Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois (6 page)

“That’s it, darling,” said Ruth, “lie back and rest. I’ll be back in a little bit to help you get ready for bed.”

Daniel lay there, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. A look that unnerved Ruth as she quietly left the room and made her way back to the kitchen. A little while later, sipping at a cooling cup of coffee, she sat staring at the telephone on the wall. Should she call the police now or wait until morning? If she did, it was for certain she wouldn’t get any sleep that night…Sheriff Hunnicut would be over asking her questions, questions she didn’t have all the answers to. She was sure to get things confused, causing more questions and then the paramedics who were sure to follow Sam over would insist that Daniel be taken to a hospital and she’d feel compelled to go with him. No, it would end up being a long night…one she hadn’t the strength to endure. She’d wait until morning to call the sheriff. Who knew? Maybe by then Daniel would have recovered his senses.

Placing her cup in the sink, she turned off the kitchen light and went upstairs. Daniel lay where she had left him, but he had rolled over onto his side. She chose to believe that it indicated progress of a sort.

“Darling,” she whispered, placing a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Still nothing.

Sighing, she began to turn him over.

“We have to get you washed up before turning in for the night,” she said. “You’re all sweaty and dirty from working in that field all day. Get up now, just for a little while until we get you cleaned up.”

As she helped him get up again, she found herself feeling better about Daniel’s condition. Although he hadn’t said a word all night, she was sure that deep down, his consciousness was struggling to emerge. That he lacked only a good night’s sleep to regain his full faculties.

It took very little effort to guide him to the bathroom across the hall. He walked mostly on his own, requiring very little prompting and when they reached the bathroom, he sat himself down on the toilet as soon as she’d snapped on the light switch. As she filled a basin with water and found a face towel, he continued to sit there, his back straight as a board, his eyes staring ahead. Setting the towel in the hot water to soak, she went to him and began to undo the buttons of his shirt. Standing so close, she found herself looking into his eyes and for a moment, wondered if there was anything of her husband left in the body that sat before her. Shaking the feeling aside, she was pulling his shirt back when she glanced down at what she was doing and recoiled in horror. She lost her footing and fell to the floor, hard. Feeling a scream building deep inside her, she scrabbled backward in desperation and only stopped when she felt her back pressed up against the frame of the bathroom door. If she hadn’t pressed a fist against her mouth her screams would surely have filled the house. In the meantime, unmoved by her actions, Daniel remained motionless where he sat, his body still partially draped by the shirt that hung from his shoulders. Repulsed, Ruth watched in horror the moving, writhing things that had been exposed where Daniel’s abdomen should have been.

Unable to take her eyes away, Ruth stared at what looked like the same tattoo that Adele Turner had sported on her body, except now it was real! In place of the appearance of ropy filaments, Daniel’s body featured what seemed to be actual appendages nestled in a tangle of other, lesser tendrils that matted his belly, some no thicker than ordinary hair. At the moment, there was a vague, restless movement among them but as grotesque as that was, by far the most horrifying aspect of Daniel’s disfigurement was the single eye that glared outward from where his navel should have been. Just then, it was open and Ruth found herself trapped in horrid fascination as she became the focus of its bloodshot glare. It looked at her, the pupil slightly off-center, as she continued to cringe from where she sat on the linoleum floor. Then, slowly, deliberately, the pupil recentered itself as the eyelid gradually descended, hiding the monstrosity from sight.

Finding herself released from whatever it was that had held her, Ruth rose using the doorjamb for support. Daniel’s body remained unmoving where it sat on the toilet, the harsh glare of the light from the medicine chest casting sinister shadows beneath the contours of his face. Edging into the hallway, she stumbled down the stairs to the kitchen and dashed outdoors. Pulling open the door of the truck, she yanked the rifle down from where she’d hung it on the rack earlier in the evening and went back into the house. Slowly remounting the stairs, not sure if she were in her right mind, she made her way back to the bathroom. In the doorway again, she saw Daniel still sitting where she had left him, his shirt still hanging uselessly around his shoulders. To her relief, the central eye was still closed. Crossing the threshold, she stepped before the thing she was sure now was no longer her husband and raised the gun. Repulsed at what had become of Daniel, whom she was convinced would rather die than remain as he was, she felt her finger begin to tighten around the trigger. And then, the eye opened again. Ruth stiffened, determined to shoot, but when she met the thing’s gaze, instead of horror, she caught only a sense of vast age and ancient wisdom. A wisdom deep and dark and infinitely cold. A wisdom that could swiftly capsize a person’s sanity and sink it out of sight forever if care were not taken. But if care and deliberation were exercised, the wisdom could be shared and knowledge gained that could make anything possible: unlimited knowledge of space and time and dimensions without number. All she had to do was to utter the secret name… Then, as Ruth felt herself being pulled back from the edge of that black abyss, she was aware for the first time of the consciousness behind the eye that seemed to reach out to her, to coax her; it promised her things that made her shudder in anticipation of she knew not what. Suddenly, she realized that she had lowered the rifle and no longer felt any inclination to use it. Leaning it against the wall, she took Daniel’s arm and once more led the way to her room where she left him lying on the bed. Pausing at the door, her hand at the light switch, she looked back, and just before turning off the light, saw that the monstrous eye had closed.

It was mid-morning, much too late for a farm couple to be having breakfast but today was a special occasion. Ruth smiled to herself as she watched the eggs sizzle in the pan. Daniel had changed it was true. As a matter of fact, she doubted that the body occupying the wheelchair in the next room was still Daniel at all. But that was all right. She’d reconciled herself to that. She’d loved Daniel of course, but she had to admit that their marriage in the last few years had deteriorated to the humdrum and the predictable. The eagerness and fire of the early days had long since been replaced with an uneasy truce. Besides, wasn’t it true that sooner or later, every woman had to put aside their dreams of romantic perfection and settle for reality anyway? So, whatever it was that Daniel had become, would make little difference to her on an emotional level.

With the eggs finished, Ruth went into the sitting room for the wheelchair. As she pushed Daniel into the kitchen, she congratulated herself on remembering that the chair had been in the barn since her mother passed away some years before. With Daniel in position at the table, Ruth retrieved his breakfast and placed the plate in front of him. After cutting the egg into pieces and breaking up the toast, she put a fork in Daniel’s hand and showed him how to feed himself. After a few tries, she was able to sit back and watch.

The abdominal eye was out of sight beneath the clean flannel shirt that she had dressed Daniel in that morning, but she still remembered the intensity of its gaze and in the remaining hours of the night and into the dawn, she had come to realize that part of what she had seen there was confusion. She concluded that Adele’s spell or formulas or whatever, had worked. The Azathoth-thing had been drawn from outside and been at once freed and trapped in Daniel’s alien body… at the mercy of others for guidance in a strange new world…and in its desperation, eager to do whatever was asked of it in return. She didn’t know what Adele had planned, but she was sure a woman with her ambitions wouldn’t have killed her husband and disfigured herself in such a horrid fashion just to live it up in a backwoods town like Dunwich when there were so many other possibilities.

Seeing that Daniel had finished his meal, Ruth picked up a napkin and dabbed at the corners of his mouth. For herself, she had more modest dreams. A prosperous farm, a long healthy life for she and Daniel, maybe children, but before all that could happen, other, less pleasant things needed to be taken care of. None of her dreams would matter for instance, if the events at the Turner’s farm weren’t taken care of first. Pushing the empty plate away, she leaned onto the table and whispered the name she had seen on the Turner’s refrigerator, the one Adele had attempted to use too late. And then, sensing she’d been heard, Ruth posed a question and for the first time since she’d interrupted Adele’s ritual the night before,
Daniel began to speak
…

arlene, honey…”

“Bill, dear,” replied Darlene Cobb with growing exasperation, “can’t you get it through that thick male skull of yours? We’re just friends.”

“But, Darlene, I was sure after what we’ve meant to each other over the past few months…”

Darlene sighed loud enough so that Bill could hear her at the other end of the telephone line. “I won’t deny that it wasn’t fun, Bill, but that’s all it was. You’re a wonderful guy to be with and I appreciated the time we spent together, but I won’t be tied down the way you want me. Now if you can’t live with that…”

“So I don’t mean anything to you, then?”

Darlene sighed again. “You mean something to me as a good friend and that’s all. If that’s not enough for you, then there’s nothing I can do.”

“Well, then…this is goodbye.”

“If that’s the way you want it.”

“It is.”

Darlene heard a distinct click in the earphone as Bill hung up.

Finally
, she thought, replacing the receiver onto its cradle. Men were so predictable. Just because a woman sleeps with them, they think they own her. Here it was the 21st century and it was as if the feminist revolution never happened. Well, wake up and smell the coffee boys, women don’t need you that way any more!

Putting Bill out of her mind, Darlene retraced her steps back into the kitchen where she had been dicing celery before being interrupted by the telephone. On the way, she passed the front door and noticed there were envelopes on the floor beneath the mail slot. Changing direction in mid-stride, she crouched and gathered them up. Straightening, she began sorting through them: more bills, another offer for a Sears credit card, Greenpeace wanted a donation…and a letter postmarked Dean’s Corners.

Tossing the rest of the mail onto the kitchen table, Darlene reached for the knife she’d been dicing the celery with, and slit the envelope open. Looking at the return address, she noticed it was from her Uncle Silas Cobb. Hmmph, she hadn’t heard from him in a while. Not that she’d made any effort to keep in touch. Generally, she preferred to forget her old home town. Dean’s Corners had just been so boring! A typical back-country, small Massachusetts town where nothing ever happened and everybody knew everybody else’s business. She’d hated living there, and as soon as she had the opportunity to leave, she took it. City life, with all its lights, and color and people, was for her. Her Uncle Silas, who actually lived a few miles away in Dunwich, understood her yearnings and promised her that if her grades in high school were good, he’d pay her way through the college of her choice. She didn’t have to think twice about the offer. She came in the top of her class and Uncle Silas came through as he promised, paying for all four years she’d spent at Brown University, earning her degree. Upon graduation, she’d thanked her uncle for his support, moved to New York City, and hadn’t seen either him or Dean’s Corners since.

Fingering the envelope in her hand, Darlene was tempted to simply throw it in the trash unread, but an ember of gratefulness for her uncle’s generosity still flickered somewhere inside her, and she relented. Moving closer to the window, she removed the letter from the envelope. The message was short, but contained what she feared most: a request by her uncle to visit him at his house in Dunwich. Again, she felt the urge to ignore the request and throw the message out, and again her conscience prevented her. She did owe him big-time for covering her college tuition and providing the means for her to get out of Dean’s Corners, after all. And how long had it been since she’d gone back? It was for her mother’s funeral, at least eight years ago. Her uncle had been there; confined to a wheelchair and looking old. Scanning the remainder of the letter, Darlene could find no explanation for why he wanted her to come up, only some vague language that Darlene interpreted as a reminder of the favor he’d done for her. Well, all right! Just this once, she told herself. She did owe it to him, but he’d better not take advantage of her grateful nature.