New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird (29 page)

“I know,” Keith wheezed. For a man well into his fifties, he was keeping up pretty good, but Tibbs was setting a punishing pace. “Seen it—back at the courthouse.”

“You seen that? You seen the coal? Then you got a pretty good idea what we brung back here.”
He’s got a better idea than that, maybe
, I thought to myself, but I didn’t say anything. For one thing, I doubt my aching lungs would have let me—nor yet my growing panic, which I was only just managing to keep in check.

“Anyhow, it was deader’n Abel slain by Cain—I’ll swear to that, an’ these men here’ll back me up. You never seen a thing so dried out an’ wrinkled—nor so ugly, neither. Jesus Christ, it made me sick to look at it!—but it was my prize, an’ I swore it was goin’ to make me a rich man. Me an’ all my kin—” He choked up at that, and none of us pressed him; we ran on, was all, with the rustling thud of our footfalls through the brush warning the whole forest of our approach, probably.

The dogs were still straining hard after the scent, when all of a sudden they stopped and gathered round something underfoot, down by a little stand of dwarf sumac. I thought it was a rock at first: I couldn’t see through the bodies of the hounds. It was Tibbs’ cry that made me realize what it
might
be—that, and the story Keith had told me not half-a-dozen hours previously, rattling round my mind the way it had been ever since.

Tibbs couldn’t pick it up, that roundish muddy thing the dogs had found. That was left to Horton Keith: he lifted it just a little, enough for one of the other men in the party to gasp and mutter “Jesse.” Tibbs repeated the name a few times to himself, while Keith replaced the thing the way he found it and straightened up off his haunches. Then Tibbs gave it out in a howl that made the dogs back off, cower on their bellies in the leaf-rot as if they’d been whipped. I swear that sound went all the way through me. I hear it still, when I think about that night. It’s bad, and I try not to do it too much, mostly because the next thing I think of is what I heard next—what we all heard, the sound that made us snap up our heads and turn in the direction of our otherworldly quarry.

You’ll probably remember that Keith had already taken a stab at describing that sound. If you go back and look what he said, you’ll see he compared it to the last trump, and all I can say is, standing out there in the middle of the forest, looking at each other in the lantern light, we all of us knew exactly what he meant. It turned my guts to water: I damn near screamed myself.

It was so close; that was the thing. Just by the clarity, the lack of muffling, you could tell it wasn’t far off—five, maybe ten score of paces on through the trees, somewhere just over the next ridge. Tibbs got his senses back soonest of us all, or maybe he was so far gone then that sense had nothing to do with it: he was off and running, aiming to close down those hundred yards or so and get to grips with whatever cut down his brothers and took a trophy to boot. The dogs almost tripped him up; they were cowering in the dirt still, and there was no budging them. He flung down the leash and left them there.

It was Keith started after him, of course. And once Keith had gone, I couldn’t not go myself. Then the rest of then followed on; all of which meant we were pretty strung out along the track. It may have saved Keith’s life, that arrangement.

I heard Tibbs up ahead, cursing and panting; then, I heard a strange sort of a whizzing noise. I once stood at a wharf watching a cargo ship being unloaded, and one of the hawsers broke on the winching gear. The noise it made as it lashed through the air; that was what I heard. Whip-crack, quick and abrupt; and then I didn’t hear Tibbs any more.

What I thought I heard was the sound of rain, pattering on the leaves and branches. I even felt a few drops of it on my face. Then one of the men in the rear caught up and shone his lantern up ahead. It lit first of all on Keith as he staggered back, hand to his mouth. Then, it lit on Tibbs.

At first it seemed like some sort of conjuror’s trick. He was staggering too, like a stage drunk, only there was something about his head . . . At first your brain refused to believe it. Your eyes saw it, but your brain reported back, no, it’s a man; men aren’t made that way. It’s a trick they do with mirrors; a slather of stage blood to dress it up, that’s all. Then, inevitably, Tibbs lost his balance and fell backwards. Once he was down it became easier to deal with, in one way—easier to look at and trust your own eyes, at any rate. At last, you could look at it and see what there was to be seen. Which was this: Tibbs’ head was gone, clean off at the neck.

I said you could look at it; not for long, though. Instead I turned to Keith, who was pressed back up against a tree trunk, still with his hand to his mouth. He saw me, and he tried to speak, shaking his head all the while, but he couldn’t find the words.

Then we both heard it together: a rustling in the branches above our head, the sound of something dropping. We both looked up at about the same time, and that was how I managed to spring back, and so avoid the thing hitting me smack on the crown of my head. It hit the ground good and hard, directly between the two of us: the soft mud underfoot took all the bounce off it, though. It rolled half of the way over, then stopped, so you couldn’t really see its features. There was no mistaking it, though, even in the shaky lantern-light; I’d been looking at the back of Tibbs’ head only a moment ago, hadn’t I?

A dreadful realization dawned in Keith’s eyes, and he looked back up. Instinctively I followed suit. I guess we saw about the same thing, though Keith had the experience to help him evaluate it. It was like this:

The branches were close-meshed overhead, with hardly any night sky visible in between. What you could see was tinted a sickly sort of greenish hue: the way those modern city streetlights will turn the night a fuzzy, smoky orange, and block out all the stars. Through the treetops, something was ascending. I’d be a liar if I said I could recognize it; there was just no way to tell, not with all those shaking, rustling branches in the way. All I got was a general impression of size and shape; enough for me to stand in front of that slab of coal in the courthouse basement the next day and say, yeah, it could have been; I guess. Keith was with me, and so far as he was concerned it was a deal more straightforward; but as I say, he had the benefit of prior acquaintance.

Up it went, up and up, till it broke clear of the canopy, and we had no way of knowing where to look. The sky gave one last unnatural throb of ghoulish green, as if it was turning itself inside out; and it was over. All that was left was the bloody carnage down below: Lamar Tibbs’ body, that we dragged between us back to the farmhouse, and the bodies of his brothers covered up with a tarpaulin. One entire generation of a family, wiped out in the course of a single night.

What with the weeping and the wailing of the relatives, and the never-ending questions—most of them from that fat fool Kronke, who hadn’t even the guts to get out of his damn automobile—that business up on Peck’s Ridge took us clear through dawn and into the afternoon of the next day to deal with. It stayed with us a good while longer than that, though; in fact, it’s never really gone away. Ask either of my wives, who will surely survive me through having gotten rid of me, as soon as was humanly possible. They’ll tell you how I used to come bolt upright in the middle of a nightmare, hands flailing desperately above my head, screaming at the ghosts of trees and branches, babbling about a sky gone wrong. Ask them how often it happened, and what good company I was in the days and weeks that followed. Yes, you could say it’s stayed with me, my three days’ visit down in Oram County.

I had the pleasure of Keith’s acquaintance for a dozen more years in all, right up until the time he set off for the headwaters of the Amazon with the Collins Clarke archaeological party and never came back. Missing, presumed dead, all fifteen men and their native bearers; nothing was ever found of them, no overflights could even spot their last camp. Keith was well into his sixties by then, but there was never any question that he’d be joining the expedition, once he’d heard the rumors—the ruins up above Iquitos on the Ucayali, the strange carvings of beasts no one had ever seen before. He’d done his preparation in the library at Miskatonic with Clarke himself, cross-referencing the Indian tales with certain books and illustrations—and with that slab of coal from the Oram County courthouse, one-half of which had made its way into the cabinets of the University’s Restricted Collection. There was no stopping him: he was convinced he was on the right track at last. “But why put yourself in their way again?” I asked him. “With all you know; after all you’ve seen?” He never answered me straight out; there’s only his last telegram, sent from Manaus, which I like to think holds, if not an answer, then a pointer at least, to the man and to the nature of his quest.

Dear Fenwick
(it said):
Finally found someplace worse than Skagway. And they say there’s no such thing as progress. We set off tomorrow on our snipe hunt, not a moment too soon for all concerned. Wish you were here—on the strict understanding that we’d soon be somewhere else. With all best wishes from the new frontier, Your friend, Horton Keith
.

My friend, Horton Keith.

“Young Derby’s odd genius developed remarkably, and in his eighteenth year his collected nightmare-lyrics made a real sensation when issued under the title Azathoth and Other Horrors. He was a close correspondent of the notorious Baudelairean poet Justin Geoffrey, who wrote
The People of the Monolith
and died screaming in a madhouse in 1926 after a visit to a sinister, ill-regarded village in Hungary.”

“The Thing on the Doorstep” · H.P. Lovecraft (1933)

• THE FUNGAL STAIN •

W.H. Pugmire

“Grow to my lip, thou sacred kiss . . .
”

—Thomas Moore

I.

I was leaning against a window in a cramped bookstore, holding aloft a candlestick to scan a volume of Justin Geoffrey (drinking in his cosmic madness), when I noticed a figure hovering in the fog outside. Strange, isn’t it, the play of shadow and light that dances in a pool of fog? I saw this person, this woman, and at first I thought my eyes were playing tricks. Her face seemed all wrong, more bestial than human. And the way she lifted her curious mouth so as to drink in the evening air was most unnatural. She lowered her face and looked toward my window, drawn perhaps by the glow of my candle’s flame. Her lips curled into an uncanny smile, and as I watched the movement of her mouth the fog thickened and veiled her face.

I returned to my book, listening, and heard the shop’s door open. A sudden chill rushed past me, and entrails of mist mingled with surrounding shadow; and out of this she approached the place where I stood. Glancing sideways, I watched her pretend to study titles. Closing my book, I reached to return it to its shelf. Her hand touched mine as she took the book from my grasp.

“This is rare,” she said, smiling. “He had such a wonderful sense of place, don’t you think?”

I laughed. “He wrote of a landscape of nightmare.”

“Exquisitely so,” she replied, and then quoted from memory the following verse:

“And in the village where it stands,

That place where Time had shrugged and passed it by,

I found deep-etched in sod and on black stone

My mortal name.”

Nodding to her, I blew out my candle, took it to the dealer’s desk, and stepped outside into misty night. The air had turned surprisingly chilly, and I pulled the collar of my coat closer to my neck. I had no idea where I wanted to go, knew only that I wasn’t in the mood for social chatter. I wanted to take in the ancient charm of Kingsport, this town where I was staying for a time. I stood for a while, watching a street lamp glow in encircling fog, when I heard footsteps on the bookstore’s porch. She stopped at the bottom step and looked around, nodding when she noticed me. I leaned awkwardly on one foot and then the other, then stopped at the noise of musical humming. Her odd song issued as mist from her unmoving mouth, and the thickening fog met and mingled with her exhalation. Something in her song beguiled me, and with an almost unconscious motion I began to creep toward her. I watched as I slowly walked, and saw the shadows of her face darken, distorting features. Soon there was nothing but her indistinct form, and the twin pin-pricks that were her diamond eyes. I thought they queerly smiled, those eyes, as finally the fog entombed her. I reached the place where she had stood, but I was alone.

I had decided, the next evening, to attend Poetry Night at the Pennywhistle Café, a truly bohemian establishment. Here one could find the loud rebels who hung their unruly art on walls and stood on tables so to declaim their bitter odes. Now and then, however, one could encounter that especially sensitive artist, those dreamers whose souls seemed as quaint as Kingport’s eldest lane. I liked to think of myself as such a bard, and I considered my vision quite singular. It had been some time since I had attended the weekly doings. I had, however, recently composed a new poem. Thus I braved the evening’s chill and took a bus to that section of town known as The Hollow, then scuttled from the bus to the small building that housed the café. The turnout was okay, and I nodded to several casual acquaintances. Five makeshift rows had been formed with folding wooden chairs, and I took my usual place in the third row.

The evening’s feature poet was a homeless woman whose appearance was quite pathetic. Yet one forgot her stained clothes and missing teeth when she began to recite her work. Unlike many of the poseurs who had more ego than talent, this woman’s poetry came from some authentic place in her unhappy soul. She read for fifteen minutes, and then the café’s owner, who always acted as master of ceremonies, invited the rest of us to approach the podium and recite our work. I listened as two friends went forward and dramatically performed, then I arose and stepped to the podium. My reading went well, even though I was somewhat startled to see a certain figure standing near the back. As I returned to my chair, she came forward, familiar book in hand, and stood before us.

“I am not a poet, but I love the craft and have been enchanted by what I have heard tonight. I would like to read a short piece by a poet who is now largely forgotten. Sadly, we live in an age where, in this country, poetry is seldom bothered with. We cannot be forgotten, for we are utterly ignored. But none may deny us our voice. Here is one poetic voice; and although it’s not as . . . free in form as that which we heard from Mr. Christopher, it is its equal in extravagance.”

“The impudent vixen,” I thought angrily, frowning at her as she opened the book and began to read.

“I kiss the cosmic wind that finds my face,

This face that burns as if encased in flame,

An ember glowing in an alien place,

An ancient land that deigns to call my name.

I tell my name among the stones that stand

As towers of black slat beneath black stars,

The stars that spill toward me like dark sand,

Like sand that stains the mortal flesh it mars.

New-made I rise, a pillar of dark stone,

A nascent thing on Yuggoth’s hoary sod.

I hear the sound that chills me to the bone:

The mirthless chortle of some raving god.”

I had closed my eyes as she began to read, and that had been a mistake; for as she continued to sound the verse, I was transported to the scene described. I felt an alien tempest that burned my face, that slinked into the cavities of my countenance and pushed beneath my flesh. I clutched my face and felt the bumps that began to form upon it. Polite applause shook me from the vision, but it was for some bloke, not the mysterious woman who had enchanted my brain with nightmare. Clumsily, I exited my chair and stumbled from the room, into night. She was leaning against the building, looking at stars.

“Can you smell the encroaching fog? How rank, like some unwashed lover. See how it steals the starlight. Can you smell the coming storm?”

“No,” I bluntly replied, reaching for the pack of cigarettes in my shirt pocket and hoping that smoking offended her. “Will you have one?”

“Certainly,” she replied. Placing a fag in my mouth, I lit it, took a drag, then held it to her. She brought the thin narcotic cylinder to her face and inhaled its fumes. Her mouth never touched it. “Will you walk with me?” she asked.

“I suppose.” I was not fond of intimate human contact, and women were a race I could not comprehend and with which I felt uncomfortable. And this was no ordinary woman. From the moment I first laid eyes on her I had felt unsettled. She was like one of Wilde’s alluring panthers, as dangerous as she was beguiling. I fancied that I could sense her bestial appetite as her hips moved against mine. These alarming observations overwhelmed me until I heard the sound of distant music. Ah, how I smiled. We approached a sight that would stir her curiosity, and in her distraction I would make my escape. Nonchalantly, I led her toward the sound, to the overgrown and usually abandoned courtyard that was lit by one weak lamppost. Beneath that dim light were two figures. The taller one, a bent old gentleman, played a worn and weathered accordion, a slender tube-like instrument from another century, with buttons rather than keyboard. He moved its pleated billows in a mechanical manner, as though oblivious to the heart-wrenching music he produced.

Beneath him knelt one of the oddest and most pathetic beings I had ever encountered. One knew instinctively that the diminutive thing was not a child, even though the monkey mask of flayed rubber covered most of the creature’s face. From its dome, just above the mask, was a mess of mangled hair, coils of matted filth that resembled thick dead worms. Bent over the image that it drew on pavement with a stick of chalk, it was unwitting of our presence.

I looked at my companion and saw her watch the remnant of hand that clutched the yellow chalk. The right hand was little more than fist, its flesh ending just above the knuckles. The left hand retained two middle digits, and they stopped their drawing as we got closer. The wee creature turned to look at us. How oddly the black eyes shined beneath their mask. His fingers dropped the chalk and began to move as if he were attempting some piteous form of sign language. He then stood upon truncated legs and did a little dance; and as he capered he bent his torso low as if in genuflection to the woman at my side.

The music swelled, and with rakish abandon I took the woman into my arms and danced her closer to the pair of beings who stood like harbingers of doom. The old man lifted his fantastic face and watched our frolic, and I tried not to stare at the growth of bumps and folded flesh that disfigured his visage. His familiar watched us with bent head and held out what remained of a palm. Pushing from me, the woman went to him and kissed the open palm. I watched the small thing shudder at her touch.

The music stopped, and the gentleman released one hand from his instrument, holding it to her. She took the proffered hand and lifted it to her face, smoothing her features with his cracked and ancient paw. Her hands swam through the air to his pale face, then wound into his white hair. She bent to him and touched her mouth to his, and then she moved her mouth to an ugly growth on his cheek. Her kiss was a prolonged thing. When at last she pulled away, I was horrified to see the blood that oozed from the place on the old gent’s face that had been eaten into. Sickened, I backed away, then turned to run as the ancient fellow reached out with shaky hands and pulled the woman’s face once more to his.

II
.

I wandered through moist and stinking fog, that queer mist that had stayed now for two days. From the sound of bells and horns I knew that I had reached Harborside, and when I found myself on Water Street I walked to a familiar address and passed through gates that were supported by stone walls eight feet high. The gnarled trees that surrounded the ancient dwelling were swathed in thick mist. From the wide covered porch I could discern a lantern’s glow. I heard the faint humming of intoxicated song. Winfield Scot was watching me.

“Ah, brother poet, come and share my wine. Or try this kick-ass rum. It’ll warm you from the coils of detested fog. You look like a fellow in need of fortification. What ails thee, son; what’s her name?”

I took the proffered bottle of rum and gulped a generous portion. “She’s a very devil.”

“Aren’t they all, god love them? Give me the hellish details. But steady on the rum, mate; it’s another week before my next check.”

I babbled of my encounter, and as I told my tale Scot’s eyes sobered. I think sometimes he plays at being more inebriated than he actually is, as if it were expected of him to play the part of town drunk. How carefully he listened to my yarn.

“Hmmm,” he said after a long pause, and then he brought a bottle of red wine to his mouth.

“What?”

“You say she appeared out of this damnable fog as you were reading
People of the Monolith
? Were you reading aloud?”

“I don’t know. I sometimes read aloud, especially verse. I like to feel the words on my lips. Why?”

“Justin Geoffrey was a potent bard. I’ve cautioned you before about speaking certain esoteric verse aloud. Now, you know that fellow’s history, of how he wrote the initial draft of his infamous poem in a state of rich madness while sitting near a monolith of cursed stone. Haunted place, haunted mind. Linked in lunacy. In such a state, believe me, humanity is prone to channel unusual influence. You and I, son, as poets, know too well the weird stuff that leaks into our imaginations. From where?”

“I’ve heard all of this before, your theory of the universal madness of poets.”

“Not all. And there are degrees of lunacy. I speak mainly of those who dig the weird cosmic stuff. You’ve written a little of it yourself, and you read it always. This place, this old seaport, welcomes those of us who thrill to outside influence. We have felt the velvet kiss of the kind of madness that produces such poetry as
People of the Monolith
or
Al Azif
. We tap into a language that is fraught with energy, with alchemy. The result is poetry that is truly
evocative.
We should use caution in speaking such words aloud.”

“Okay, I know where you’re going with this. You’re saying that I summoned this witch woman by uttering the sounds of a mad poet’s song.”

“You catch on quick. Come on, I want to show you something interesting.” Clumsily, he held out his hand. I took it and pulled him to his feet. He stumbled to the door of the ancient house and pushed it open.

“I don’t think so, Winfield.”

“Hand me that lantern and don’t be gutless. The trick is not to linger too long inside. Take my hand, child, if that will help. Can you feel it? This, too, is a realm of madness.” I stayed close behind him, taking in the debris with which the shadowed room was cluttered. “The old matey who lived here, bless him, left his stigmata of craziness within these rotting walls. Man, the weird junk he picked up as he sailed around the world. This place is a trove of nameless booty. From the stories he told, and from the bits he cautiously left out but hinted at, he was ruthless in his pursuit of plunder. Ah, settle down and don’t look so nervous. Ain’t much can reach us here from Outside, not as long as those painted stones stand unmoved in the yard. Okay, found it.”