Jackie tried to imitate him, but his own was a little boy’s voice, and the result was a series of yelps, barks, and squeals.
And Caleb said to him, “It’s the Call. I told you it would come.” He still held Jackie by the hand and started to lead him deeper into the water.
It was Margaret who actually had the nerve to do something. You might say she had the balls in the family. She was the one who rushed forward, yanked Jackie away, and said, “No you don’t! You’re coming home right now!”
“But it’s the Call, Mom!”
“I don’t care if it’s fucking Santa Claus,” she said under her breath, and hauled him, squalling and protesting, up the beach and back toward our house.
Caleb turned to face me, waist-deep in the water. His eyes were definitely luminous now, like those things far out to sea.
I wanted to demand of him the truth, who he was and why he had come into our lives, and, more to the point, what he was.
But I didn’t. I don’t give myself any credit, but I think it did take a certain amount of courage to confront him at all.
All I said was, “Go away, Caleb. Leave us alone. Don’t come to our house anymore. Don’t play with Jackie.”
He said nothing. He sank down into the water. He must have been swimming.
* * * *
That of course solved nothing. It wasn’t hard to predict what happened next. One night Margaret caught Jackie at the window, leaning out into the dark, trying to make those sounds, and, in the distance, something answered him.
She was really afraid now. I could tell that. This brought us together. You know that little drawer deep inside my brain, in which I kept what was left of my love for my family? It creaked open, just a bit. I didn’t argue when Margaret insisted that Jackie start sleeping in the same bed with us again. None of this “He’s a big boy” crap. I knew what she meant and what she felt. I was afraid too.
During the days we just sat around the house. There was no use going out. Such neighbors as we had didn’t know anything. If the government was making any rescue efforts, they weren’t doing it here. Power did not come back on. The phones didn’t work. The sky was filled with strange auroral effects, even in the daytime. Margaret tried to read. Believe it or not, I actually wrote a good scene in my much delayed novel-in-progress. Jackie pretended to do school work.
But there inevitably came a night when Jackie slipped out of bed as if he had to go to the bathroom, and it was maybe as much as an hour later before I was suddenly wide awake, my heart racing, and I realized that he was gone. I got up. I took the flashlight we kept by the bed and searched the house. The back door was unlocked. No further explanation necessary.
Margaret was up by then too, weeping.
I tried to play the hero. I told her I would find our boy and bring him back.
Now a hero has to have a weapon, so I rummaged around until I found a small hatchet we sometimes used for firewood. That would have to do. It was cold that night, almost winter. I put on a winter coat and fisherman’s boots in case I had to do any wading, and, hatchet and flashlight in hand, I sallied forth.
The night was moonless, but brilliant with starlight and the auroras. The stars did ripple, like painted dots on a black cloth caught in a wild wind. The surf pounded. The Boomers, far out at sea, sang.
I made my way northward along the shoreline, the way Caleb had always gone. I knew where I was going. At Dead Man’s Cove the tide was high, and the waves breaking in towers of spray. I had to make my way around the landward side, which must have taken nearly an hour. Then I trudged on and on until I came to an ancient ruin of a house, sagging to one side, as if the wind had nearly blown it over.
I didn’t have any doubt where I was, whose house this was. I pushed the front door open without bothering to knock, and probed inside with the flashlight. If anybody was home, well, that was what the hatchet was for. No one seemed to be.
The first thing I noticed, inside, was the smell. For all the wind whistled through gaps in the walls, the air inside was close and stank of death and decay. When I found my way into what must have been the kitchen, I understood why. There, spread out on the floor, was the remains of a large dog, just skin and scattered bones, like what’s left over when you’ve eaten a bony fish and scraped all the meat out.
And in the living room I found the very similar remains of what was clearly a human being.
Beyond that was a small room off to the side. Here a bare, broken up mattress lay on the muddy, sand-tracked floor. But next to that, nearly folded in a cardboard box, were a couple pairs of cut-off jeans that I certainly recognized, and a tank top, and my old Philadelphia Phillies t-shirt. This had been Caleb’s room. He had definitely lived here. Next to the clothes was another box filled with manga and comic books that Jackie had no doubt given him.
There was no sense searching further. In the living room, near to the flayed man, a dozen or so books, some of them quite old-looking and quite thick, lay piled on a broken table. There were also a few flyers and leaflets. I could make out the words ESOTERIC ORDER with the flashlight. It was only some while later that I returned to the house and took some of those books and read the ones I could. Some were in languages I could not even begin to identify.
I found Caleb waiting for me back at the Cove. He stood waist-deep in the frigid water, naked. Behind him, a fog was coming in. The Boomers or Heralds or whatever they were still sounded, but their light was little more than a soft blur. The surf was quiet. The tide was going out.
I could see that the Caleb had begun to change. I can’t really say how he looked. He was still as skinny and pale as ever, but most of his hair, which had never been very thick start with, was gone. He looked a bit like an old man with bulging eyes, or maybe like some long-limbed, aquatic insect.
He was sobbing. A very human sound. He held my son’s limp body in his arms.
I did not have to ask to realize that Jackie was dead, drowned. He was not naked. He was wearing, absurdly, swimming trunks.
“I’m sorry,” Caleb said. His voice was that polite, little boy’s voice again. “I thought I could take him with me. Only those who change and answer the Call can live. That’s what our deacon says. I thought Jackie could come too.”
He waded slowly forward, as if to hand Jackie’s body over to me. I could see then that Caleb’s fingers had mutated into claws, and there was webbing between them, and the sides of his neck expanded and contracted rhythmically. He had rudimentary gills.
Well I didn’t care if he was sorry or what his deacon had said, and if I’d had a gun I would have shot him right there. Instead I hurled the hatchet into his face with all my strength. Hit him too. I think the blade only glanced off, but it left a big gash on his forehead. There was blood all over his face, rather shockingly (to me at least) bright red. Then he was gone, and these was nothing left to do but haul my son’s body out of the water and take him home and bury him.
* * * *
Not much more to tell. We are living, I have concluded from reading what I could of the books from the old Hutchison place, at the end of days. Other people seem to agree. Once it occurred to me that even if our power was out, it still should be possible for me to turn on the car’s ignition and then use the radio. I searched the dial. I found only one station, on which a certain crazed preacher and wannabe presidential candidate was saying that God had visited his wrath upon us because we had tolerated gay marriage, and Jesus wanted us to kill all the homos. I flicked it off. I certainly didn’t want to spend my last days listening to that asshole. I’d rather come to my own conclusions.
It’s mostly dark now. A darkness has fallen upon the world. I am not sure the sun still rises. My wife Margaret disappeared into the darkness. I heard her screaming, and something like a black trash bag with wings had fastened itself over her face, and after a while she wasn’t screaming anymore, and several more of those things attached themselves to her and carried her off into the air.
I still
haven’t entirely figured Caleb out. Was he really my son’s best friend? Was he as much caught up in the inexorable current of events as the rest of us? I gather from my reading, particularly from a celebrated account of the Great Persecution of 1927, that his kind tend toward a heavy, squat build. So was he some kind of hormonally-deficient freak, a throwback to the more human part of his ancestry, or was he just too young, the Call forcing him through changes he wasn’t ready for?
There are no answers. It doesn’t matter. I cannot hear the Call now myself, but I have dreams of vast cities under the sea, and of an island emerging into gray daylight amid heaving seas, and of vast potency stirring in the darkness of a tomb.
A WIZARD’S DAUGHTER, by Ann K. Schwader
(for Asenath, at last)
A wizard’s daughter is a foredoomed child.
Denied the recognition of her sire
whose vision cannot scry beyond the form
of female, she must magnify her will
while passing for a mirror of his wisdom
solely. Innocent of mother-blood
to all appearances, she mingles blood
with ink, begins her training as the child
of shadows manifest. Forbidden wisdom
comes easiest: the birth-gift of a sire
ensnared by something Other, ageless will
still interwoven with this aged form
of flesh now fading. Failing. Nature forms
the surest remedy, though even blood
is not enough to satisfy him. Will
some fragile wickerwork of woman-child
suffice a mind like his? He’d thought to sire
an heir as reliquary for dark wisdom
worked upon the world. A long life’s wisdom
cannot compress itself so; surely form
corrupts its function. Far too late to sire
another: he must make the most of blood
blighted by strange bargaining. This child
is his alone, last testament & will
bequeathed to no one—yet her infant will
resists. Delivered by a mother’s wisdom
both alien & unsuspected, child
no longer, it assumes its proper form
at last. Begins its thirsting for the blood
of her usurper. Turned aside, her sire
seduced by Otherness (that primal sire
of myth & madness) hesitates. Whose will
is this? What hybrid spirit fills this blood
& flesh he meant as vessel? Lacking wisdom
not found in books, he only sees the form
before him. Never thinks her mother’s child.
Betrayed at first by blood, & now by wisdom
overthrown, the dying sire finds will
prevails in many forms. One was his child.
“…she was Ephraim Waite’s daughter—the child of his old age by an unknown wife who always went veiled.”
—H.P. Lovecraft, “The Thing on the Doorstep”
THE SHADOW OF AZATHOTH IS YOUR GALAXY, by DB Spitzer
Let it be known, that the creator of us all and master of us all is the great and mighty Azathoth.
It is known Azathoth is the most powerful being known, and we now exist in his shadow.
It is known all life as we know it comes from Azathoth, all other great beings are part of Azathoth.
Azathoth is massive, and Azathoth is composed of all existing matter in many dimensions. Azathoth is the space we occupy, and all matter we contact.
Lesser creatures whom live in the 4th or 3rd dimension consider Azathoth’s “shadow” to be their plane of existence. Azathoth spawned, from chaotic fission his first children, massive beings of light and gas. Their children were the first beings of matter, now called “the great old ones”.
Some of Azathoth’s Oldest Spawn became greedy and choose to plunder matter from Azathoth’s shadow. The greater creatures didn’t realize that existing in lesser space would slowly trap them.
Some of the trapped formed armies, some formed religions, some simply hunted, some still sit and think.They spawned civilizations, that in turn did the same, creating a chain reaction of life across Azathoth’s shadow.
The rest of Azathoth’s children still dance and sing within the warm embrace of Azathoth.
We all await the day Azathoth collides with Juk-Shabb, this shall be a brutal meeting.
Azathoth shall absorb Juk-Shabb, creating a new form of existence.
Everything will be new, everything old will be gone.
Everything from matter to knowledge will become obsolete, time and dimension as we know it will become nothing.
ASCEND, by Mark A. Mihalko
As I look upon dominion, the murky depths surround me
The sea of life poisoned by the uninitiated
Virtuous beliefs, now forbidden
The ancient temple crumbles
Darkness and despair abound
The cult leader rises in front of the mass
His followers prostrate to the false idol
Mocking the godliness of the Great Old One
Defiling ageless texts
Alas, the Necronomicon burns.
The echoes stir the seas
Earthquakes touch the mountains; shake Innsmouth
Voices join the chorus of thunder
Lightning dances.
Vocate ad Vetus Ones
ut resurgat
Da nobis absolutio
nos tibi cthulhu
Moloch calls, oh great and righteous one
Rise again and walk among us
The dying embers of life call to you
Your golden sanctuary tainted by the malefactors
I may not be as pious as thou art
My sins sentencing me to an eternity in exile
Yet, my faith in thy greatness never wavers
Protect me from the unrepentant
Free me from the despair
Cthulhu, I call to thee.
The shroud of Wormwood blankets the Heavens
Nemesis protrudes from the depths; Innsmouth burns
The chants illuminate the abyss
Flames purify the righteous.
Ecce coram oriri ones magna pollens
Denique, nostrae salutis adest
Cthuhlu amplectere benedicat ipse pietatis
Per vires, deficiat impiis.
As I stand over oblivion, the infidels beg for absolution
The sea of life sanctified by the blood of the martyrs
Righteous beliefs, now embraced
Prophets bow before the beasts
Idols testify before the throne
Darkness swallowed by the inferno
The golden dawn blinds the malefactors
The Great Old One ascends
The Necronomicon lives again
And, Cthulhu walks among man.
THE SOLACE OF THE FARTHER MOON, by Allan Rozinski
We found a secret haven
on the dark side of the moon—
not on the sunny-side up,
where life is exposed by light
too bright to escape notice.
Best not to linger in the
glaring confusion of the day;
we seek out the
comfort of constant shadows
on the dark half.
On the farther moon, in the
sanctuary of our hidden world,
we can sit atop a mons
in solitude, or descend undisturbed
to the bottom of a tranquil sea.
With only the eyes of distant stars
to watch us, we hope to keep
its secrets as ours alone—
to live here concealed
under the cover of eternal night.
But we are trapped in the orbit
of that baleful blue orb that menaces
our sky; the foul odor of desperation
rises from the very rot of
humanity’s
self-inflicted wounds.
Their planet grows too
small, and waxes most apocalyptic.
We fear for our future then: another
celestial body to be ravaged,
bored through and hollowed
out by alien worms
savaging fruit without defense.
THE STARS ARE ALWAYS RIGHT, by Charles Lovecraft
or, The Evening Not Nice
It seems the stars are always right.
I look out of my window, bright
With constellations of all kind,
But something strikes my deeper mind.
I see a tilting of Time’s dots,
A drawing back of ancient spots,
As if a mighty travesty
Were wheeling here to flex so free.
And I recoil as if a spark
Galvanic, charged from eons’ dark,
Had reached out from the hedging gulfs,
All edging closer like perched wolfs,
And leaned into my lonely room,
A hand of weirdness from the gloom,
That clutches at my throat and heart,
While chills throughout my cold blood dart,
To see the glances of the spheres,
Shift wryly in their churning fears,
Like curtains on a stage of dark,
Which bring the changes that they mark.
The night scapes, bending in their spree,
Freewheeling in weird majesty,
Depart from spheres unknown and black
And reach our eyes in dark attack.
And I stand empty of all grief,
In illimitable relief,
Awaiting on the sounds that come
To blot life out and darkly numb.
The mulling eons and their eyes,
The Third Cthulhu Mythos Megapack Page 19