Macula and Damis retreated back.
It spied the bodies of Bibaculus and his woman first, and fell upon them, shining brightly as it drew them almost inside out in its violent mastication.
Macula watched the bulk of the thing swell again. It filled the room. When it straightened, its head would burst through the ceiling.
“It will grow larger with every victim,” Damis stammered.
Macula looked at the puny dagger in his hand and scowled. He grabbed Damis by the arm and they ran out the front door.
There was a great crackling behind them as, true to his prediction, the roof burst apart and the shining red monstrosity reared up out of it, pushing aside the walls with a shrug of its writhing shoulders.
Gods, there could be no stopping such a thing.
“It will destroy Baiae and then rampage through Rome herself,” he murmured, feeling his reason slip precariously.
The thing turned toward the closest villa, and Macula heard the goats in their pens bleating in terror. But it did not advance. Instead it turned toward the bay below and began to tread down the hill, each step shaking the earth.
“Why didn’t it go after that house?” Macula demanded.
“It was born in darkness,” Damis said, twiddling his fingers as he did when his mind was working. “And it is but a child. It is very near dawn. It may be that it will seek darkness, incubate until the night comes again.”
“It’s making for the bay,” Macula observed.
“If it reaches the bottom, we won’t be able to prevent it from rising again. And when it rises it will be renewed. Nothing will stop it,” Damis said.
“How can we stop it now?”
Damis snatched Macula by the wrist and held up the pugio to the light. He grabbed the circular pommel with its star design, and twisted it, unscrewing it from the handle.
“What are you doing?”
“The handle of this dagger is a cylinder seal. Its markings may not kill it, but it can create a barrier it will not cross.” He looked Macula in the eyes. “And the shore of the bay down there is clay.”
Macula spun the handle of the dagger, watching the intricate carvings of circled stars, flaming eyes, branches and letters, all whirling and dancing as if animate.
“Trap it in an unbroken circle, Macula,” Damis said.
Macula ran down the hillside for all he was worth. In his youth he had competed in the marathon, and later served as a foot messenger in the legion. But years of promotions and a dying barbarian’s axe had stiffened his legs. They were aflame as he scurried like a mouse alongside the slow-moving giant, and he was nearly snatched up by one of its groping tentacles. A tumble turned into a roll, and he crashed down the hill, smashing into rocks and through bushes, finally coming to a stop in the cool dark mud of the clay beach.
His flesh bore dozens of streaming cuts, and his heart beat on his chest as if to escape, but he had held onto the pugio, and sat up painfully as the colossal thing that had been Calidas bore down, blotting out the moon.
He stumbled to the edge of the lapping waves and pressed the handle of the dagger into the clay. Holding the end and the blade, he began to quickly roll it in a long line. In the darkness he could hardly see the long imprint it made as it rolled, but he pressed hard, praying it would be unbroken.
The shambling monster planted its heavy foot onto the beach, then the other. It strode toward the dark water.
Macula kept scooting along the edge, now backpedaling, to begin the circle. His hunched back burned now, and his calves quivered like taut bowstrings.
It advanced to the water’s edge and stopped.
Macula redoubled his efforts, hobbling behind the thing now as it snuffled the air questioningly. Its many tendrils reached out, unsure, detecting an unseen barrier. If it turned to its left, it would sense the way was unobstructed and plunge into the bay.
It turned right, feeling along Macula’s path, turning in place, even as he scampered like a crafty rat along its side.
When he came to close the circle, he could not find his original marks in the darkness.
Above him, Icthyacchilus gave a tremendous huff. It had spotted him down there, and it fell to its unseen haunches, limbs and tentacles all reaching down for him.
The hidden moon shone now like a crown, and its light fell full upon the beach.
Macula spied the meticulous line of markings three steps to his left, and rolled the pugio furiously toward them, completing the design as it filled his vision. The reaching mass rebounded inches from him, as though it had collided with an invisible screen.
It tested the limits of its prison, shoving back and forth, but even the ends of its many tendrils could not pass over the seal.
Macula sat on the beach and stared up at it as the sky blued. Iccthyacchilus seemed resigned to its fate then, and regarded Macula with its looming eye. That bulging orb seemed like a soothsayer’s bauble. It expanded and grew concave, as the dawning light played upon it and the skin all around began to trickle and run like heated wax.
But in the eye lay swirling pictures that tugged something in Macula. It showed him the many sins of his life, the slaughtering fields through which he had waded, the infants wailing at dead mothers’ breasts, the men pleading for clemency in foreign tongues as their mouths flooded with blood, the women and girls ruined by his lust, like Aelia, the potter’s daughter whose father had thrown her to her death on the tiles below their balcony when he’d heard of their indiscretion.
These and a thousand other misdeeds weighed like a necklace of millstones about his shoulders, and the blackness within those oily eyes seemed peaceful, welcoming. These were the lightless seas of Elysium, where floated the Isles of the Blessed, over which hung ancient, hungry stars unnumbered by man.
He felt a hand close around his arm and shrugged it off. Then something cold and metal pressed into his hand, and his fingers closed, and the eyes were merely the eyes of a melting monster again.
His sandal was poised to blot out the seal in the clay.
He stepped back.
Damis stood with him.
“You dropped the pugio,” he said. “I thought perhaps….”
“You thought right, old man,” Macula said. “Thank you.”
They waited until the black eyes of Iccthyacchilus were two mounds of agate floating in a murky red puddle of slime.
Then, as the sun rose, they sank within and dissipated, the whole reeking mess seeping into the ground within the circle.
Magnum Innominandum
by Penelope Love
“As for the dream itself…My name appeared to be Lucius Caelius Rufus.”
—H.P Lovecraft, letter to Bernard Austin Dwyer
“Tibi, magnum Innominandum, signa stellarum nigrarum et bufoniformis Sadoquae sigillum.”
— H.P. Lovecraft, letter to Robert Bloch
Helvia was in her cozy nook in the foyer, mulling over her dinner plans, while Thallus, an elderly Greek slave with a grey fringe of beard, translated aloud from some old scrolls. The morning salutio had come and gone. Lucretius had been admired, dandled and returned to his nursemaid for a nap. Uncle Marius was snoozing over On the Nature of Things in his study.
The sound of frantic knocking broke into the tranquility of the house. Thallus left to speak to the guards at the front door.
Helvia patiently awaited his return. She was tall and calm, with long, sloe-black eyes. Her hair was coiled in an elaborate head-dress. She was a widow. Little Lucretius was born five months after her husband left on a trading voyage, and she learned of her husband’s death a year after he died in some wretched Iberian backwater. Widowhood suited her. She had money and independence. She managed her husband’s affairs in the name of her little boy, saw off the suitors that Uncle Marius tried to introduce, and resisted all efforts to send her to raise her son in the peaceful rusticity of the family estate at Tusculum. Uncle Marius was a mild old man, guardian in name only. If he was ever offended or upset by her
ways she bought him a new book.
Despite marriage, childbirth, and a fondness for dinner parties, Helvia maintained her supple figure by religiously following the regime laid out in Galen’s On Exercise with a Small Ball at the women’s gymnasium. She worshipped at Galen’s altar and wasted no opportunity to practice her medical learning.
Thallus returned, flustered. “Domina,” he started, as a young woman burst in and threw herself, weeping, at Helvia’s feet.
Uncle Marius was woken by the noise. He poked his bald head around the entrance, saw it was women’s business, and withdrew.
“Carvillia!” Helvia exclaimed, recognizing the girl’s pretty, delicate features, swollen and distorted by tears. She was flattered that Carvillia came to her in her hour of need but then, she complacently reflected, ever since she had become a devotee of the Good Goddess the local girls had sought her advice. She embraced her. “Oh my dear, what’s wrong?”
“My father is dead,” Carvillia wept.
“My condolences,” Helvia said, taken aback. “Why, only yesterday you told me he was in fine health.”
“He was. I do wish you could find out why,” Carvillia begged.
“I, a mere woman? I couldn’t,” Helvia was thrilled by this gesture of respect.
“Please help! This was no normal death.”
“Good Goddess! What do you mean?” Helvia remembered that Old Scipio Carvillius had a wicked temper. He had taken his rivals to the courts and cleaned them out. So many lawsuits, so many enemies as the old adage had it.
“He came down to breakfast this morning in a bad temper, so we all avoided him. He ate alone,” Carvillia said. “I heard him cry out but by the time I arrived—he was dead.”
“My dear, what makes you think it was foul play?” Helvia asked.
“His face,” Carvillia whispered.
Helvia rose. It would do no harm to have a look at the corpse, she decided, if only to set Carvillia’s mind at rest. She bid Carvillia farewell, and told her she would be with her shortly. She sent Thallus to fetch his medicine bag. She paused only to look in on her son before she left the house. His bedroom was on the other side of the garden, a paved courtyard with potted fig and date trees. In the center of the garden a cool fountain played.
As she walked across the garden she noticed with irritation that the nursemaid was not at her post at Lucretius’ door. Gossiping in the kitchens again! She stepped into the bedroom. To her utter consternation a small dark-haired, dirty, half-naked man wearing a slave collar leaned over her son’s crib.
She stepped forwards, grabbed the back of the collar and hauled. The slave choked and sprawled, rapping his head on the tiles. Helvia stepped over him to Lucretius, who was sleeping soundly, unmarked and unharmed. She stroked her sleeping son, marveling at his downy dumpling cheek. She turned back in time to see the slave bolt across the garden and dive into the kitchen.
Felix, the head of the household slaves, appeared in the kitchen entrance. He was a big, burly man, naked to the waist.
“I am not pleased,” Helvia stated.
Felix dropped to his knees, bowed his head and spread his arms. “A thousand apologies, Domina, Iberius shall be flogged.” The name told Helvia the slave came from Iberia.
“Whip the nursemaid as well. Now order my litter. I am going out,” she said.
A litter ride through the busy streets of the Esquiline Hill brought Helvia to Carvillia’s house. The blank façade had no windows facing onto the street and the front door was locked and guarded.
The guards opened the door and Carvillia rushed forward to greet her. Helvia noted, with disapproval, the dirty floor where people had been tramping in and out with the corpse. Carvillia ushered her into the family dining room. The room was shabby and old fashioned, not the grand dining room where Old Carvillius entertained his patrons. The couches and table were good quality but they had been broken and repaired several times.
“You’re sure he was alone?’ she said to Carvillia.
“Certain. He was in a bad temper,” Carvillia said, simply. Helvia understood. The broken furniture spoke for itself. None of his household wanted to be near the paterfamilias when he was in a foul mood or he would break a chair over their heads.
Old Carvillius’ body had been removed to his bed but the meal was left untouched; bread, figs and wine. Thallus sniffed the food, and rolled pieces between his fingers to check for discoloration. He carefully ate a small piece of fig, a crumb of bread and took a sip of wine. “No poison,” he said.
“The only fig that needs be poisoned is the one he ate,” Helvia reflected. She was startled by movement behind her. A blonde-haired, blue-eyed slave woman lay on a fringed shawl near the door.
“What is that?” she said to Carvillia.
Carvillia gazed vaguely in the direction of the corner. “Servia,” she said.
Servia meant Slave. No-one had bothered to even give the woman a name.
“You said no-one was here,” Helvia pointed out.
Carvillia grew even more vague. “Oh but that is just Servia,” she said.
“Come here,” Helvia ordered.
Servia crawled towards Helvia using her elbows to propel herself forward. She wound her shawl around her elbows to protect them. The fringe of the shawl left a pattern of pock-marks in the dirt on the floor.
Thallus knelt by the creeping slave. He pulled up her shawl. Thick scars stood out in ridges across her spine. “She is paralyzed from the waist down.”
Carvillia excused herself to write letters. Helvia had clearly embarrassed her hostess by talking of old broken belongings.
Helvia stepped into the master’s bedroom to view the body. Thallus smothered a shriek. Helvia had steady nerves but she took one look then stepped back, clapping her hand to her nose. The room stank. The old man lay contorted on his bed, his face distorted, his eyes glaring. Bloody foam disfigured his lips.
Thallus crept forwards at Helvia’s gesture. He tasted the foam and spat it out at once. “Bitter.” Then he drew aside the toga to check the chest. He screamed again at what he saw. The old man’s skin was swollen tight and shiny, mottled black and green, in diamond shapes. Bloody broken skin oozed between the mottled diamonds, so they stood out like the scales of a snake.
“Carvillia was right, by the Good Goddess. This is no natural death,” Helvia said, excitement overcoming her respect for the dead.
Her next stop was the kitchens to talk to the household slaves. “You are sure there was no-one in the room when your master died?”
“Sure.”
“No-one?”
“No-one.”
“What about Servia?”
“Oh. But she is always there.” Once the slaves grasped Helvia’s insistence in regarding Servia as something other than a permanent fixture of the dining room, along with the couches and tables, they were more forthcoming. The Dominus had won Servia as part of a settlement of a lawsuit well over fifteen years ago when she was a young and valuable slave girl. He prized her as evidence of his victory over his rivals. He always kept Servia near him, and she suffered the worst of his rages. Ten years ago he broke a table over her back and crippled her, but that made no difference to his liking for her. Of course Servia would have been in the room when the Dominus ate breakfast, along with all the other old and broken furniture.
Helvia returned to the dining room and knelt by Servia. “Did you see anything strange this morning?” she asked.
Servia’s blue eyes glittered. “I saw nothing.”
Helvia rose. Had she imagined it, or had there been a glint of malicious triumph in Servia’s eyes? She studied the slave, thoughtfully. She was clean. She was able to move enough to wash herself. Helvia retraced her steps through the house to the garden, shamefacedly looking for the slave’s latrine. She found it in the damp nook off the garden. Nearby she saw the dimpled marks of Servia’s shawl in the mud.
Helvia spoke reassuringly to Carvillia and departed. Once home, she retired to her coz
y nook in the foyer and considered what to do next. The house was locked and guarded. There was no way for an assassin to get in. Only a member of the household could have poisoned Old Carvillius. Servia had the opportunity and the motive: fifteen years of savage treatment. But how could a cripple crawl from the house to buy an exotic poison, and why would the master of the house wait patiently while she crept over to poison him?
Should she consult with the city magistrate? She could not bring the case directly to him, unless she involved Uncle Marius, but she could bring the matter to the attention of the magistrate’s wife, the chief priestess of the Good Goddess. She was uneasy that she had no proof. If a slave was found guilty of killing their master then all the slaves of the household were put to death. She had to consider the matter carefully before she involved the authorities.
Thallus broke into her meditations to tell her that Iberius had a broken leg. Helvia descended on the kitchen. “Was this necessary?” she snapped at Felix. Iberius’ back was a sodden mass of bruises and his shin was snapped.
“He tried to escape,” Felix growled, unrepentant.
“Never mind, I’ve always wanted to try my hand at a splint. Thallus, I want half his back covered in a poultice of cobwebs, the other half in dried boar’s dung. We’ll see which works best.”
Felix held Iberius down as she fixed the splint. “Watch out, Domina, he bites,” he said.
The splint was crooked and Iberius would walk with a limp if the limb set, but all in all she was satisfied with it as a first attempt. Iberius spat a string of threatening gibberish as she stood back to allow Thallus to lay on the poultices.
“What is he saying?” she asked.
“We don’t know, Domina,” Felix said. “It’s not Latin or Greek. We even asked an Iberian over the way to interpret and he couldn’t understand a word.”
“Now Felix, I have checked my books and I find that I have not bought an Iberian slave,” she said, pleasantly.
Felix flushed. “I was offered Iberius cheap. It was too good an opportunity to refuse,” he said.
“I was not aware that Titus dealt in such inferior stock,” she said.
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