![Titus Crow [1] The Burrowers Beneath](https://fs.collectorofbookboyfriends.com/481581/thumbs/152x264/titus-crow-1-the-burrowers-beneath.jpg)
finally Africa. For a long while I just sat there in numbed silence, occasionally turning the pages, automatically checking names and localities.
My thoughts were in a terrible turmoil when I eventually left the library, and I could feel upon my spine the chill, hopping feet of some abysmal dread from the beginning of time. My previously wholesome nervous system had already started to crumble.
During the journey back across the moors in the evening bus, the drone of the engine lulled me into a kind of half-sleep in which I heard again something Sir Amery had mentioned - something he had murmured aloud while sleeping and presumably dreaming. He had said: ‘They don’t like water … England is safe
… have to go too deep …’
The memory of those words shocked me back to wakefulness and filled me with a further icy chill which got into the very marrow of my bones. Nor were these feelings of horrid foreboding misleading, for awaiting me at the cottage was that which went far to completing the destruction of my entire nervous system.
As the bus came around the final wooded bend which hid the cottage from sight
- I saw it! The place had collapsed! I simply could not take it in. Even knowing all I did - with all my slowly accumulating evidence - it was too much for my tortured mind to comprehend. I left the bus and waited until it had threaded its way through the parked police cars and others of curious travellers before crossing the road. The fence to the cottage had been knocked down to allow an ambulance to park in the now queerly tilted garden.
Spotlights had been set up, for it was almost dark, and a team of rescuers toiled frantically at the incredible ruins. As I stood there, aghast, I was approached by a police officer. Having stumblingly identified myself, I was told the following story.
A passing motorist had actually seen the Collapse; the tremors attendant had been felt in nearby Marske. The motorist, realizing there was little he could do on his own, had driven on at speed into Marske to report the thing and bring help. Allegedly the house had gone down like a pack of cards. The police and the ambulance had been on the scene within minutes and rescue operations had begun immediately. Up to now it appeared that my uncle had been out when the collapse occurred, for as of yet there had been no trace of him. There had been a strange, poisonous odour about the place but this had vanished soon after the rescue work had started. The floors of all the rooms except the study had now been cleared, and during the time it took the officer to bring me up-to-date even more debris was being frantically hauled away.
Suddenly there was a lull in the excited babble of voices. I saw that the sweating rescue workers were standing amid the ruins in a gang looking down at something. My heart gave a wild leap and I scrambled over the debris to see what they had found.
There, where the floor of the study had been, was that which I had feared and more than half expected. It was simply a hole. A gaping hole in the floor -but from the angles at which the floorboards lay, and the manner in which they were scattered about, it looked as though the ground, rather than sinking, had been pushed up from below…
Nothing has since been seen or heard of Sir Amery Wendy-Smith, and though he is listed as being missing, I know that in fact he is dead. He is gone to worlds of ancient wonder and my only prayer is that his soul wanders on our side of the threshold. For in our ignorance we did Sir Amery a great injustice
- I and all the others who thought he was out of his mind - all of us. Each of his queer ways, I understand them all now, but the understanding has come hard and will cost me dear. No, he was not mad. He did the things he did out of self-preservation, and though his precautions came to nothing in the end, it was fear of a nameless evil and not madness which prompted them.
But the worst is still to come. I myself have yet to
My thoughts were in a terrible turmoil when I eventually left the library, and I could feel upon my spine the chill, hopping feet of some abysmal dread from the beginning of time. My previously wholesome nervous system had already started to crumble.
During the journey back across the moors in the evening bus, the drone of the engine lulled me into a kind of half-sleep in which I heard again something Sir Amery had mentioned - something he had murmured aloud while sleeping and presumably dreaming. He had said: ‘They don’t like water … England is safe
… have to go too deep …’
The memory of those words shocked me back to wakefulness and filled me with a further icy chill which got into the very marrow of my bones. Nor were these feelings of horrid foreboding misleading, for awaiting me at the cottage was that which went far to completing the destruction of my entire nervous system.
As the bus came around the final wooded bend which hid the cottage from sight
- I saw it! The place had collapsed! I simply could not take it in. Even knowing all I did - with all my slowly accumulating evidence - it was too much for my tortured mind to comprehend. I left the bus and waited until it had threaded its way through the parked police cars and others of curious travellers before crossing the road. The fence to the cottage had been knocked down to allow an ambulance to park in the now queerly tilted garden.
Spotlights had been set up, for it was almost dark, and a team of rescuers toiled frantically at the incredible ruins. As I stood there, aghast, I was approached by a police officer. Having stumblingly identified myself, I was told the following story.
A passing motorist had actually seen the Collapse; the tremors attendant had been felt in nearby Marske. The motorist, realizing there was little he could do on his own, had driven on at speed into Marske to report the thing and bring help. Allegedly the house had gone down like a pack of cards. The police and the ambulance had been on the scene within minutes and rescue operations had begun immediately. Up to now it appeared that my uncle had been out when the collapse occurred, for as of yet there had been no trace of him. There had been a strange, poisonous odour about the place but this had vanished soon after the rescue work had started. The floors of all the rooms except the study had now been cleared, and during the time it took the officer to bring me up-to-date even more debris was being frantically hauled away.
Suddenly there was a lull in the excited babble of voices. I saw that the sweating rescue workers were standing amid the ruins in a gang looking down at something. My heart gave a wild leap and I scrambled over the debris to see what they had found.
There, where the floor of the study had been, was that which I had feared and more than half expected. It was simply a hole. A gaping hole in the floor -but from the angles at which the floorboards lay, and the manner in which they were scattered about, it looked as though the ground, rather than sinking, had been pushed up from below…
Nothing has since been seen or heard of Sir Amery Wendy-Smith, and though he is listed as being missing, I know that in fact he is dead. He is gone to worlds of ancient wonder and my only prayer is that his soul wanders on our side of the threshold. For in our ignorance we did Sir Amery a great injustice
- I and all the others who thought he was out of his mind - all of us. Each of his queer ways, I understand them all now, but the understanding has come hard and will cost me dear. No, he was not mad. He did the things he did out of self-preservation, and though his precautions came to nothing in the end, it was fear of a nameless evil and not madness which prompted them.
But the worst is still to come. I myself have yet to
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