The Third Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

by Adrian Cole et al.

  Aunt Melanie looked at him with concern. “You all right? You’re crankier than usual.”

  “Yeah, had a rough time with the job interview,” he said.

  “You sure? You look pale. You coming down with something?”

  The knotholes on the wood surface of the sideboard caught his attention, like the eye holes in a mask. He flinched visibly, he realized. “Had weird dreams last night, they kept me awake.”

  “That’ll do it to you,” she said, something in her voice sounding unconvinced. “You sure you’re okay?

  “Might be a bit jumpy over this job interview.”

  “I know someone you could talk to.”

  “I don’t need a headshrinker, so much as I need a job.”

  “Well, talking to someone outside your usual sphere can help you feel less frayed about trying to get a job.”

  “As long as they don’t mind me paying by sweeping their office floor or something.”

  * * * *

  Evening shift at the grocery store and Mason spent much of the time bagging or sweeping the floor. Something yellow shifted in his peripheral vision, causing him to jump and nearly knock over a woman’s shopping basket on wheels with his broom handle.

  “Watch where you’re going,” a woman in a yellow silk raincoat, pushing the shopping basket, snapped, shoving past him and muttering at the incompetence of the youngest generation.

  “Get going yourself, you bat,” Mason muttered.

  That night brought more dreams, in which he pursued the ragged procession between ruined structures like crumbling castles and temples, bare trees lifting leafless branches to the dust-yellow sky above, more yellow dust rising in acrid puffs from under the marchers’ feet where their blood had not yet clotted on the dusty road. He raised his eyes from this rabble to the sky above, to the skyline of the castle where House Aldonces had dwelt for generations, his to claim, as Hastur the kindly, Hastur the gracious, had promised, if he would present a fitting offering.

  He jerked awake, the amber light on his alarm clock showing he had several hours left till he had to get up, but lay there unable to fall back to sleep

  Next morning, he dragged himself through another shift at the antique shop. “I’ll help you pay for a session with Doctor Archer, if it helps,” Aunt Mel offered. “If you can’t sleep, this is all the reason you need.”

  “All right, all right, stop twisting my arm,” Mason muttered.

  She gave him the next day off, sending him to Dr. Archer’s office. Mason could see why they would be friends: he could remember when the bookcases that lined the walls of the shrink’s office had lined the walls in Aunt Mel’s shop, holding up a bunch of Hummels she had trouble moving, along with some encyclopedias in cream colored bindings that had yellowed with age. Now they held up various thick manuals and binders, and a few framed photographs of forests and seasides, likely taken in Maine.

  “It’s a tough field to get into, I’m told,” Dr. Archer, a small man, dark eyes behind silver-rimmed glasses, said. “I’m told there’s a high demand for camera crew and film editors, but they’re selective in who they hire.”

  “Too picky for their own good, if you ask me,” Mason said.

  Dr. Archer cocked his head, the light from the window glinting on his lenses. “You’re feeling slightly on edge because it’s taking so long to get a job in the field you chose.”

  “Who wouldn’t feel this way? I take it this is the part where I break down bawling because I’ll be bagging groceries and lugging furniture up staircases for my aunt, just to pay the bills, and where you reassure me that the right job is somewhere, I just have to be patient, yadda yadda yadda. Insert mommy-daddy-society wound talk.”

  “You really don’t want to be here.”

  “The hell I don’t. I should be out there, getting what’s mine, my just deserves,” Mason snapped, mind ticking back to the play, the elder son’s rant in the first act.

  “If you need to let it out, I’m here to listen,” Dr. Archer said.

  “No. I’m stressed, but I can take it.”

  “Well, what would you care to talk about instead?”

  “Nothing. Anything.”

  “What do you do when you’re not working?”

  “I watch a lot of movies. I know, cliché for an AV guy.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  He told Archer about the box of VHS tapes, watching them with Lexus. He didn’t mention the yellow label tape or the King in the Tattered Cloak. No point mentioning the dreams. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go down that rabbit hole, and have this shrink tell him the dreams meant he really wanted to bang his aunt or something sick like that.

  “So you critique these movies?

  “Sort of. Point out what’s bad production, learn what not to do. Think of things I’d do to improve it.”

  “Ah, so more than an MST3K session.”

  “That’s some people’s idea of movie critiquing, ain’t mine. It’s fun to watch when you want something goofy and brainless, but it’s too snarky for my tastes.”

  “In that case, aside from some anxiety connected to the job search, I’d say you’re doing well.”

  “So I don’t have to come back?”

  “If you feel the need, by all means, but otherwise, go forth and prosper, young man.

  * * * *

  The light on the answering machine blinked when Mason got home. He played back the message.

  “Thank you for your application. We’re still reviewing it with all due consideration….” Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah, usual HR blather.

  Off to work at the grocery that night, despite the set back. The usual crowd came through: stay at home moms or second shift moms coming in with their ankle biters in tow. Including one not yet old enough for school using the carriage as climbing bars.

  “Ma’am, can you not let your child clamber on the carriage?” the words slipping out of Mason’s mouth before he could stop them.

  “He’s not bothering you. Kids need to climb and exercise,” Mommie said.

  “Yeah, but they’re in my way as I repack your carriage.” Mason reached over and around the kid hanging from the side of the carriage. He swore the kid moved right into his path to get into his path on purpose. Grabbing a bag with several boxes in it, Mason slung it into the carriage, clipping the kid’s shoulder. The kid jumped off the carriage, running to his mother for comfort.

  “We got in each other’s way,” Mason said.

  “You did that on purpose,” Mommie said, pulling her pup close.

  “Wasn’t trying to,” Mason said, proving her point.

  Mommie paid the bill, but rather than going on her way, she approached Petersen the assistant front end manager, talked to him in a low voice.

  At Mason’s break, Petersen took him aside. “What happened with that kid and a bag of cereal boxes?” he asked.

  “What about what kid and a bag of cereal boxes?”

  “A woman says you hit her son with a bag of cereal boxes,” Petersen said, looking him in the eye. “Was it an accident?”

  “Of course it was an accident. You take me for the kind of man who beats kids?”

  “You’ve been a bit more grouchy than you usually are.”

  “I just got the run around from a job I applied to. It’d put anyone on edge.”

  “If your attitude here was anything like your attitude at your interview, I can see why they might be reluctant to hire you,” Petersen said.

  “Whatever. I need coffee,” Mason said.

  First customer after his break, an old woman who reeked of perfume she’d drenched herself in to cover her stale, unwashed stench. Mason reached up to pinch his nose shut while bagging her groceries—packages of cupcakes and cans of cat food—with the other.

  “Don’t make the bag so heavy,” she said, her S’s squeaking through her dentures, as he put a single jar of mayonnaise into one plastic sack and set it aside to open the next bag.

  “There’s only one thing in
these bags,” Mason said.

  “Don’t contradict me, young man.”

  “Ma’am, with all respect due to your dotage, there is only one thing in each of these bags or two to three very light things. If you see more than one jar in that bag, you need your eyes checked.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that! How dare you speak so disrespectful to a poor old widder woman,” the hag snapped, as she raised her cane to brandish it at Mason.

  How dare she speak to me like that, he thought and grabbed the cane, yanking it from her gnarled fingers and swiping at her with it. The hag screamed one of those overwrought old beldame screams and staggered backward into the commoner behind her.

  He swiped the cane at her head. She shuffled out of the way. “Come back to me, you harridan!” Mason cried, one part of his mind puzzling at his vocabulary before his rage throttled this brief voice of concern. He lunged across the end of the register at her. She shuffled backward, falling into a shopping carriage behind her. The customer hauled the cart backward as Mason reached for her.

  “What’s going on?”—“The bagging kid’s gone crazy”—“Someone find a manager!”—The rest of the line and the customers in the aisle behind them scuttled backward before some turned to run. Mason swiped at the nearest person with his cudgel. How dare they address a member of House Aldonces in such a manner. Let these peasants cower and snivel, he would give them reason to mewl as they did.

  A heavy hand fell upon his shoulder. He looked over, his mind briefly registering Famolare, the store director, till he fell back to himself, awakening to the mask falling away, to gaze upon this minion of the dread King, Hastur the Unspeakable, Hastur come to wrench the crown from the heirs of Camilla.

  He swung the cudgel to drive off the vile minion, but it wrenched the weapon from his hands. Emitting a war cry, he lunged at the minion. It seized him and dragged him down into the darkness as his head cracked on the yellow floor tiles…

  TUAMA, by L.F. Falconer

  “Did you know I am possessed by an irrational fear of drowning?”

  Dr. Chase-Whateley’s question catches me off guard. It’s the third time in our short acquaintance she’s hit me with some random, out-of-the-blue comment. Shivering against the cold sea mist, I glance over at her. “Seems a rather odd phobia for a marine biologist.”

  “It hasn’t always been so Diana, however, it’s why I abandoned the sea in favor of zoology.”

  The captain of the boat grumbles, “It’s not the sea ye should fear.” He throttles back the engines, the sky overhead the same gunmetal gray as the sea which surrounds us. “And you’ve still time to change your minds.”

  Her gaze intent upon our destination, Dr. Chase-Whateley secures the top button of her reefer jacket. “I’m well aware of the legends. I’ve only come to study the nesting nightjars. The dead cannot harm me.”

  “It’s not the dead ye should fear,” the old man mutters.

  I’m not certain if Dr. Chase-Whateley didn’t hear him or if she simply refuses to honor him with a response. Many are the unfriendly stories rising from this land of giants and ancient gods, one of those being—Tuama only welcomes the dead. I gaze back out at the bleak island we approach, a frigid dread creeping beneath my skin. What did I get myself into?

  An area profuse with prehistoric menhirs, stone circles, and barrows, the Kintyre Peninsula remains lost in the Dark Ages. From the farmers to the distillers, its few inhabitants cling to the land like weary ghosts. Off the peninsula’s west shore lies Tuama—our destination—a charnel isle which, for five millennia, has sheltered countless bones. Two miles long and one mile wide, the isle is little more than a spit of windswept rock and sand, held in place by the sturdy machair grass. Dead center, its pinnacle rises forty feet above the sea, crowned with the fallen remnants of a druidic temple.

  The engines drop to near silence. The boat crawls through the uneasy waters and into a sheltered cove surrounded on two sides by a stern garrison of basalt bluffs. Here, nothing but the past remains. The wrecked. The decayed. The mighty, fallen to the earth, but for one stone monolith which still stands guard atop the headland, forever watching the restless North Atlantic.

  The locals refuse to set foot upon Tuama. Dr. Chase-Whateley had to pay the captain of this fishing vessel a handsome sum to convince him to drop us off and promise to retrieve us again when her study is complete. She’s curious as to why this isle, and this isle alone, is where the local nightjars choose to nest. Perhaps this anomaly lends credence to the “corpse bird” sobriquet they carry—the keepers of souls.

  To spend the month of May living on a graveyard off the coast of Scotland with a woman forty years my senior runs contrary to my idea of a good time. But an internship as a field research assistant to such an eminent scientist as Dr. Miriam Chase-Whateley could hardly be refused. Especially when sugared with a fat check.

  The boat skims up to a rickety dock inside the cove. The captain uses his boom to lower an aluminum dinghy filled with supplies onto the beach while the doctor and I unload the rest of our supplies down the gangplank. Never once does the old man leave the sanctuary of his boat. “This is your last chance,” he offers before departure.

  “I’m only too thrilled to have my feet back on dry land,” Dr. Chase-Whateley tells him before addressing me. “Come now Diana, we must secure our camp before nightfall.”

  I wave the captain goodbye, hoping he remembers to return.

  Laden with supplies, we head up the beach toward a large swath of sand near the base of the cliffs. Under the scrutiny of a handful of curious nightjars, their large, dark eyes trained upon us, we work fervently throughout the day. Thwarted occasionally by stiff gusts of icy wind, we complete our campsite just as daylight fails, the sun setting without fanfare. The wind descends with the sun, ushering in a welcome calm.

  We lack a generator, and cell phone service is nonexistent. Fresh food will soon become a rarity so I relish our evening sandwiches within the rear portion of the 13’ by 27’ canvas wall-tent which will house us for the next month.

  After our supper, Dr. Chase-Whateley pours a generous shot of Campbeltown whisky into each of our mugs. “Tonight, Diana, we relax. Our real work begins tomorrow.” She downs her drink in one swift swallow. “And please, from now on you must refer to me as Miriam. There’s no need for formalities out here.”

  Wishing it were wine, I warm my taste buds with a sip of whisky. Under the bright light of the propane lantern, our shadows loom like a pair of gray giants on the tent wall.

  Miriam pours herself another drink. “Naturally, we must study the birds enough to justify the grant.”

  She’s caught me off guard again and I search her eyes for hints of jest. “I assumed the nightjars are why we’re here.”

  “Nightjars…nightjars…I couldn’t care less about nightjars.” She sips from her mug. “They were simply an excuse to get me here. We’ll write down a few observations to satisfy my sponsors, but there’s a mystery here much more fascinating than birds.”

  As if summoned, the nightjars near our camp begin a rhythmic churr, nearly in unison, the cumulative sound pulsating through the air like blood in a vein.

  With an animation that’s been absent until now, Miriam leans forward. “Tell me, Diana, what do you know of the fourth dimension?”

  “I know there are conflicting theories. Many question its very existence.”

  She leans back in her camp chair, swirling the contents of her mug. “That’s only due to the limitations of the ordinary human mind. Yet, in order to attain true understanding from a sphere of cosmic enlightenment, the fourth dimension must be accessible.” A twinkle sparkles her eye. “What if I could prove its existence here? Would you like to be a party to that?”

  “I’m barely an entomologist. It’s not really my field of study.”

  “Nor mine. And the North Atlantic Avian Foundation would never have given me a dime to seek the fourth dimension. But—to study the birds…” She winks and finishes
off what remains in her mug.

  While my scientific interests are grounded more in tangible realms, she’s piqued my curiosity. “May I ask why you believe the answer is here?”

  She stares over toward our shadows on the tent wall. “Few people are aware that when I first met him in my freshman year at Miskatonic U, my husband was a professor of physics.”

  Who would’ve thought the old girl had it in her? I lean in, preparing to endure details of her sordid past. “A clandestine faculty/student affair?”

  “Oh, no.” She waves her hand as if to brush the notion aside. “Nothing so romantic as that. We simply met there. It wasn’t until we met again, twelve years later at a symposium in Miami that we got involved. By then I had already made a name for myself in the scientific community, so when we married, among other things, I inherited that dreadfully cumbersome hyphenation of both our last names. But—I digress…”

  She leans her aging, lissome form forward, pouring another shot into her mug. “When he abandoned physics and left Massachusetts, Andrew severed all ties with his relatives as well. Yet, several years after we married, he received a gift from a distant cousin, a small locked box not unlike a miniature pirate’s chest. For years, it sat unopened and ignored upon a shelf in Andrew’s study. I suppose curiosity got the best of him because eventually he broke the lock and opened it.” She sighs deeply. “That’s the day I lost him.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She takes a sip and goes on. “He was still very much alive at that point, but he became a man obsessed. The box contained a jumble of maps, journals, and news clippings. He constantly poured over the contents, translating and formulating the information contained within. Near the end, he took to spending weeks at a time within the confines of his study. One day, I went in to check on him and found him dead on the floor near the fireplace. He died of an aneurysm while in the process of burning the box and all its contents. Though it was partially destroyed, the only thing to survive was his own notebook. When I began going through his notes, I grew to understand his fascination. And now,” she takes the final swallow from her mug, “here I am, at the gateway of an Elder—”