Black Wings: New Tales of Lovecraftian Horror (12 page)

  "You know," Lovecraft said to me in a horrified whisper, "someone once said that my Shub-Niggurath was a representation of sexual disease. Can you believe that?"

  I heard this at least once a day. It was one of the things that really bothered him, given his upbringing and personality.

  "Yeah, I can believe it," I replied. My manager didn't even look at me. She had gotten used to me talking like this.

  On the way home, I bought the herbs listed in the book at the only local health food store. I didn't recognize most of the names and the clerk wasn't much help either. Several of the ingredients weren't there, so I had to substitute. The clerk thought that the other herbs and vitamins were just as good and, even though I didn't believe him, didn't have anything else to go on.

  I stopped at a local restaurant and had a big steak meal with a plateful of french fries. My farewell to meat. I avoided the seafood platter out of deference to Lovecraft who, as always, kept looking around and exclaiming, "Gad, how these birds do eat!"

  At home later, I read through the book some more. The doctor believed that the steady use of his herb/vitamin combination, along with the diet, was able to curb the growth of cancer. In a few instances he described, the cancer had disappeared completely. I laid the pill bottles on the counter. I mixed the herbs together. There was a specific pattern on what to take, how much, and when. I took the first dose and followed it with Dr. Lyons's medication. It had a long clinical name that I couldn't pronounce but it was "the latest in cancer treatment." Couldn't hurt to keep taking it. I'd paid for it, after all, and it hadn't been cheap. The cost of being poor and sick in America.

 
 
hat night, there wasn't much on TV. The cable channels were all boring so I put an old
Night Stalker
tape on and read for a while. Out of habit, I picked up
The Dunwich Horror
and started reading "The Shadow over Innsmouth" again. It had always been one of my favorites, but Lovecraft wouldn't give me any peace.

  "Disease, disease, disease. That's all they keep talking about. According to some critics, everything I wrote came from a fear of disease, either sexual or mental. Why couldn't it just be a story? Why did it have to be
about
something?"

  "You think that's bad," I replied, "you should read Hodgson. Now
there's
a man who had a real problem with disease."

  That piqued his interest and he settled down with a volume of Hodgson's short stories. One of the small-press books, of course, I would never have been able to afford a first edition and he wasn't reprinted often.

  Lovecraft read quickly and quietly. Reading was one of the few things that kept him calm. Every so often he would chuckle to himself or make a satisfied sound after reading a particularly good section.

  In this wise, I eventually fell asleep.

 
 
was walking through the streets of Innsmouth past the Esoteric Order of Dagon church (with its sinister shadow in the basement), along the streets of houses that, though habitable, showed no signs of life. I walked by the supermarket and waved to the stock clerk who, as normal, bore a striking resemblance to Frank Long. (I hoped he'd had an easier life than the real Long.) Zadok Allen was wandering about, of course, and we exchanged laughs and old stories.

  "Well, ya know, death's funny. It comes when ya don't call and never answers when ya do!" Zadok laughed without the trademark Yankee accent.

  Lovecraft the narrator came lumbering down the street from the supermarket and Zadok staggered off to meet him, practicing his Yankee-speak as he walked. They had an appointment to keep.

  I sat on the beach and looked out at Devil's Reef. It was an ugly thing. A piece of rock jutting out of the water. Beyond it, I knew, the ocean floor fell away and the Deep Ones swam not far beyond.

  Several fishermen with the "Innsmouth look" stopped by and encouraged me to swim out. "G'wan," they said, "why not?"

  Why not, indeed? I took off my clothes (never self-conscious in dreams . . . I had never had the "waking up in school naked" dream) and entered the water. Though I had done it a few times before, I'd never swum out very far. This time felt different. The water was warmer, heavier than before, and it enveloped me like nothing I had ever felt. I swam out to the rock and climbed on top of it.

  From there, I could see Zadok and Lovecraft talking on the beach as Zadok gave his little speech. And then it struck me. Every other time I'd been here, I had only seen and experienced what Lovecraft had written in the story. I'd never been out to Devil's Reef before and, remembering the story, neither had the narrator. Oh sure, he described planning on
going
to Devil's Reef with his cousin and diving off the deep end, but it wasn't an actual place he visited in the story. Yet I was there. I could feel the rough stone beneath my fingers and, looking over the other end, could swear that I could see other things beneath the surface, beckoning to me.

  Slowly, I dipped into the water and followed.

hen I woke up this time, there was blood on the pillow. That wasn't good. I touched my nose and my fingers came away bloody. Suddenly, my head was shoved into an invisible vise and I collapsed back into my pillow, barely able to keep from screaming.

  In his chair, stroking an invisible cat that wasn't there but was anyway, Lovecraft sat silently.

  After a few minutes, the pain subsided and I was able to sit up. The front of my undershirt was covered in blood. This hadn't been the first attack, but it was definitely the worst.

  "Dr. Lyons said it would only get worse," Lovecraft added unnecessarily.

  I ignored him and went to clean myself up.

  Sometime later, I made myself some breakfast. I didn't have any of the macrobiotic stuff the book doctor recommended, so I made do with eggs and bacon. I'd give up the bad stuff later, although I had begun to think that there wasn't any point in giving anything up and that I should just surrender to excesses. Spend the last months of my life carousing from one bar to another, drinking too much, eating bad food, sleeping with anonymous women (assuming I could find any who were willing) and just give myself up to the extremes.

  Lovecraft looked disapprovingly at me. "I know," I said, "you'd probably prefer if I just sat there quietly and suffered like you did while I eat a can of cold beans and some crackers."

  "You could do worse," he said, but I didn't see how.

  "I could do a lot better," I said and started mentally counting up the money in my bank account. Just enough for a real large splurge or six months of diminishing capacity. Yeah. Life's great.

  "What about the dream?" Lovecraft asked.

  I looked at him. I'd grown used to him asking questions at the most inappropriate time for a spirit who shouldn't even be here ("Why are you haunting me anyway? What'd I do to you?") but this was unexpected.

"What dream?"

  He looked at me. I knew perfectly well what he meant and he had this habit of looking at me a certain way when I was avoiding a subject. I expected him to hand me a business card someday with
H. P. Lovecraft, conscience
printed on it. Jiminy Cricket had nothing on him.

  "It was a dream, that's all."

  He just glared at me. "Here," he finally said, "read this. It might help you understand." He threw a copy of Hodgson's
The Ghost
Pirates
at me. I still hadn't figured out how he was able to manipulate objects but my head was hurting too much to wonder about it.

  I looked at the book. "I read it already."

  "Read it again. You obviously didn't get the connection." He went back and starting petting the cat again. It was an all-black kitten whose name, if you dared to mention it in today's PC climate, could get you into a lot of trouble.
"All the pigeons come home to roost,"
I thought.

  I took the herb/vitamin potion and chased it with one of Dr. Lyons's Miracle Cure. "Good
for what ails ya!"
I got dressed and left for work. On the way, I found the Hodgson buried deep into my coat pocket.
He
put it there.
I
put it there. Didn't matter. It was still there anyway.

  When I got to work, I saw Keziah Mason in the occult section, chuckling to herself as she read one of the New Age witchcraft books. She certainly didn't look like the young, trendy/sexy girls that are witches in today's movies and TV shows. Brown Jenkin was curling around her feet, looking up at her from time to time with a very hungry shine in his eyes. This was something new. Usually it's just Lovecraft, now other characters were coming to visit.

 
 
oe lived virtually his entire life in poverty. He died in a gutter on a street in Baltimore. That tells you something right there. He never lived to see his work gain the celebrity it deserved. Neither did Lovecraft. Neither did Howard. Is there a pattern here?

 
 
he last clear thing I remember from that afternoon at work was waiting on Nyarlathotep. I suppose it was only inevitable. With Keziah and Jenkin about, the Dark Man couldn't be far away. I was running the register when he came up. He put a couple of self-help books on the counter (two of those
I'm
Okay,
You're
Okay
self-affirmation kind of things) and started fumbling for his wallet. This struck me as kind of funny as I couldn't imagine Nyarlathotep having a wallet. I wondered what would be inside it. Would he have a driver's license? From where? Kadath maybe? Snapshots of Keziah and Azathoth? Who did he want contacted in case of an emergency? And what was the wallet made out of? I started laughing which made him look up at me. The man was dark. I don't mean just your normal black man. Nyarlathotep was the antithesis of light. Then he smiled and I could smell his breath. It wasn't the stagnating breath of decay as I'd been expecting. It was sweet and cloying. It made you think of hot summer nights when the heat sticks to your skin and you can peel your sweat away in layers. My eyes closed and I went away.