Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (11 page)

The bleariness of my eyes tells me that I have been reading and typing for a very long time. It may well be time to imbibe a glass or three of homebrew. Apologies once again for clogging up your inbox with my ramblings.

Good night.

John

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To: Brian J. Showers ([email protected])
From: John Reppion ([email protected])
Sent: 22 Dec 2008 02:02
Subject: (no subject)

Brian,

I must choose my words very carefully here. I am writing to you because my earlier emails might somehow help to explain what has happened – what is still happening – although I
admit I am not sure exactly how. I’m extremely tired, and have spent the last twenty-four hours immersed in the history of the land on which Princes Park now stands. Maybe the combination of these factors has triggered some sort of uncanny episode, the kind of phenomena reported by greater writers than myself where work intrudes on real life in some bizarre way. I’d think that it had all been some kind of fevered dream, but the black, foul-smelling mud tracked across the carpet is real enough. And the sound. The scratching at the window. I’m trying not to think about it.

I will start at the beginning. I will lay out the bare facts, as I have done in my earlier emails. Perhaps some sort of sense will emerge.

After I sent my previous message, I was true to my word and opened a bottle of homebrewed stout. Feeling rather alone in the living room – unaccustomed as I am to being on my own in the flat – I decided instead to watch a DVD here in the study. I found one of the copied discs my friend Shane sometimes sends me. These are generally obscure or low-budget horror of a kind ideally suited to watching whilst drinking. I don’t remember much of the film, but I was well into my second bottle of stout when I must have started to doze. I awoke in a fright, a horrible sound ringing in my ears.

Recovering from my initial shock, I knew that the noise must be part of the film’s soundtrack. Cursing my stupidity, I removed my headphones. It was with a sense of horribly creeping dread that I then realised the sound was now louder than before, and coming from outside. It was like the desperate, mewling cry of a stricken child or, more accurately, a chorus of cries. After a few moments of panic, I came to the conclusion that the sound must be cats fighting, and again cursed my fuzzy-headed irrationality. Opening the window, I was not hugely surprised when my own cat came leaping into the room. But the awful sound – half bark, half scream – still echoed horribly outside. Peering out into the darkness I saw a tangle of shapes moving in the park. They were too large for cats, their movements somehow less fluid, more primitive, and gradually I came to the conclusion that I was looking at a group of foxes. I couldn’t tell whether they were fighting, mating or something else, but their cries were relentless and somehow painful to hear. I shouted out of the window, but my yell was feeble by comparison and the foxes seemed not to hear it. It was late, past twelve already, and I was baffled by the fact that no one else seemed to have been drawn to their windows by the sounds.

Pulling on my shoes and picking up my keys, I went out to the garden. Standing at the fence, I could see the pack of creatures swirling and tumbling around a single spot, as if they were attacking something. There is a garden nearby where chickens are kept, and I thought it possible that the canids were fighting over an unlucky bird. It seemed that there were four or five animals, but it was impossible to count accurately because of the weird manner of their movements. I shouted again and this time banged on the metal railings which separate the garden from the park, but the foxes were unperturbed and continued their grisly, unnatural dance.

Sitting here now, I can’t really say why I did it – the sounds were crowding my thoughts, and I suppose I was desperate to silence them – but I ran out of the garden and round to the heavy iron gates which lead into the park. I stopped there, the tangle of beasts some four or five hundred feet ahead of me, and again I shouted. I shouted as loud and as long as I could, but I could hardly hear my own voice above the noise of the foxes. Desperate to break the group up, I ran toward it. I was within twenty feet of them when the pack finally disbanded. The lean, low shapes scattered into the surrounding undergrowth, and at last the sound stopped.

I stood for a while catching my breath and savouring the silence. The park was still and dark, a faint mist all that remained of the earlier thick fog. Looking around I spotted a pair of yellow luminescent eyes watching from beneath an overgrown hedge. I considered throwing something at it to drive the animal off farther. It was then that the sound started again.

A few hundred feet head of me, close to the red granite monolith dedicated to Richard Vaughan Yates which marks a fork in the path, I saw a lone, low black shape. A sound, just as loud and complex as before, seemed to be coming from the creature. It occurred to me that the foxes might somehow have caught a cat or small dog, and that this individual was now struggling to carry the poor creature off on its own. Again I ran. The crouched silhouette skittered ahead of me. I half expected the beast to drop whatever it was carrying, but it left no carcass or wounded thing in its wake.

I stopped at the monolith thinking that the creature should by now be sufficiently scared to keep running. However, the second I paused, the shadowed form did likewise. Its dreadful mewling began again and all at once the magpies seemed to come alive in the trees around me – their horrible chatter sounding like sinister mocking laughter. I was suddenly furious, angry almost to the point of blind rage, and once again I gave chase. The air seemed filled with birds fluttering and flapping, hideously packed together like a swarm of monstrous locusts driving themselves into a frenzy as they beat their wings against each other.

The thing which I thought was a fox lolloped ahead of me. As we rounded the path into the dip carved out centuries ago by the Puritan’s River Jordan, the creature splashed heavily though a puddle and seemed to slow down. I redoubled my efforts, now intent on catching the beast. I shudder now to think what would have happened if I had laid a hand on it.

My foot must have caught some unevenness in the path, and I stumbled, falling face first into the puddle. I struck my head hard on the tarmac. My vision flashed white. Sitting up dazedly, I wiped the muddy water from my face and found it mingled with blood from my own nose. Magpies covered every branch of every tree, their
chakker-chakker
laughter all the more uproarious after my fall. The fox-thing stood some twenty or so feet ahead of me at the edge of the boating lake. Despite the bright moonlight, it somehow still appeared as though a silhouette. Between it and myself was a trail of wet prints – prints that had not been made by the paw of any animal.

I know that what I am writing does not make sense. Maybe the blow to my head and the tiredness fuelled by my recent esoteric delving has caused some kind of delirium. I would love to believe that – I wish I could believe it – but the sound at my window is all too real.

The prints that lay between me and the fox-thing looked as though they had been left by the bare feet and hands of a child. I looked toward the creature – the thing that was not a fox – and it looked back at me. It turned its head and its face, its awful face, was that of an ancient and wizened woman. And she was laughing.

I tried to crawl away from the thing, to claw my way out of the miniature valley where the path lay, but it was as if the laws of time and space had become distorted. Each desperate, dream-like motion seemed to bring me closer to that horrendous creature until I couldn’t bear it any more. I closed my eyes. There was nothing else I could do.

When I opened them again, I was knee deep in stinking mud, amongst the dead reeds at the edge of the boating lake. A figure was reaching out toward me, a voice calling to me. I struggled to get away, but my legs were stuck firmly in the mud. I fell backwards, my head and shoulders dunking into the ice-cold water.

Hands closed firmly on my shoulders, and I was sure that I would be dragged to the bottom of the lake, drowned like the others before me. Instead I found myself yanked gasping from the water and hauled awkwardly onto the path.

It was a middle-aged couple – they must have been cutting through the park on their way home from some nearby pub lock-in. They thought I was drunk, or on drugs. The man, a burly workman type, smelt strongly of whiskey. He swore at me, asked me what I thought I was playing at. I couldn’t answer. I felt as though I was a child, and the only thing I could think to do was run away, back through the park, avoiding the path that winds around the lake. I ran until I reached the safety of my own flat, and bolted the door behind me.

I’d had time to  gulp down a fair bit of stout, my heart just beginning to slow a little, when the scratching began. Thinking it must be my cat, I moved towards the living room window and drew the curtain aside. But at that instant a sound came from behind me. I turned in surprise to see the cat, his fur standing straight up on his back, staring past me at the window. He produced that terrible warning wail cats make when they have been cornered. Behind me the scratching was more frantic than ever. I let the curtain fall, without so much as turning toward the window, and left the room.

The true horror of it is that the creature – that thing which is not a fox – seems somehow to know which room I am in. Wherever I go in the flat, that scrabbling and scratching at the sill follows. I can do nothing now but wait for dawn and hope that the sunlight somehow dispels this nightmare.

John

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To: John Reppion ([email protected])
From: Brian J. Showers ([email protected])
Sent: 22 Dec 2008 17:34
Subject: RE: (no subject)

Hi John,

Hope all is well with you.

Phone and internet are still down at home, but it’s turned out to be an unseasonably sunny day despite yesterday’s snow flurry, so I decided to walk into town.

I’m afraid I haven’t had time to read the other emails you sent, but something in your first message had my brain ticking over all of yesterday. You mentioned a minister called Richard Mather. The name rang a bell. After chewing it over all night I decided to call into the library. I’m sure you know all of this already, but I thought I’d share anyway:

Richard Mather (1596-1669) arrived at Boston from England on 15 August 1635. He was a pastor in Dorchester, Massachusetts up until his death. Richard was father of Increase Mather (21 June 1639 - 23 August 1723) and the grandfather of Cotton Mather (12 February 1663 - 13 February 1728). You are no doubt familiar with his
Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions
(1689). Both Cotton and Increase were involved in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693, hence my familiarity with the name.

Having established the connection I couldn’t resist searching for any evidence of the Mathers being involved in witch-finding prior to their emigration. I’m sure you will not be hugely surprised to learn that this morning’s all too brief investigations have yielded nothing of the kind. Something that might be of more interest to you is following passage from Margaret Alice Murray’s
The Witch-cult in Western Europe
(1921):

In 166? at Liverpool, “Margaret Loy, being arraigned for a witch, confessed she was one; and when she was asked how long she had so been, replied, Since the death of her mother, who died thirty years ago; and at her decease she had nothing to leave her, and this widow Bridge, that were sisters, but her two spirits; and named them, the eldest spirit to this widow, and the other spirit to her the said Margaret Loy.” This inheritance of a familiar may be compared with the Lapp custom: “The Laplanders bequeath their Demons as part of their inheritance, which is the reason that one family excels another in this magical art.”

I cross-referenced the names and (partial) date and found several similar records, one of which states that one of the familiars bequeathed to the sisters were supposed to take the form of a fox, the other a badger. Margaret’s surname is given as Lay or Ley – both of which are thought to be variants of an Old English word for a clearing in a forest or wood. Could this relate to the Royal Hunting Ground you mentioned in your email?

I admit that it seems a bit of a stretch.

Regards,

Brian

DARK WATERS
by Adam Vidler

The waterhole was deep and deliciously cool under the burning sun. Ray let himself float, eyes closed. His ears dipped beneath the water, plunging him into a world of silence, and he drifted in blank emptiness. Then a rock landed beside him, splashing water all over his face. He came up spluttering, wiping his eyes.

“What the hell?” he called, laughing.

Kat was sitting on her towel on the shore, grinning beneath her sunglasses. “I meant to hit you!” she said.

Ray paddled towards her. The deeper water was stingingly cold on his feet. “You’re lucky you didn’t.”

“Yeah? Says who? Maybe I could have got out of here and gone to a proper hotel or something.”

He chuckled, treading water in front of her. “People would come looking for me. They’d find you out.”

“Nuh-uh.” She threw another rock. It sailed over his head and landed with a splash behind him.

He paddled closer. The smile faded from his face. “Look, I know camping outdoors isn’t what you probably had in mind for a holiday...”

“God, you’re over-sensitive.”

“...but this place isn’t bad. And it’s only for the night. We’ve got a tent, plenty of food, and–”

“Do shut up, Ray. It’s fine. I made one joke. I like it here. Nobody to bother us, and even the road went off on its own a mile or so back. If it weren’t for all the bloody rocks I’d ask you to come share my towel.”

He grinned. “You could come in here.”

She looked at him over the edge of her glasses. “Yeah? How deep is it down there?”

“Dunno. I dived earlier, didn’t reach the bottom. Too cold.”

“Well, then. I think I’ll stay where I am and finish my nice warm book.”

“Scaredy-Kat.”

“Now we’re back in school.”

“I know you are, but what am I?” He raised one dripping arm out of the water. “What happens if I splash all over the book?”

Her sunglasses slid up over her eyes again. “You don’t have the guts.”

She was right. He kicked back and returned to floating atop the abyss with a contented smile. Until she threw a rock at him again.

♦

The campfire popped and snapped, a speck of light in the surrounding dark. Camp was away from the waterhole, in the long defile they’d climbed down that morning. Their car was on top of the ridge, and pitted stone cliffs rose around them like walls, darker shadows against the stars. The ground was sandy, and dotted with sprays of stunted scrub trees. Ray grinned at Kat as he waved the pan over the flames.

“See? Not just baked beans for us tonight. Primo sausages.”

“Where the hell did you get those?”

“Butcher’s in town, while you were at that book sale at the library. Kept them in the cooler all day.”

Kat wrinkled her nose. “Are they okay to eat?”

“Ice was barely melted, hon. They’re fine.”

She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them. “At the library sale, they had a book about this place.”

Ray glanced up from his cooking. “What place? Here?”

“This waterhole, yeah. It’s called Blackwell or something, right?”

He frowned, trying to remember the map in his car. “Yeah... Think so.”

“Right, well, they had this book. It was kept away from the others, so I asked why. Apparently they wanted like a hundred bucks for it.”

“No shit? Don’t they try to offload all that stuff for fifty cents or whatever?”

“This was a handwritten copy, an old diary, with a red leather cover. The woman there said it was the diary of the first guy to explore this part of the country.” Kat looked out into the night, towards the waterhole. Above them the stars prickled, a great carpet of white needles in the dark. The sausages popped in the pan and she flinched.

“What’s wrong?” Ray asked.

“Sorry. Nothing. It’s just that it’s only the two of us out here, and it’s night and all. The lady at the library said that diary was pretty out there. That this area had some horrible things happen in it. The explorer went mad, they reckon – they only found his diary, and it was just filled with gibberish, languages nobody had ever read, that kind of thing. Never saw him again.”

He chuckled. “Oooh. Scary.”

“Shut up. It wasn’t, then. When she was telling me about it. Now that I’ve just got your ugly face for company though...”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll protect you, don’t worry.” He poked the sausages with a knife, and grunted in approval. “Ready. Grab your plate. Want an egg?”

“Nah.”

They ate in silence. The world around them blanketed everything with stillness. Impossibly distant, the stars burned with cold fire.

“God, it’s quiet out here,” Kat said.

“Yeah.”

“If we ever have kids they’d better like the quiet. No way I’d want to raise a child in the city.”

He stiffened, and she looked up from her plate as if she’d sensed it.

“Oh – no, Ray, I didn’t mean –”

“Right. You never do.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be a dick.”

“Yeah, I’m a dick, got it.” He dropped his plate on the ground. “I’m going for a walk.”

“Ray...”

He dumped his plate on the dirt, jerked upright and stalked away.

The scrub trees and the darkness swallowed him, and he walked without knowing where he was headed, wrapped in his own fury. Hands in pockets, he found himself at the edge of the waterhole. He frowned. He didn’t think he’d been walking for long enough. The glow of their fire was lost behind him. To either side, the pockmarked cliffs loomed over the waterhole.

“Kids,” he muttered. “Goddamn kids.” He stooped and picked up a handful of flat stones. “I don’t,” he skimmed one, “want”, another, “kids!”

He watched his stones bounce across the flat water. Ripples spread in the starlight. He looked at the last stone in his hand – an odd one, not like the others. It was black and veined with quartz, and felt strangely cold in his hand. Anger bloomed deep inside him. He clenched his hand around the stone, hard, hissing as its sharp edges cut into his palm. Teeth bared in a snarl, Ray flung the stone out, not bothering to skim it. It splashed into the water. Dark ripples spread away from it and the stone sank, taking his anger with it. He blinked, and drew a shaky breath.
Where did that come from?
No – he knew. He knew where it came from. He rubbed his eyes.

“Stupid,” he muttered. He’d been stupid. Rude. Cruel. It was time to apologize. He drew a deep breath, released it, and turned back towards camp.

Behind him, the stone continued to sink.

♦

Kat wasn’t sure what woke her. A dream, or – no, it was gone. Ray was breathing deeply and evenly beside her. He’d come back to apologize a couple minutes after storming off. They’d hugged, and she had apologized too, even though they both knew she didn’t need to. She smiled down at him sleeping.
If that’s the only fight we have on this trip
, she thought,
we’ll be lucky.
It wasn’t really his fault, how sensitive he got about kids. Being raised by a monster like that...

A low sound came from outside. She froze. It was hard to identify, but once she had, it clung to her ears. A low, mournful call, almost turning into a song at times. She nudged Ray. “Hey,” she whispered. “Ray. Wake up.”

“Mm. S’it morning?”

“No. Can you hear that?”

He rolled over, already sinking back into sleep. Kat shook her head, and sat there hugging her knees until the sound drifted away. She needed to pee.

Outside the tent, the night was silent, save for some gurgling at the waterhole that echoed through the low scrubby trees. The night was moonless, but the stars gave the landscape a pale sheen that was enough to see by. She walked away from the camp and squatted unhappily behind a patch of twisted shrubs.
Bloody outdoors
. As she stood, the sound began again.

She froze, half crouching, her shorts pulled to her knees. Out here, beyond the thin walls of the tent, it was louder.
A bird,
she told herself.
A stupid bird
. It came to her how ridiculous she had to look, and she stood more abruptly than she needed to, yanking her shorts up.

A twig cracked under her foot. The low, weird hum softened. There was something haunting about it, almost enchanting. And it was coming from... coming from everywhere. She relaxed, her eyes drifting.

The waterhole shivered under the stars, a rippled black canvas. Kat stood on the shore.
How she had come to be there?
There was no breeze, but even so the water was rolling with little wavelets, as black and cold as the sky it mirrored. She shivered. The sound was still there, within her mind, throbbing and humming, a mournful and irresistible summons.

This is crazy
, she thought.
This is a damned pond, not –

With a gentle splash, something broke the surface. She yelped, and sank to her knees. A stone. Impossibly, it was a stone, floating on the water’s surface. Drifting towards her. A weird stench came with it, ancient and decayed. Trembling, she crawled to the very edge of the water. Hollow noises filled her ears. She reached out, fingers shaking, and picked the stone up. A glimpse of dull, white quartz against black and –

A world exploded in her mind.

She saw Ray for a moment, felt his fleeting bitterness. Then others, men and women, with white skin and black, on and on. The vision reeled back through thousands of years, millions, the supplicants no longer even vaguely human. And beneath the water...

Whimpering, helpless, she felt her mind crumble. Her very self was bending, shattering. Somewhere, her body convulsed. Hunger assailed her, hunger to drive her into madness. Finally, she saw what awaited her.

She screamed. There would be pain, and there would be no peace to follow it. As she tumbled into icy darkness,
the depths cracked open beneath her, yawning wider and wider.

♦

Ray woke with the sun high in the sky, holding himself absolutely still. Just below his throat rested a black stone, veined with quartz. He’d known he would find it there. In his dreams, he’d seen a dead man come and place it on his chest. In his dreams, he’d seen Kat, shorn of her name and mind, swallowed first by the water and then by the thing that dwelt beneath it. In his dreams, he’d seen the smile on her empty face slowly eroding in the blackness.

He could not think. Would not think. He got up, struck the tent, and drove toward the city. Alone.

After an hour on the road, under the sweltering sun, he reached the little town they’d passed through only yesterday. The book sale was still going, the banner wilted in the heat. He got out of the car and walked slowly up to the table, where a beaming middle-aged woman waited.

“You have an old book here,” he said. He could hear the dull flatness of his own voice.

She regarded him ironically. “Yes?”

Of course they did. Hundreds of them. “A...” He felt as if his memory was leaking. “A red book. An old journal. I’d like to buy it.”

“Oh, I see. Well, that one’s going to cost you quite a bit, young man.”

“A hundred dollars, I know.” He pulled out his wallet and slid two fifties towards her. “Here you go.”

She looked slightly startled, but the money decided her, and she turned around to dig through a box on a table behind her. “Ah. Here.” Turning back round, she handed him a carefully-wrapped package. “Be careful with it. It’s in pretty good condition but, well, it’s old. I’d recommend having somebody type it out for you instead of trying to read it.”

“Thanks.” The word felt like lead.

Ray took the package back to the car, and moments later, he was rumbling through the quiet main street, heading towards home. He drove for as long as he could, before pulling over at the side of the road and winding his seat back. The instant he closed his eyes, silence swallowed him, pressing in. Impossibly, he slept.

Kat’s face, faint and wavering, floated into his dreams. He saw it dissolving, fleck by fleck. A whispered call settled into the fabric of his mind and woke him, raw-eyed and sandy-mouthed. Defying the night, he turned the car on, put it into gear, and drove the rest of the way back to the city without pause. Before him, the red sun rose.

Eventually, he reached the block where he and Kat lived. He parked the car in the cool dark of the garage, and rested his clammy forehead on the steering wheel. He’d hoped, faintly, that the humdrum chaos of the city would reassure him, drag his mind away from the wild places that lurked in his dreams. Instead, the very mundanity of it grated on him. The engines and voices and electronic hums blended together into a shrill urban scream. It was a desperate pretence. The city – humanity, life itself – was just a husk, a crust over an endless black well that went down, and down, and down. Ray cradled his face in his hands and cried softly.

Up some unremembered number of stairs, he found himself facing the door of their – his – flat. His hands shook as he opened it, but only a little. Eyes dry, he walked inside and dropped his travel-bag to the floor. The furniture, the walls, the gleaming white fridge in the kitchen, it was all so mockingly normal. As if reality meant something.

Kat’s touch was everywhere. Her heels, discarded in a corner. Her handbag, stuffed with makeup and tissues and coins, slumped on the stupid wicker chair she’d bought at a garage sale because she thought it would add some rustic colour to their bland little home. Ray’s knees shook, and he collapsed onto the couch and cried, really cried. Sobs shuddered through him like earthquakes. Devastated, exhausted, and terrified in equal measure, he was powerless to stop sleep from claiming him.