Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (23 page)

“Can they do it?”

“No,” he says. “I don’t think so.” He doesn’t sound sure though. “Come on,” he tells me, his eyes glinting silver. “Let’s get you fed.”

I have the Bontempi organ in my backpack, so we put it in the trees in the dark end of the park behind McDonalds, where nobody ever comes. We have to wait ages and ages but eventually some skinny guy in a beanie cap comes along, smoking a fag. He spots the organ sticking out of its box and looks around sneakily, but he doesn’t see me and Dad behind the tree.

As the bloke bends over to pick it up, Dad slips out silently and pulls back his face like a fleshy mask. What’s underneath slashes the man’s face and slits his throat in three easy flicks.

We drag the body further into the woods and feed.

“We never used to have to do this,” says Dad, mouth full. “All this hiding. So demeaning. In the good old days, humans worshipped us, you know. They were our cattle, too. We’d stride around, high as the stars, and when we got hungry, we’d reach down and pluck off a head. Just a head!”

“And one day soon, our time will come again,” I say, before he can.

He looks at me appreciatively. “Not long now.”

“Mmph,” I say. “Can I have the eyes this time?”

“Oh, go on then,” says Dad, blood all down his chin. “After all, you’re a growing lad.”

Dad makes me go back because he says if I don’t, it’ll look really suspicious. I’ve eaten properly, so I don’t feel so bad. Eating with Dad is the only time I feel full, to be honest. When I get back, Bernard’s nowhere to be seen for once. Mum cleans the blood off my face, then we watch Countryfile on the sofa together.

♦

It happens on Wednesday.

“No school for you today,” says Mum. “Put on some loose clothes. We’re going to go out today. Special treat.”

Loose clothes? Mum can’t look me in the eye.

We go downstairs, but instead of getting ready to go out, we march out into the garden. Everything is very big today, as if the spaces between things have all increased. The garden seems stark, chilly, too empty somehow.

“Bernard says it’s for the best,” she says. She leads me into the big shed. The bare bulb in the ceiling is switched off and there are candles stuck messily to every surface. It’s full of plants and they’re writhing slowly, as if they’re underwater.

“Mum? What’s going on?”

“We need to do a... ceremony.” Her face is turned away.

“A ritual,” says Bernard. He’s wearing black clothes I’ve never seen before, and he’s holding the book open. The pages are buzzing with tiny black lines, writhing like the plants, searching for something. For me. On the workbench, he has several different workman’s tools laid out. A retractable Stanley knife, garden cutters, even a thick steak knife. They look very sharp.

The mark on my arm blazes in pain, as if it’s trying to get out.
Dad
, I think.
Oh, Dad
. I’m too scared to move.

Mum cups my face in her hands. She looks so old, suddenly.

“I made a big mistake with your father,” she says, and it’s not like she’s really talking to me at all. She’s talking to herself. “I was young – I thought it was cool, all the sacrifices, and the dancing, and the secrets. I knew what he was – I knew what he was – I didn’t go into it blind – but I never – I never –”

“Mum,” I cry. “Let me go, this is all wrong.”

She falters, then summons up all her courage. “You don’t have to grow up like him.”

“I WANT to be like him!” I yell. “I don’t want to be like YOU!”

I wrench myself out of her grasp. The words start spilling out of me, words that have been building up in me since Mum and Dad parted. “What’s so great about being a stupid human anyway?”

She looks at me, eyes wide with shock as I spit out the words. “What’s so great about having to love and hate and miss people and watch people split up and hurt each other and you can’t do anything about it? Dad doesn’t do that! Dad doesn’t have to
care!
”

As I shout, I see a thousand strands of black snaking out of the book towards me, searching blindly. Where they touch, they sting like needles. I cry out at the sudden agony. Bernard leans forward, his eyes blazing.

“You said it wouldn’t hurt him!” Mum cries.

Bernard ignores her, and thrusts the book towards me. The strands are pulling me back towards him. I try to crawl, but even the slightest movement away is more pain than I can stand.

“We’ll cut out the part that belongs to the Old Ones,” pants Bernard. “We’ll give you a brand new soul – a nice clean one – and you’ll be free!”

I’m crawling helplessly on the floor, the strands pulling me over to where Bernard stands with bare feet on the musty shed floor. I reach up, open up my true face, and bite Bernard’s left hand clean off.

Everything is a blur. Bernard roars in pain, and the threads instantly recede. I fumble at the shed door while Mum wails behind me. Stumbling, falling, I run inside the house. Bernard is scrambling behind me, screaming at me incoherently in rage.

I make it to the hallway, but all my strength is sapped. I hear Bernard mutter a few strange syllables, and then the threads are drilling into my back again.

I grab at the front door, pull it, but it’s too late. I can’t move forward for the pain.

The door swings open slowly, and I see that there’s someone there.

It’s Dad. He’s come to take me home. Not just Dad, either. Behind him, draped tall and monstrous across the sky, are the Authorities.

I think I see Grandad. It’s hard to tell, because it hurts a bit to look.

Bernard runs screaming to the door, and then halts, skidding on the carpet runner. Dad has shrugged off his skin like a robe, and is reaching out his thin arms to Bernard.

Bernard starts to run back down the hall, away from Dad. So I trip him up.

As the Authorities flow themselves into the house, their shadows fall over the hallway. It’s a grey you can’t get in this world, and I notice that wherever they fall, all the orchids are wilting to mush.

THE HIGHLAND AIR
by Gethin A. Lynes

MR AONGHAS CROWTHER

SCHIMEL ST

WATERLOO, NEW SOUTH WALES

HAVE ARRIVED SAFE STOP VOYAGE UNEVENTFUL STOP AWAITING ARRIVAL OF UNCLE CORMACK STOP WILL WRITE PROPERLY SOON STOP

DOUGAL

The telegram brought some small measure of relief, though until my son was safe in the care of my brother, Cormack, I could not help a lingering sense of unease. For all our differences, my brother was a good man, and I knew he would do his best for Dougal. My son had suffered long from both a sickly constitution and, in more recent years, increasing mental ill health. Despite his frailty, Dougal had always been a contrary lad, full of argument and question, and I worried often that if his health did not take him from me, his wont to question society’s beliefs would get him into trouble of a sort from which I could not save him.

From the earliest age he displayed an intelligence beyond his years, and I held high hopes that he would elevate himself above his station. That is not to say that we were of a lowly birth, nor that our emigration to the antipodes had not provided us with fortune. Indeed, quite the contrary. Being of no small wit myself, the colonies of Australia proved to be a most opportune place in which, with hard work and ingenuity, one could grow wealthy.

It is, however, to a standing of respect, even honour, beyond that afforded by wealth alone that I hoped Dougal might rise, perhaps as a surgeon, or member of the judiciary. But it was not to be.

Even in his early schooling, he surpassed his tutors. He was placed with children older and, I think unfortunately for Dougal, duller of wit than he, and while he quickly became as much an aid to his teachers as a student, it was to his social detriment. He was oft derided, even bullied by his peers, and being of a slight stature unmatched to his fiery temperament, he retreated from the company of other children, and took to spending his every moment indoors.

He was always reading, as though he might learn enough to question the very nature of the universe. Which, I suppose, in his way, he did.

I enrolled him in The King’s School, with no small amount of convincing, a full two years before he was of an age. I thought that the guidance and discipline provided by boarding at the school would prove to be a boon for Dougal’s delicate health, believing that what he needed was a firm hand and some physical exertion.

Under the school’s supervision and tutelage, however, he seemed to suffer more than prosper. He took no interest, much to his Housemaster’s grievance, in those pursuits, sportsmanship and military training and so on, to which young men, I was oft informed, ought to take rather keenly. He was at odds, also, with the school’s religious instruction, against which he railed constantly. On more than one occasion, I was called into the school to account for his ungodly ideas.

On this count, I cannot blame the boy, for the escape from my own staunchly Calvinist upbringing formed no small part of my decision to leave Scotland. It was also the chief reason that in the years since I came to New South Wales, at least until I sent Dougal to his care, I had exchanged not two words with my brother.

It was only a few months before he was due to graduate from King’s that I was called back from business in the Western Plains to find that Dougal had been expelled from the school. He would have been well placed, according to his examination results, to have entered university in whichever faculty he desired, and I thought to argue for the school to rescind their expulsion.

I was met, however, by a resolute refusal to discuss the matter. I left with the distinct impression that the Headmaster, Reverend George Fairfowl Macarthur, was, more than anything else, afraid.

Dougal himself refused to speak of what had occurred, and eventually I was left with no choice but to cease my inquiries.

In the two years following, Dougal’s health deteriorated. He got about everywhere with the aid of a cane and, wrapped in a thick shawl, he was wracked by bouts of shivering, even in the hottest months.

He took work in the Sydney Free Public Library. There he worked closely with the young principal librarian, Robert Cooper Walker, with whom I became well acquainted, and was instrumental in helping to expand the library’s collection. Dougal found himself lodging close by the Library, and though I saw less and less of him, I became great friends with Mr Walker, though he was much closer to my son’s age than mine. He told me Dougal was fascinated, almost obsessed, with the Library’s rare books collection, and spent long nights closeted in the archives, poring over its contents. He confessed that he had rather received the impression that Dougal was searching for something, though what that might be, neither he nor I had any clue.

Dougal worked for Robert Walker for over three years. Eventually, and quite suddenly, he announced that he was going to seek his fortune in the goldfields of Victoria. I made no effort to conceal my surprise, and concern, for both his health and his prospects of success. I questioned him repeatedly, not understanding at all where this sudden, and quite odd, desire had come from. I was in no way short of funds. The fact that Dougal could live out his days comfortably in good health and pursuit of his interests, on my moderate wealth, fell on deaf ears. Despite my efforts, Dougal remained firm in his resolve.

I did not hear word of him for the better part of three years. When I did, it was most alarming.

♦

MR AONGHAS CROWTHER

SCHIMEL ST

WATERLOO, NEW SOUTH WALES

YOUR SON DOUGAL EXCEEDINGLY UNWELL STOP FEAR THE WORST STOP IN NO CONDITION TO TRAVEL STOP PLEASE COME AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE TO GLENROWAN STOP

JOSEPH BYRNE

By the time I arrived in Glenrowan, Dougal was barely clinging to life. He was laid up in the Glenrowan Hotel, under the care of the now infamous Joe Byrne. For all the violence for which Mr Byrne was later responsible, and all that has been said of him, I found him to be both an exceedingly courteous and considerate young man. His concern for my son was immediately apparent, and he tended Dougal, who lay pallid and sweating on his cot, with a surprisingly gentle hand.

Dougal had become horrendously thin, his face skeletal and his eyes sunken in black pits. To his chest, in one thin hand, he clutched a worn, leather-bound journal, a strange symbol scratched on its cover. It echoed the Celtic triskelion design, and yet it had some indefinable, almost squid-like quality in its form. I felt an immediate revulsion towards the thing, and I made to remove it from Dougal’s grip. But Joe quickly stayed my hand, and handed me the cool cloth with which he had been mopping my son’s sodden brow.

Joe left me then for a time, and I sat by the bedside for a long while, deeply concerned. In all his childhood bouts of illness I had never seen Dougal in such a wretched condition.

I do not in truth know how long it was that I sat there, but night had fallen by the time Joe returned. He had a bottle of whisky and two glasses, and he motioned me from the room, taking me to his own, where he related the events, or at least what he knew of them, that had led my son to this dark place.

Dougal had fallen to the devil of opium, which was a common affliction, I was told, amongst the Chinese encampments of the goldfields. Joe admitted, with much candour, that he himself partook of that drug on occasion, and he feared that it had been his friendship and influence that had introduced my boy to it.

“I feel much responsibility to my friends, Mr Crowther,” he said. “But I’ve not been the friend to your boy I should have.”

I said nothing, sensing in the young man the need to make a confession of sorts.

“He is a remarkable intellect,” he went on. “And perhaps I didn’t realise how little experience of the world he has. I should not have left him alone. I’m no saint, but I’ve been much maligned by the law, and I didn’t think my disappearance would leave Dougal... I didn’t think he would have been so indulgent with the opium.”

He was obviously much pained by what he was telling me, his eyes on the floor and an anguished cast to his features. Despite my anxiousness over Dougal’s condition, I found myself unable to be overly angry with him. Still, I remained quiet, and allowed him to continue in his own time.

“I was gone for months, avoiding the coppers, and too much concerned with my own welfare. When I came back, he was in a terrible way. The Chinese had put him in a little tent, or he had crawled there. It was not much more than a lean-to, a pitiful shelter, but no one would go near him.”

He fell silent then, his eyes far off, as though reliving the experience. There was a long silence.

“Mr Byrne?” I said eventually, prompting his from his reverie. He shook his head, and looked up. After a moment, he went on.

“I could make neither head nor tail of it, Mr Crowther. I have seen men in the grip of opium before, but not like this.” Another silence. “Do you know what, or who, The Old Ones are?” he asked suddenly.

I shook my head.

“Dougal raved about them. He was in some state of delirium, and I could barely understand what he said, but he said it over and over. He was always holding that little book, and would go mad if I tried to put it aside, screaming and thrashing about. He seemed near dying, but the strength he held that book with was beyond me to break.”

I looked away, as though I might stop seeing that image of Dougal in my mind. When I turned back, Joe was quietly holding out the bottle of whisky. He waited while I poured, and took a long swallow.

“Even in his moments of clarity, I could get nothing from him. All he would say is ‘Time, Joe, I have no time’, as though he knew he was dying. There was an old man, a Chinaman, who didn’t seem to share his compatriot’s fear, and had been giving Dougal water, and what food he’d eat. He told me that I needed to take the lad elsewhere, before someone did away with him.”

Joe had sent for his friends the Kelly brothers, and together they had brought Dougal here to Glenrowan.

I had consumed more whisky in the telling of that story than I was used to and, tired and worried, I excused myself to return to my son’s side. Joe, who was to take his leave again the next morning, warned me of what to expect in the aftermath of Dougal’s dependence on the opium, and that I would see him in worse condition yet before he recovered.

He was not wrong, and I remained several weeks with Dougal in Glenrowan before he was well enough to make a slow trip back to Sydney. I say well enough, but in truth it was only that he was able to be moved at all. I was afraid he might not make the trip, but was determined to get him to where he might receive the best care.

Though he was past his desperate need of the drug, Dougal’s body was ravaged, and his dreams fevered. He slept the bulk of the journey north, and he rambled much in his sleep, mumbling strange, indecipherable phrases, and occasionally raving and crying out as if in pain.

I could make little sense of it, but that he seemed to think he was very close to something, and repeated often “no time left”.

At home once more, and under professional care, Dougal made a very gradual recovery, at least to a state where he could tend to himself. He was much frustrated by his slow healing, and would become angry and even violent when he proved incapable of performing anything beyond the simplest tasks. On more than one occasion I was forced to clean up a shattered cup and saucer where Dougal had flung it from the table, unable to lift the teapot to pour himself a cup.

I had extricated myself as much as possible from the parts of my business that required my attention outside Sydney, so that I could tend to my son in whatever capacity I was able. During his long convalescence I saw no sign of his little journal, and remembering Joe Byrne’s description of Dougal’s reticence and violence when asked of it, I let the subject be and soon forgot all about it.

Eventually he began to talk of going back to work at the Public Library. I could not see what he could manage in the way of work, his frailty being what it was, but I arranged for Robert Walker to visit him and discuss the matter.

They spent over an hour closeted together in the parlour. I was alerted to Robert’s departure by the slamming of the front door, which was strange. He and I had remained great friends after Dougal’s departure for Victoria, and I had expected him to join me for an evening drink, as we often took together.

“I was expecting Robert to stay for a drink,” I said, stepping into the parlour.

Gazing out the window, Dougal said nothing.

“Dougal?”

He continued to ignore me.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you boy,” I said.

He pulled his gaze sulkily from the window.

“What has happened?” I asked.

“I shan’t be returning to my work at the Library,” he said, and turned back to the window. I left him alone.

He fell thereafter into a deep ennui, spending his days in bed and staring blankly out the window, and talking to himself. I stood quietly outside his door at times trying to make sense of his mutterings. I could understand little, but he seemed bitter and angry, and I heard him repeat on several occasions, as though an echo of his past delirium, “no time left”.

There was nothing I could do to rouse him, and he would take little in the way of food or drink. The height of summer was upon us then, which had always ill suited Dougal’s constitution, and coupled with his paltry appetite, he began to lose the small measure of vitality that he had regained.