The Second Wish and Other Exhalations
Brian Lumley
THE SECOND WISH AND OTHER EXHALATIONS
By Brian Lumley
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright © 2017 Brian Lumley
Copy-Edited By: Tony Masia
Original publication by Hodder Headline PLC – 1995
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Meet the Author
Born in County Durham, he joined the British Army’s Royal Military Police and wrote stories in his spare time before retiring with the rank of Warrant Officer Class 1 in 1980 and becoming a professional writer.
In the 1970s he added to H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos cycle of stories, including several tales and a novel featuring the character Titus Crow. Several of his early books were published by Arkham House. Other stories pastiched Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle but featured Lumley’s original characters David Hero and Eldin the Wanderer. Lumley once explained the difference between his Cthulhu Mythos characters and Lovecraft’s: “My guys fight back. Also, they like to have a laugh along the way.”
Later works included the Necroscope series of novels, which produced spin-off series such as the Vampire World Trilogy, The Lost Years parts 1 and 2, and the E-Branch trilogy. The central protagonist of the earlier Necroscope novels appears in the anthology Harry Keogh and Other Weird Heroes. The latest entry in the Necroscope saga is The Mobius Murders.
Lumley served as president of the Horror Writers Association from 1996 to 1997. In March 2010, Lumley was awarded Lifetime Achievement Award of the Horror Writers Association. He also received a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2010.
Bibliography
Psychomech Trilogy
Psychomech
Psychosphere
Psychamok
Necroscope Series
Necroscope
Necroscope II: Wamphyri!
Necroscope III: The Source
Necroscope IV: Deadspeak
Necroscope V: Deadspawn
Vampire World I: Blood Brothers
Vampire World II: The Last Aerie
Vampire World III: Bloodwars
Necroscope: The Lost Years, Volume I
Necroscope: The Lost Years, Volume II
Necroscope: Invaders
Necroscope: Defilers
Necroscope: Avengers
Harry Keogh: Necroscope & Other Weird Heroes
Necroscope: The Touch
Necroscope: The Möbius Murders
H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreamland Series
Hero of Dreams
Ship of Dreams
Mad Moon of Dreams
Iced on Aran
Other Novels and Collections
A Coven of Vampires
Beneath the Moors
Beneath the Moors and Darker Places
Brian Lumley’s Freaks
Dagon’s Bell and Other Discords
Demogorgon
Fruiting Bodies and Other Fungi
Ghoul Warning and Other Omens
Ghoul Warning and Other Omens … and Other Omens
Haggopian and Other Stories
Harry and the Pirates
In the Moons of Borea
Khai of Ancient Khem
Maze of Worlds
No Sharks In The Med & Other Stories
Screaming Science Fiction
Sixteen Sucking Stories
Spawn of the Winds
Synchronicity, or Something
The Burrowers Beneath
The Caller of The Black
The Clock of Dreams
The Compleat Crow
The Compleat Khash: Volume One: Never a Backward Glance
The Fly-by-Nights
The Horror at Oakdeene and Others
The House of Cthulhu
The House of Doors
The House of the Temple
The Last Rite
The Nonesuch
The Plague-Bearer
The Return of the Deep Ones and Other Mythos Tales
The Second Wish and Other Exhalations
The Taint and Other Novellas
The Transition of Titus Crow
The Whisperer and Other Voices
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Introduction copyright © Brian Lumley, 1995.
“The Second Wish”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1980, first published in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, ed. Ramsey Campbell, Arkham House, 1980.
“The Sun, the Sea, and the Silent Scream”, copyright © Brian Lumley, first published in F&SF, Feb. 1988.
“De Marigny’s Clock”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1971, from The Caller of The Black, Arkham House, 1971.
“The Luststone”, copyright ©Brian Lumley, 1991, first published in Weird Tales, Fall 1991.
“Mother Love”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1971, first published in Witchcraft & Sorcery, May 1971.
“What Dark God”, copyright ©Brian Lumley, 1975. first published in Nameless Places, ed. G.W. Page, Arkham House, 1975.
“The Thief Immortal”, copyright © Brian Lumley, first published in Weirdbook 25, Autumn 1990.
“The House of the Temple”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1980, first published in Kadath Vol I, No. 3, Nov. 1980.
“Back Row”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1988, first published in Terror Australis, Autumn 1988.
“Name and Number”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1982, first published in Kadath Vol II, No. 1, July 1982.
“Snarker’s Son”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1980, first published in New Tales of Terror, ed. Hugh Lamb, Magnum 1980.
“Rising with Surtsey”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1971, first published in Dark Things, ed. August Derleth, Arkham House, 1971.
“David’s Worm”, copyright © Brian Lumley, 1972, first published in Year’s Best Horror No. 2, ed. Richard Davis, Sphere Books, 1972.
THE SECOND WISH AND OTHER EXHALATIONS
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Second Wish
The Sun, the Sea, and the Silent Scream
De Marigny’s Clock
The Luststone
Mothe
r Love
What Dark God?
The Thief Immortal
The House of the Temple
Back Row
Name and Number
Snarker’s Son
Rising with Surtsey
David’s Worm
Introduction
A couple of years ago I cropped Fruiting Bodies & Other Fungi; then Dagon’s Bell & Other Discords rang out; by all rights The Second Wish & Other Exhalations should be the last gasp, so to speak. A trilogy, with each book containing a witch’s dozen of stories from across my twenty-five-year span as an author. So that by the time this one sees print, all or most of the short stories and novelettes that I would wish to preserve will have been collected in this, that, or the other volume.
That’s not to say that there aren’t more short stories and novelettes; there are, but they have already been collected, or they were ‘theme’ stories that wouldn’t fit in. My tales of the Primal Land, and my Dreamlands stories, for example, would feel out of place here; many of them wouldn’t be sufficiently, well, macabre. And if there’s any theme at all to what I’ve tried to present in these books, that’s it: the macabre, or what I continue to think of as ‘horror stories”, despite the fact that a good many authors nowadays tend to shy away from the horror tag.
But while the collections themselves haven’t had specific themes — except horror, of course — the introductions have; they were platforms for my own ideas about the horror story. I prefaced Fruiting Bodies with a ‘What’s wrong with horror?’ introduction; not an apology for the genre, just a brief examination of what, to my way of thinking, has gone wrong with it. And I came to the conclusion that while a good many recent tales of terror are still recognizably ‘horror’ stories (how else can we describe them? A month-old corpse by any other name, etc.), far too often the modern variety fails to entertain but merely … horrifies!
And in my introduction to Dagon’s Bell I tried to describe what a horror story should be all about; not its contents, but the feeling it evokes: the need to look back over your shoulder when the house is dark and still. So, entertainment by frisson: the continuing theme that blood and guts aren’t enough in themselves but — like good food — the real measure of the art is in the presentation, the way it’s served up.
And so in The Second Wish, for the third time, I’m attempting to serve up horror stories that won’t just horrify but satisfy, too, and might occasionally make you want to take a peek over your shoulder, or maybe gasp out loud.
If, on the other hand, you’re looking for something to make your stomach heave, forget it — you won’t find it in this corner of the bookshop. The chemist’s (or drugstore, to you American cousins) is next door. If you should find it here, however, then for sure I’ve strayed from the path and failed to achieve my real goal, which was always and only to entertain — albeit in a cold, shivery, gasping sort of way …
Brian Lumley
Torquay
February 1994
The Second Wish
Among horror classics The Monkey’s Paw must rank with the very best. I don’t think it inspired the present tale, though certainly both stories share similar macabre motifs.
My first wish when I set about to write this story was to reiterate the theme of ‘The Warning Ignored’ and the resultant ‘Payment Exacted’; that’s what it’s about. It’s also a Cthulhu Mythos story, but despite the usual (unusual? obligatory?) references, it isn’t typically Lovecraftian.
As for my second wish:
Sixteen or seventeen years ago when this story was written, I was still a soldier. I wasn’t dependent upon earnings from my literary efforts; writing was only my hobby, while the Army was my real bread and butter. Which made me easy meat if an editor wanted changes made in a manuscript: I wouldn’t kick and scream at the mere suggestion. At that time the important thing was to get my stuff into print.
In order to comply with editorial dictates, I re-wrote the original ending in a style that never entirely satisfied me: a case of ‘who pays the piper calls the tune,’ so to speak. This time around I’ve put the matter right. It’s only a small thing — just a paragraph, that’s all — but I can now consider The Second Wish in its entirety published the way I want it.
My third wish is that it should give you the creeps!
The scene was awesomely bleak: mountains gauntly grey and black towered away to the east, forming an uneven backdrop for a valley of hardy grasses, sparse bushes, and leaning trees. In one corner of the valley, beneath foothills, a scattering of shingle-roofed houses, with the very occasional tiled roof showing through, was enclosed and protected in the Old European fashion by a heavy stone wall.
A mile or so from the village — if the huddle of time-worn houses could properly be termed a village — leaning on a low rotting fence that guarded the rutted road from a steep and rocky decline, the tourists gazed at the oppressive bleakness all about and felt oddly uncomfortable inside their heavy coats. Behind them their hired car — a black Russian model as gloomy as the surrounding countryside, exuding all the friendliness of an expectant hearse — stood patiently waiting for them.
He was comparatively young, of medium build, dark haired, unremarkably good-looking, reasonably intelligent, and decidedly idle. His early adult years had been spent avoiding any sort of real industry, a prospect that a timely and quite substantial inheritance had fortunately made redundant before it could force itself upon him. Even so, a decade of living at a rate far in excess of even his ample inheritance had rapidly reduced him to an almost penniless, unevenly cultured, high-ranking rake. He had never quite lowered himself to the level of a gigolo, however, and his womanizing had been quite deliberate, serving an end other than mere fleshly lust.
They had been ten very good years by his reckoning and not at all wasted, during which his expensive lifestyle had placed him in intimate contact with the cream of society; but while yet surrounded by affluence and glitter he had not been unaware of his own steadily dwindling resources. Thus, towards the end, he had set himself to the task of ensuring that his tenuous standing in society would not suffer with the disappearance of his so carelessly distributed funds; hence his philandering. In this he was not as subtle as he might have been, with the result that the field had narrowed down commensurately with his assets, until at last he had been left with Julia.
She was a widow in her middle forties but still fairly trim, rather prominently featured, too heavily made-up, not a little calculating, and very well-to-do. She did not love her consort — indeed she had never been in love — but he was often amusing and always thoughtful. Possibly his chief interest lay in her money, but that thought did not really bother her. Many of the younger, unattached men she had known had been after her money. At least Harry was not foppish, and she believed that in his way he did truly care for her.
Not once had he given her reason to believe otherwise. She had only twenty good years left and she knew it; money could only buy so much youth … Harry would look after her in her final years and she would turn a blind eye on those little indiscretions which must surely come — provided he did not become too indiscreet. He had asked her to marry him and she would comply as soon as they returned to London. Whatever else he lacked he made up for in bed. He was an extremely virile man and she had rarely been so well satisfied …
Now here they were together, touring Hungary, getting ‘far away from it all.’
“Well, is this remote enough for you?” he asked, his arm around her waist.
“Umm,” she answered. “Deliciously barren, isn’t it?”
“Oh, it’s all of that. Peace and quiet for a few days — it was a good idea of yours, Julia, to drive out here. We’ll feel all the more like living it up when we reach Budapest.”
“Are you so eager, then, to get back to the bright lights?” she asked. He detected a measure of peevishness in her voice.
“Not at all, darling. The setting might as well be Siberia for all I’m conc
erned about locale. As long as we’re together. But a girl of your breeding and style can hardly—”
“Oh, come off it, Harry! You can’t wait to get to Budapest, can you?”
He shrugged, smiled resignedly, thought: You niggly old bitch! and said, “You read me like a book, darling — but Budapest is just a wee bit closer to London, and London is that much closer to us getting married, and—”
“But you have me anyway,” she again petulantly cut him off. “What’s so important about being married?”
“It’s your friends, Julia,” he answered with a sigh. “Surely you know that?” He took her arm and steered her towards the car. “They see me as some sort of cuckoo in the nest, kicking them all out of your affections. Yes, and it’s the money, too.”
“The money?” she looked at him sharply as he opened the car door for her. “What money?”
“The money I haven’t got!” he grinned ruefully, relaxing now that he could legitimately speak his mind, if not the truth. “I mean, they’re all certain it’s your money I’m after, as if I was some damned gigolo. It’s hardly flattering to either one of us. And I’d hate to think they might convince you that’s all it is with me. But once we’re married I won’t give a damn what they say or think. They’ll just have to accept me, that’s all.”
Reassured by what she took to be pure naiveté, she smiled at him and pulled up the collar of her coat. Then the smile fell from her face, and though it was not really cold she shuddered violently as he started the engine.
“A chill, darling?” he forced concern into his voice.
“Umm, a bit of one,” she answered, snuggling up to him. “And a headache too. I’ve had it ever since we stopped over at — oh, what’s the name of the place? Where we went up over the scree to look at that strange monolith?”
“Stregoicavar,” he answered her. “The “Witch-Town.” And that pillar-thing was the Black Stone. A curious piece of rock that, eh? Sticking up out of the ground like a great black fang! But Hungary is full of such things: myths and legends and odd relics of forgotten times. Perhaps we shouldn’t have gone to look at it. The villagers shun it…”
