Read Online Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron by The Book of Cthulhu - Free Book Online

all this time is worth a thought. And that painting suggests it’s a good deal more objectively real.”
    “So your father read about the island in a story,” she said. “So did you, so did the painter. What else can you possibly be suggesting?”
    “Nothing,” he said at last.
    “So what were the other strange things you were going to tell me?”
    “That’s all,” he said. “Just the painting. Nothing else. Really.” She was looking miserable, a little ashamed. “Don’t you believe me?” he said. “Come here.”
    As the sheepskin rug joined their caresses she said “I don’t really need to be psychic for you, do I?”
    “No,” he said, probing her ear with his tongue, triggering her ready. Switching off the goose-necked steel lamps as she went, she led him through the flat as if wheeling a basket behind her; they began laughing as a car’s beam shone up from Mercy Hill and seized for a moment on her hand, his handle. They reached the crisp bed and suddenly, urgently, couldn’t prolong their play. She was all around him, working to draw him deeper and out, he was lapped softly, thrusting roughly at her grip on him to urge it to return redoubled. They were rising above everything but each other, gasping. He felt himself rushing to a height, and closed his eyes.
    And was falling into a maelstrom of flesh, in a vast almost lightless cave whose roof seemed as far above him as the sky. He had a long way still to fall, and beneath him he could make out the movements of huge bubbles and ropes of flesh, of eyes swelling and splitting the flesh, of gigantic dark green masses climbing sluggishly over one another. “No, Christ no,” he cried, gripped helpless.
    He slumped on Hilary. “Oh God,” she said. “What is it now?”
    He lay beside her. Above them the ceiling shivered with reflected light. It looked as he felt. He closed his eyes and found dark calm, but couldn’t bear to keep them closed for long. “All right,” he said. “There’s more I haven’t told you. I know you’ve been worried about how I’ve looked lately. I told you it was lack of sleep, and so it is, but it’s because I’ve begun dreaming again. It started about nine months ago, just before I met you, and it’s becoming more frequent, once or twice a week now. Only this time I can never remember what it is, perhaps because I haven’t dreamed for so long. I think it has something to do with the sky, maybe this planet we’ve been hearing about. The last time was this morning, after you went to the library. For some reason I don’t have them when I’m with you.”
    “Of course if you want to go back to your place, go ahead,” Hilary said, gazing at the ceiling.
    “In one way I don’t,” he said. “That’s just the trouble. Whenever I try to dream I find I don’t want to sleep, as if I’m fighting the dream. But today I’m tired enough just to drift off and have it anyway. I’ve been getting hallucinations all day that I think are coming from the dream. And it feels more urgent, somehow. I’ve got to have it. I knew it was important before, but that painting’s made me sure it’s more than a dream. I wish you could understand this. It’s not easy for me.”
    “Suppose I did believe you?” she said. “What on earth would you do then? Stand on the street warning people? Or would you try to sell it to your paper? I don’t want to believe you, how can you think they would?”
    “That’s exactly the sort of thing I don’t need to hear,” Ingels said. “I want to talk to my father about it. I think he may be able to help. Maybe you wouldn’t mind not coming with me.”
    “I wouldn’t want to,” she said. “You go and have your dream and your chat with your father if you want. But as far as I’m concerned that means you don’t want me.”
    Ingels walked to his flat, further up Mercy Hill. Newspapers clung to bushes, flapping; cars hissed through nearby streets, luminous waves. Only the houses stood between