long last, although I am not sure whether I ran for minutes or hours, I

reached the gates of the garden, which opened of their own will before me,

that I might issue forth from the hellish landscape and escape across the

patio at the back of the castle, through the glass doors of the great room,

past the gazes of stunned guests, down hallways of red carpet, beyond the

orifice which signified the entrance to the house, and into the lamplit streets

of the city, looking back only when my hands rested upon the latch of my

own door, miles from the estate of Filigree Frost, far from the place where

unimaginable horrors swam and fed, still shaking and muttering to myself

even as I collapsed and slept upon the bed in my dark room.

* * *

I have only now, some years after that disturbing night, the ability to

write down the mere suggestion of these events – the full atrocity of which I

could not submit for any sane person to read – without a shudder of such

fear and loathing encroach upon my spine that my pen be unable to tread

the paper in an intelligible fashion. This passage I put down as a warning to

any sane souls who wish to retain the same, that if upon some chill eve you

should find yourself inside the estate of Filigree Frost, that no matter how

strong the desire to wander beyond those demon-faced gates, do not dare to

tread the ground of the garden that glows beneath two moons. And a final

word of warning — if ever you should chance upon a pool some dark night,

when the mist is still above the water, and you see there the reflection of the

moon, do not look long upon the surface of that lake, or upon the reflection

of that heavenly orb — lest you learn the secrets which no man should

learn, and you may become the emissary of the gods of time, your soul

bound on a journey from which there can be no return.