Against the distant glow, I could see the silhouette of Jimmy shrugging his shoulders.
To hell with this. To hell with him. I forged past, lured on by the glow of the lights. I had to walk slowly to keep from tripping over the uneven ground, but it wasn't far. It wasn't long before I saw the small pen with the attached shack next to a good-sized clearing. Wood had been stacked up around a wooden post in the center. The bonfire all set up, just waiting for the torch to set it ablaze. I could smell gasoline from the edge of the clearing. Gasoline and goat shit. Not a soul in sight.
After the cover of the woods, I felt exposed crossing the clearing to the goat pen. I kept low, scurried across the gap as quickly as I could. My mouth was dry. Heart racing. I pictured the hot, coppery gush of blood as I severed the goat's throat and my cock pressed against the zipper of my jeans. I missed this almost more than I missed winning.
The goat wasn't in the pen, so I figured he was in the attached shed, which suited me just fine. Less chance of someone seeing me in the act. I reached the door to the shed. Paused in the shadows to catch my breath while I checked the door. Just a simple hinge clasp. It wasn't even locked. Idiots. It was like they had never had a football rivalry before!
I twisted the hasp, opened the door, and slipped into the darkened interior.
Even in the total darkness, I could tell immediately that something was off. It felt too close. Too quiet. I couldn't even hear the goat bleat in fear, and I wondered if Dunwich might have already taken him out of his enclosure entirely. I fumbled for a light switch on the wall, found nothing. Reached out for a light cord, muttering, "Where's the goddamned goat?"
My hand touched a man's face. Doughy, brushed with stubble. From either side of me, a handful of people chuckled. The guy whose face I touched had a voice like molasses. Dark, sweet, devoid of mirth. "Goat's right here, boy."
I got tapped, a hard, crisp blow to the back of my head. The knives and apron hit the ground about a second before I did.
I don't know how long I was out. I woke up on my feet to more pain than I've ever experienced in my life. My shoulders were ablaze, and it took me a few seconds to realize that they were dislocated, the shoulder muscles torn. Through the pain, I realized the back of my hands were touching each other, tied behind me to a post. In my panic, I didn't immediately realize where I was. It was the overwhelming smell of gasoline that reminded me.
The bonfire. I was tied to the post in the middle of the goddamned bonfire. A line of figures dressed in hooded brown robes came out of the woods. They kept coming, joining in a wide circle around me. Could have been a hundred. Maybe more.
"I'm not afraid of you!" I lied, shouting myself hoarse. "You can't do this! This ain't right!"
Nothing. No mercy, no reaction. Just still figures, waiting, watching.
"It's just a goddamned football game, you bastards!"
I heard Jimmy's voice behind me. "So quick to give up your faith now that your God has abandoned you?"
I craned my neck to see him. Twisted left and right, even though the daggers of pain in my shoulders threatened to make me black out again. All I saw were the shadows of a few robed figures. My attackers, I figured. My attackers and Jimmy, my Judas. "Jimmy. You gotta let me go."
"I don't have to do anything," Jimmy said. "I'm not even here. I'm in Boston right now, texting a few friends about how Mike Le Clair dragged me to Boston, got pissed off, and ditched me. As far as they know, my cousin is on his way to pick me up and drive me back to Danvers."
I heard the sound of flames, saw the glow from a torch being lit behind me. The crowd that was gathered around us started chanting something. Dunwich had the worst cheerleaders I've ever heard. I couldn't understand a word of it.
"Jimmy, come on. This isn't funny anymore. You don't even play for Dunwich."
"Don't get me wrong, Mike," he said, lowering the torch to the gasoline-soaked wood. It erupted in a whoosh of flame. He practically had to shout to be heard over the sound of fire and me screaming. "I like the game. But it's not my religion. It isn't Steve's either, but he's lived up here long enough to know when to stay on the sidelines. Knows better than to be the goat. We have older ways in the Miskatonic, Mike. Much. Older. Ways."
* * *
Mike Le Clair is a Texas-born high school football quarterback, recently relocated to Danvers, Massachusetts. A below average student, he was raised on a working ranch and has the drive of a natural-born leader. Anyone with information to his whereabouts should contact the Arkham County Sheriff's Department.
* * *
Nathan Crowder is a product of the great American southwest infused with enough pop culture to power a small city. Despite writing in a variety of mediums and genres, he is never far removed from a touch of horror. His works have appeared in the anthologies Coins of Chaos, Blood Rites: An Introduction to Horror, and Cthulhurotica. Online he can be found at Nathancrowder.com where he blogs about writing, media, and fringe candy.
* * *
The Crumbling of Old Walls
An account by Neil Grayson, as provided by Craig D. B. Patton
* * *
I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm writing this because I'm scared. More scared than I've ever been. I don't understand what's happened here since the storm. And if things get worse ... well, there should be some sort of record. Something that maybe someone can use to figure out what took place. It'd probably help to include some context, so I think I should start by going back a bit.
God. I feel like I'm in high school again, splashing the hot mess of my emotions onto the pages of a journal. But this is not about me at all. And it's definitely not all in my head.
Karen and I met at a Halloween party in Boston. One of those corporate affairs with smoke machines turned up too high and too many people dressed as zombies. I went as Dr. Venkman from Ghostbusters because people tell me I look like Bill Murray anyway. Karen went in a black cocktail dress and had this bulbous, swamp green head piece with yellow eyes and tentacles. She looked amazing. Bizarre and unique and sexy all at once. So I walked up and asked her if she knew she had a squid on her head. She told me it was a Great Old One. I asked if she'd explain what that meant if I got her a drink. She said yes and that was how it started.
Two years later we were married. Started out in my apartment, but she had always talked about wanting to live in Aylesbury where she grew up. Aylesbury was where she learned about the Great Old Ones. They were these monsters with complicated names in dark folklore tales. The sort of stories eccentric people tell kids to give them nightmares.
Anyway, at first I wasn't crazy about the idea. Aylesbury was a tiny town out in the woods in the north central part of the state. I'd grown up in Cambridge. I was used to the crowds and the energy of the city. I liked riding the T and going to the Museum of Science and spending 4th of July on a blanket on the Esplanade for the Pops concert. Karen liked it too, but not as much and it wasn't home.
In the end, I changed jobs to work at a company on 495 and started commuting on Route 2 so we could live in her childhood town. Lots of people live their whole lives here, I learned. It's not much more than a Colonial-era village with streets and buildings and businesses named after families who have been here for generations. Honestly, it's a bit rough around the edges. There are potholes in all the roads and some abandoned buildings, but Karen says it's much better than it used to be. Things are supposedly much worse across the Miskatonic River in Dunwich. Never been.
Aylesbury does have a strange sort of charm. I had never expected to fill out a rural mail delivery form with the postal service. Cell phone reception is spotty at best. But all in all, it's nice enough. I've enjoyed living among these rugged, thickly forested hills.
But all the trees brought trouble this October. A freak early winter storm dumped heavy snow and then ice overnight. I lay awake for hours listening to the sound of limbs snapping and trees tumbling down the ridge. By morning, we had no power and the roads were blocked by downed trees,
downed poles, and dangling wires.
Five days later was Halloween. We still had no power, no cell coverage, and nobody seemed to know when we would have either. On the bright side, I was feeling good about storing up so much potable water, batteries, and propane before the storm hit. But I was getting stir crazy and told Karen I was going for a walk. She tried to stop me. Sort of. But after a couple of assurances that I would be careful, I set out.
Outside the full moon hung in a clear sky. The snowpack was splashing the moonlight everywhere. The world was aglow with it. I didn't even need the flashlight I'd brought. But the air was frigid. I was glad I had taken my winter coat.
The darkened streetlights were like fists raised by the utility poles in fury. The houses were as dark as the lamps. Not a single light or candle glowed in the windows. People were hunkered down, burying their bones beneath sedimentary layers of blankets.
It was the most boring Halloween night walk ever. There were no Jack-o-Lanterns shining on the steps. No motion-activated monsters lurching and wailing. No backlit faces leering out of windows. The neighborhood looked abandoned, like the world had ended and someone had forgotten to tell me.
I wound my way around the debris that had made the road impassable for cars. After a while I glanced up and stopped in my tracks. I had never seen such a sky. The lack of artificial light for miles around had unveiled an uncountable number of dim, distant stars.
A few houses further along I came to the first spectacular example of the storm's power. A massive limb had snapped off a maple tree and landed with the leaf-covered twigs down and the jagged, twelve-inch thick end bowing the utility lines. The next house had a birch tree leaning on the roof. The lines to the next house on the opposite side of the street angled sharply down from the pole and vanished into a thicket of fallen branches.
I came to a small clearing. At the back was an old stone gate framing the access road that climbed the trap rock ridge behind the neighborhood. The snow between the gate and the road looked pockmarked. I switched on my flashlight and shone the beam across it. There were dozens and dozens of footprints.
We had hiked the access road a few times. There was a cell tower anchored to an enormous exposed shelf of basalt at the top. I thought about how extraordinary the view from there would be. But I hesitated. It would take longer. Karen might wonder where I was and worry. I decided it would be alright. I'd be back soon enough. I stepped into a track of boot prints and followed them.
The access road arced in a lazy curve upward. I followed the prints as they twisted around or under the downed limbs and trees. It was an easy climb, popular with families, and I could see the tiny prints left by children's boots mingled with the others.
I was almost to the top when the tracks abruptly merged and turned left. A featureless muddy streak dipped off the side of the road, crossed the drainage ditch, and disappeared between the trees.
I shone my flashlight into the woods, puzzled. I hadn't known there was a trail there. It didn't look like much. There were no blazes marking it. But there are probably hundreds of unofficial trails in these woods. I had explored a few of them, but preferred to stick to the clearly identified ones. Karen teases me sometimes about being "a city mouse." As if wanting to avoid getting lost in the woods is silly. But I couldn't get lost if I just followed the tracks. Something the natives thought was more interesting than the view from the cell tower was out there.
Wary of slipping on the icy mud, I picked my way down off the road and followed the prints. After a short distance the path opened up, following a six-foot wide slot between two stone walls that angled sharply uphill. The seemingly endless series of crumbling, moss-covered walls in these woods amazes me. All of that work, hauling stone after stone to mark boundaries that no longer matter.
I kept the light trained close to my feet. The path was more rugged than the access road and I stumbled over rocks and tree roots. After several minutes of climbing, the rock walls ended where the ridge became almost vertical. I shone the flashlight up and saw that the path continued through a series of switchbacks to reach the top. Beyond the pillars of the trees at the crest there was open sky.
I started up, panting and puffing great clouds as I went. I was looking forward to teasing Karen. At least I had gotten my exercise. She had stopped doing yoga when the furnace went out.
There was a figure atop the ridge. I had thought I might find someone up there but it startled me anyway. I pointed the flashlight beam toward the stranger, keeping it low to avoid shining it in their eyes. But it wasn't a person. It was a statue.
It stood at the center of a clearing that ended at a cliff, the land plunging away to the rounded hills beyond. The statue was maybe nine feet tall and constructed entirely of branches and sticks. The head was like a giant bird cage made from slender branches. Thicker pieces framed the torso, thin sticks forming a dense weave between them. Beneath, branches as thick as my arm flared out and down to support it. I had the impression the statue was facing away from me, looking out across the Miskatonic River Valley to the north.
I walked closer, studying it. The branches and sticks were bound together with jute. Dozens, hundreds of tiny lashings and knots worth of it. An enormous amount of time and effort had clearly gone into creating the statue. It belonged in a museum or an art gallery somewhere, not hidden up here.
There was something inside the torso. At first I thought maybe a squirrel had built a nest. I shone the light on it. It was a jumble of narrow, folded pieces of paper. One was flared open and I saw elegant loops of blue ink. A line, flowing into a cursive "e" and "m".
It was a note.
I had a sudden memory of my semester in Japan as an exchange student. Our group had visited dozens of Buddhist and Shinto temples. At many of them, there were stations where visitors wrote prayers on strips of paper and then tied them to structures. Had it been the Buddhist temples or the Shinto ones? I couldn't remember. Neither made sense for the homogenous, white population of Aylesbury. People here think Olive Garden is exotic dining.
I walked around the statue. On the side facing the cliff the notes were bunched much closer to the surface. One was sticking a half-inch out. It would be easy to pull it loose. A stiff breeze might have done it.
I stood there looking at that note for what felt like a long time, resisting what I wanted to do. Finally I swept the flashlight in a slow arc around the clearing. I half expected to see a crowd standing there, arms folded, glaring at me. But I was alone. Satisfied, I looked at the note again.
I memorized the spot where it stuck out. It felt important that I put it back in the same spot afterwards. Respectful. Then I took gentle hold of the note and gave it an exploratory tug. A moment later it was in my palm.
The paper itself wasn't anything special. Standard, white office grade stock. I tucked the flashlight under my arm and unfolded the note. The rustling and crackling of the paper seemed impossibly loud and I glanced around. I was still alone, but my heart pounded faster anyway.
It skipped a beat when I saw the writing.
Black ballpoint pen strokes, squat lettering, the capital letters barely taller than the rest. It read:
I don't love him anymore. Release him, and a complicated name I can't remember the spelling of. Narlatotep. Something like that. It reminded me of the names in the folktales Karen had told me about. The stories of the Great Old Ones.
But it was the writing itself that bothered me more. It reminded me of Karen's. I tried to picture her cursive, how she formed each letter. But she hardly ever handwrites me anything besides signing a birthday card.
I read it several times. I licked my lips and tried to read it aloud, but had no voice. I could not speak those first four devastating words.
I shivered. I suddenly wanted very much to be home with Karen. Not out there alone in the dark.
I folded the paper back up with trembling hands and ran my fingers along it twice to crease it. I would put it back and then I would go home.
>
Taking the flashlight in my hand again, I shone it on the statue. I found the spot where I had removed the note--a narrow opening beside a stick shaped like a femur. But the note shook in my hand. It wavered past the opening.
I tried and missed again.
And again.
The fog of my breath had thickened. It was colder than when I had left home. Much colder. That was what was wrong, I realized. I shifted my grip on the note so that I had more control over the end. I just needed to concentrate.
I shifted my feet and that's when it happened. My foot struck something and I lost my balance. I lurched down and sideways. My knee drove into one of the statue's legs. There was a loud snap as it gave way beneath me. I tumbled backward to the ground, flailing at the statue to try and catch myself.
For a dizzy moment, I thought it would topple onto me. But it fell away from me instead, sticks snapping and cracking within it all the way down before it landed with a splintering crash. Then there was utter silence.
I got up slowly and shone the flashlight on the fallen statue. It was just a pile of brush now. Branches and sticks jutted out at all angles. Bits of jute dangled from some of them and hung in tangled clumps from others. Any resemblance to a figure was gone.
The notes had spilled across the ground beside it. I walked over and looked down at them. Many of them were open. I started reading one after another. I couldn't help myself. I'd already violated that place. What did reading a few of the notes matter?
Some, like the one that might have been Karen's, bore neat and precise handwriting:
That Ain't Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley (Mad Scientist Journal Presents Book 1) Page 3