Cthulhu Lives!: An Eldritch Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft (21 page)

Conrad looked even twitchier than usual. His glasses were cracked, and the smell said he hadn’t bathed in a while. The thighs of his khakis were covered in scrawled equations. He peered over the hedge. “Look, look!” I followed his gaze.

An older man, probably a professor, walked over to the bus stop bench and sat down, looking at his phone. He happened to glance down at the ball, and jumped up like he’d sat down next to a live sewer rat with rabies. After backing several steps away, he warily circled it, examining it. With a shudder, he turned away.

Conrad watched closely as the guy stepped away from the bench and pulled a loose stick from under a nearby tree. The man used the stick to knock the printed ball off the bench and under another hedge, out of sight, then threw the stick as far as he could away. After taking a moment to compose himself, he stood next to the bus stop pole, far from the bench.

“Interesting,” Conrad muttered to himself, ducking below the hedge. “The consciousness attempts to visualize the object in three dimensions, and that’s when the instinctive revulsion occurs. But is it universal?” He turned to me. “Do you know anybody illiterate?”

“No. Conrad, you need to give the printer back.” I didn’t give much thought to why the professor had reacted so strongly to the thing Conrad had made; I assumed the guy had a phobia or something that Conrad’s little art project had set off.

“But there’s so much more to do.”

I stood up. “You also need to stop freaking out people all over campus with your... whatever those things are. It’s not healthy.” Just then, the bus pulled up and the professor got on. When I looked back down, I just saw Conrad’s feet vanishing under a hedge. I looked around the area for a while, but I couldn’t find any trace of him. He definitely didn’t want to be found.

When I called his parents, they were totally unconcerned. They told me that ever since he was a kid he’d been wandering off by himself and coming back days or even weeks later, unharmed. I got the distinct impression they barely knew their own son.

About a week after I’d seen Conrad, campus security visited the hackspace. They had found the remains of a pregnant alley cat near the football field. They asked us because the cat’s womb had been cut open, vivisection apparently, and held open with a kind of clamp. They showed us a picture of the device, shaped like a giant head louse or tick, and it was undeniably printed by a Skulptomatic. The cat’s fetuses had been removed and placed in individual bowls, also printed.

That’s when I got really worried. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, had avoided capture for so long in part because he included hand-crafted wooden components in his bombs. Who knew what Conrad might do if he got his hands on some fertilizer, diesel fuel and a few electronic components?

A few days after that, there was a fire in the attic of one of the old agricultural buildings. After the firefighters put it out, campus security investigated and found the burnt remains of a squat: a sleeping bag, a lot of empty soup cans and a metal bucket on a camp stove, with a residue of melted ABS inside.

Most likely Conrad had been melting down the ABS for the printer and got it too hot, igniting the fumes. There was no sign of the man himself.

After a while, I gave up looking for him and tried to catch up on my master’s thesis. Thankfully, the university’s insurance covered the theft of the printer, and the hackspace used that money and some member contributions to buy a new Skulptomatic 650, which could fabricate objects up to twenty centimeters on a side. Life went back to normal, and I completely stopped thinking about Conrad.

♦

One night, I dropped by the hackspace to futz around with the new printer, and found that the door had been pried open again. Prepared for the worst, I stepped inside. The new printer was working away, creating a shape on the stage. Next to that was a man in a dirty raincoat, facing away, bent over a laptop. He was completely absorbed.

“Conrad,” I said, though I wasn’t positive it was him. “You okay?” Whoever this was, he reeked, way beyond ordinary unwashed human.

He turned around to face me. I took a step back when I saw what covered his face – a mask, made of printed plastic. Most masks are distortions of a recognizable human face: symmetrical, horizontal mouth, bilateral eyes. This wasn’t anything like that, more like what you’d see on the underside of a mollusk.

Trying to keep control of the situation, I said, “Conrad, I’m worried about you, and I really think you need to get help.” That’s when I noticed that his laptop was covered with printed parts epoxied over the keyboard keys, with shapes and symbols I didn’t recognize.

He moved to one side, and for the first time I could see that there was this... thing on the table. The color and texture were clearly printed plastic from the Skulptomatic. It was much larger than anything he had made before, obviously fabricated in pieces and assembled. Just looking at it made me feel queasy and like I was on the verge of a migraine, the way lights flashing at certain frequencies can trigger headaches in most people. I rubbed my eyes and tried to look only at Conrad.

He raised his hands, which had printed, clawed brass knuckles fitted over his fingers. I wasn’t sure ABS was strong enough to be used as a weapon, but I didn’t want to test it. Fortunately, he just took off the mask. It had clamped onto printed plastic rings and rods in his temples, earlobes, septum and lips. The holes in his skin were red and infected, and wept pus. I could only guess that he’d pierced himself, and inserted the printed objects directly into his own body. After all that, I barely noticed the burn marks on one side of his face.

Whatever Conrad had been doing for the past few weeks, it hadn’t been good for him. His face was pale and sweaty, like he was running a high fever, and his skinny neck and wrists poked out of his baggy shirt. Hard spiky shapes on his chest poked against the cloth. “It’s almost finished,” he said. His eyes were bloodshot, and surrounded by dark bags.

“What is?” I tried to humor him.

“Couldn’t get it to render properly with the smaller printer,” he said, almost casually. “The new device is performing splendidly.”

“How about you pause the printer and we can talk for a minute.” I stepped towards the printer.

“Let it finish!” he screamed at me.

Terrified of what he might do, I stepped back and left him alone, hoping that when the printer stopped, he would calm down and I could persuade him to get help. He rambled on for a while, something about how “the many-angled ones” had shown him “the shape” that would be “a blade” to “perform a Caesarian on the world.” Then he started cursing me, saying I had made him use metaphors.

The printer stopped moving, and the laptop beeped. From where he had positioned the laptop’s screen, I couldn’t see what it had made.

“It has to cool,” he said.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

He looked apologetic for a moment. “They promised me it would stop hurting.” He reached into the printer and gently, reverently took out what it had made.

When I saw the object Conrad held, I made a noise of reflexive fear and disgust. I could visualize where the object would fit into the thing on the table, and having that shape in my head made me...

Ever hear of Stendhal Syndrome? Supposedly, some people see works of great art and go into trance states, their minds overwhelmed by the beauty. Now, imagine the opposite of that, your mind overwhelmed with a sight of something that it just can’t handle, that it didn’t evolve to handle. Imagine the sensation of vomiting while having a cluster headache and an epileptic seizure, all at once.

Before he could bring the final component any closer to the thing on the table, I grabbed it and tried to pull it out of his hands. For a scrawny, undernourished guy, he was surprisingly strong. I got one foot into his stomach – I felt something hard and jagged between his clothes and his skin – and pushed him away. He stumbled backwards and landed on his butt.

I took one quick glance at that thing in my hands, threw it to the floor and jumped on it, my full weight on one boot heel. It shattered.

Conrad stared at me for a moment, made this God-awful howl of pain and frustration, and lunged at my throat with those clawed hands. He caught me off balance and I fell, bashing my head on a metal cabinet.

That’s when I blacked out.

Coming out of that was one of the worst experiences of my life, like trying to keep from drowning in a pool of hot tar. I was only sure of two things: Conrad had left the room, with his mask and his laptop, and I had to finish what I’d started.

I grabbed a ball peen hammer and smashed the thing on the table to pieces. I gathered up all the little bits of multicolored ABS and melted them into one smooth blob with a blowtorch. Even though I knew it would probably be wanted for evidence.

And that’s the last I saw of him. No, I have no idea where he went, couldn’t begin to guess. I don’t think Conrad thinks like the rest of humanity any more. I think there’s something using him, forcing him to do something in this world. Maybe it’s some intelligence, somewhere else in the universe, communicating with him in a way we don’t understand. Maybe it’s just something from deep inside his own mind. But I know he has to be stopped.

You know, I used to hang out with my engineering buddies and talk about ethics and philosophy, like, whether you would work on something that might help make nuclear bombs or nerve gas or things like that. I always said, engineers and scientists shouldn’t morally judge the theoretical outcomes of their work. You can’t make something that is bad in itself. It’s just how people apply it.

I destroyed that thing Conrad made because I know it was bad for human beings.

I’m giving this to you in a spoken interview, because I can’t read or write any more. I can recognize things just fine, I just can’t assign meaning to abstract symbols. That sign over the door over there is just random lines to me. The doctors say this is because of my head injury, when Conrad knocked me out.

Most likely you agree with them, that this is just a case of some guy going off his meds, making some outsider art and attacking me, giving me brain damage. Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is probably the correct one, right?

If you’ve got it all figured out, you explain something to me.

Why did I lose my ability to read any of the text in the hackspace before Conrad hit my head, but after I’d looked at the thing he made?

THE OLD ONES
by Jeremy Clymer

The nurse refused to look at me, staring fixedly at the clipboard on the desk in front of her. “Name?” She sounded thoroughly impatient.

“Al Mitchell,” I said. She bore a startling similarity to Nurse Ratched from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, a pleasant motherly type with the soul of a serial killer.

“Guest’s name?”

I found it charming that they referred to them as “guests” here instead of “patients.” It made the place seem less clinical—or at least it would have, if it wasn’t so very clinical-looking.

“Paul Hastur,” I told her.

Professor Hastur had taught several of my philosophy classes in college. He’d lectured on philosophy for the sole purpose of spewing great amounts of vitriol at any philosopher of historical prominence, as far as I could tell. He professed a deep and unrelenting hatred for everyone from Plato to Kant to Heidegger to Sartre. This included a host of lesser-known contemporary philosophers I could only assume had taught him at some point in his own college years. The only philosopher he had ever grudgingly shown respect for was a Russian nihilist by the name of Bazarov. Despite my best efforts though, I’d never been able to locate any of the Russian’s works.

Nurse Ratched’s doppelganger directed me to room 312 and I went on my way, having never actually made eye contact with the woman. As I walked down the hallway to the elevator, the lights flickered and an ominous moan seemed to emanate from the walls. Anywhere else this would have stricken me as a little bit spooky, but here it seemed like a nice change of pace from the maddeningly harsh fluorescent lighting and the constant buzzing sound it produced.

As I reached the elevator, its door opened and three elderly women smiled at me from its interior. They looked like identical triplets, except for their varying levels of decrepitude. I thought it odd that they didn’t exit the elevator, seeing as how we were on the ground floor, but I figured maybe they were just riding it up and down for something to do. It was probably either that or another game of Canasta. I nodded at the women as I stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor.

“How do you do, young man?” One of the sisters removed a glass eye from its socket, rolled it around in her hand like she was about to do a magic trick with it, and then put it back into place.

I tried not to cringe, but was unsuccessful. “I’m quite fine, thank you.”

The women smiled sweetly at me, and then began raving at me in eerie unison. “All shall weep when a dark sun rises on the forty-second parallel in the place where two waters converge, for on that day he who has been dead but dreaming will rise from the abyss and bring chaos and destruction in his wake. Unspeakable terrors shall be unleashed upon the Earth. The Old Ones shall spread over the land, leading mankind to a frenzied demise in an amoral revelry of unmitigated terror and destruction.”

“I... uh... I think we’ve just about reached my floor.” I pressed myself against the wall, trying to put as much distance between them and myself as possible. The elevator stopped on the third floor and the door opened.

“It’s been nice talking to you ladies.” I quickly made my way out while keeping my eyes on the three weird sisters. “I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but you may want to consider having the nurse adjust your meds.”

The three women waved cheerfully as the elevator door slid shut. I stared blankly at the closed doors for a minute or so before shaking my head and heading down the corridor to room 312.

As I reached the room, I could hear the sound of daytime courtroom television coming through the open door. A sassy female judge told someone to “drop the zero and find yourself a hero, honey,” and the audience roared in approval. I peeked my head in the door and saw the Professor sitting in a brown, faux leather recliner. He was dressed in a bathrobe and sneakers (no socks), and watching the televised proceedings with rapt attention.

“Professor Hastur?” I peeked my head round the door and into the room.

Startled, he shot out of his chair and adjusted his robe. He then looked over at me and squinted. “What? Who? Who’s that?”

“Al Mitchell,” I said. “I was in some philosophy classes of yours.”

Professor Hastur scowled as if he didn’t quite believe me, but then he waved me in and motioned to a folding chair that had been set up opposite his recliner. I sat down and he resumed his position in his chair, after turning the television off.

“First off,” he said, “it’s been years since I’ve been a professor, so just call me Paul.”

I smiled, happy to be able to speak to him on a more intimate basis. “Okay, Paul.”

“Secondly,” he continued, “Why is it so trendy these days for people to visit their old teachers in retirement homes? You’re the third this month. Makes me kind of paranoid. Poor Walt next door gets so many former student visitors, he’s practically still teaching.”

“Well in my case,” I explained, “I was thinking of writing—”

Paul groaned loudly. “Let me guess. You learned that I was in the old folks’ home, diagnosed with terminal cancer, and you decided to write an inspirational memoir about how I, as your teacher, touched your life with my words, and influenced your development not only as a writer, but as a human being and blah, blah, blah, predictable, unimaginative nonsense. Maybe you would even get to witness my gradual decline and play it off for maudlin sentimental value. How base. How cliché.”

That stung a little. I consoled myself by focusing on a single, comically-long hair descending from one of his ancient nostrils.
I may be sentimental
, I thought to myself spitefully,
but at least Rapunzel won’t be climbing up into my nose
.

Paul sighed. “Look, Albert—”

“Just Al,” I interrupted.

“Look, Albert,” he continued, wagging a bony finger in my direction, “I didn’t get into the whole teaching thing to impart invaluable life lessons to my students that would ready them for adulthood and yada, yada, yada. I did it to sow the seeds of discord, to pave the way for an era when a disillusioned, apathetic mankind would allow itself to be led to the mouth of a hellish abyss, and would then jump willingly into that abyss because it would seem preferable to continued existence.”

“Oh. I see.” Not knowing how to respond to this, I instead doodled a penis in my notebook. I could feel Paul’s eyes sizing me up.

“I suppose I didn’t do that good a job, considering how many ex-students have come forth to taunt me with their exuberance over how clever I made them feel.”

I looked up from my penis doodle. “Forgive me for asking, Paul, but how exactly did you intend to...”

“Sow the seeds of chaos and discord?”

“Yes, that bit.”

He looked a bit thrown off. “Well, I taught you Nietzsche, didn’t I? I mean, what more do you want from me?”

“And why do you want to lead the collected ranks of mankind—”

“That includes women, too, to be fair,” he interjected. “I’m no sexist.”

“Why do you want to lead... humanity... into the gaping maw of a dark, hellish abyss?” I felt like I was finally getting into my groove as interviewer, despite the jarring absurdity of my former teacher’s ramblings.

“Well, to be frank with you, I’m part of a millennia-old race that ascended from the depths of the sea and assimilated with humanity for the purpose of ushering in an era when our ancient, forgotten gods would once again walk the Earth, bringing terror in their wake and causing humanity’s doom.”

“That seems a bit rude.”

“It’s nothing against humanity in particular. That’s just kind of how our gods go about their business.”

“I see,” I said. Then, trying a tactic I picked up from my Intro to Psychology class back in college, I asked, “And how does that make you feel?”

Paul shrugged. “Whatever works for them, I guess. Who am I to question the will of those for whom death is merely a cat-nap? They have existed for an eternity and will continue to exist long after you and I have shuffled off this mortal coil.”

“Seems a bit essentialist to me,” I said.

“Pardon?”

“You just always seemed to me to lean more toward the existentialist perspective, even though you pulled no punches in criticizing Sartre and Camus.” I was particularly proud of my correct pronunciation of “Sartre.” It had taken me years to get that down.

“Couple of pricks.” Paul scowled. “You try confronting an unimaginable and undying horror and let’s see
you
cling to existentialism. In fact... I have some in my closet if you’d like to give it a try.”

“You have some...” I glanced over at the closet door behind him. It looked perfectly ordinary from the outside. “I’m sorry, some what now?”

“Come, come, let me show you.” Paul stood up slowly from his chair and straightened out his back with a few loud cracks, the first real sign of old age I had seen in him other than his severe dementia. Then he meandered over to a closet door on the other side of the room. I got up and followed him.

As he opened the closet door, I heard the same ominous moaning sound I had heard in the hallway downstairs. I walked over to the closet, and as I approached it the moan seemed to morph into a piercing shriek. By the time I reached the closet, the sound was maddeningly loud and high-pitched. There was also a nasty quality to it that made me want to shit myself – possibly from fear, but somehow I wasn’t entirely certain.

I looked into the closet. The insides looked like a planetarium thought up by a psychotic marine biologist. Swirling masses of stars were visible in a vast expanse, but in the space in between these celestial bodies were a countless array of pulsating, amorphous creatures with writhing tentacles and a sickly-looking pallor to their flesh. It was these creatures that were emitting the terrifying noise, both ear-splitting and ground-shaking at the same time.

The presence of these creatures elicited terror in me that I had never felt before. It was the terror of knowing that life is utterly meaningless in the face of unmitigated destructive power. I wanted to tear my own skin off to stop it from crawling. I wanted to howl at the heavens in protest of the unfairness of it all. Most of all, I wanted it all to end. I wanted these creatures to get on with the inevitable and snuff out my inconsequential existence.

Then Paul shut the closet door. I returned to my senses, but my mind still reeled at what I had just seen.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” He grinned mischievously. “I don’t have much of a wardrobe, so I figured I’d put my walk-in closet to good use by making it a portal to another dimension. It took a few tries to get the incantation right, but it was well worth the effort, I think.”

I walked back over to the folding chair and sat down in a daze, trying to collect my thoughts. My whole understanding of the universe had just been changed. It all seemed like a cruel joke. I wanted to pounce at Paul and snap his leathery old neck. He resumed his position in the recliner and looked at me with some concern.

“Hey now, Albert,” he said, “don’t get all sullen on me. You seem like a decent-enough guy despite a certain amount of natural dull-wittedness. Look, no one really knows when the Old Ones will return to overrun the Earth. It might be tomorrow or it might not be until a thousand years from now. Did you happen to catch the prophecy, from those gals that hang around in the elevator? They’re friends of mine. We go way back.”

I nodded.

“Well, that prophecy is at
least
five millennia old. On top of that, it’s so damn vague you’d think that fool Nostradamus had written it. And look at me, riddled with cancer but still hopping about like a lad of forty-three. What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that we’re all here on Earth to die terrible, often agonizing deaths, so you might as well do what you love. Me, I love breaking people’s spirits and softening them up for the apocalypse. You seem to enjoy hackneyed, overly sentimental writing. Whatever.”

I thought for a moment. “Maybe not,” I said. “Maybe I can still write my book about you, but
really
write it about you instead of my sentimentalized version of you. You can teach me one more lesson, and I can teach the world that monsters like you exist. What do you say?”

Paul smiled. “Now you’re talking like you have some sense in you. What the hell? I’m dying anyway, I might as well try to get my point across one last time. Maybe I can still crush a few more souls yet. Okay, let’s really get started.”

I tore out the page I’d been doodling on.

“Before the universe even existed,” Paul began, “there were the Old Ones...”