grotesquerie
richard gavin
ᚷ ᚱ ᛟ
ᛏ ᛖ ᛋ
ᛩ ᚢ ᛖ
ᚱ ᛁ ᛖ
Advance Praise for grotesquerie
“Richard Gavin is an important figure in the contemporary horror/weird fiction field. Influenced by masters such as Blackwood and Ligotti, Gavin is cerebral, yet empathetic. He reconfigures classical tropes to suit his own unique perspective. grotesquerie is a major event.”
— Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase
“grotesquerie contains the latest records of Richard Gavin’s continuing explorations of the intersection between the mundane and the numinous, the earthly and the spectral, the pastoral and the horrific. Drawing on and in dialogue with such writers of the visionary weird as Aickman, Ligotti, and Machen, Gavin’s fictions extend the tradition into bold new territory. Original, idiosyncratic, Richard Gavin is like no one else.”
— John Langan, author of The Fisherman and Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies.
“In grotesquerie, Richard Gavin summons ancient gods and vengeful ghosts. He nods knowingly to the horror/weird fiction greats, but forges a singularly unique vision.”
— Priya Sharma, author of Ormeshadow
“...richly articulated nightmares that will delight horror fans [...] will put readers in mind of both classic weird fiction and the supernatural mysteries of the 1970s.”
— Publishers Weekly
Other Books by Richard Gavin
Fiction Collections
Charnel Wine
Omens
The Darkly Splendid Realm
At Fear’s Altar
Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness
Esotericism
The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis & The
Monstrous Soul
The Moribund Portal: Spectral Resonance and the Numen of the Gallows
As Editor
Penumbrae: An Occult Fiction Anthology (co-edited with Daniel A. Schulke & Patricia Cram)
grotesquerie
© 2020 Richard Gavin
Cover art © 2020 Mike Davis
Cover design © 2020 Vince Haig
Interior design, typesetting, and layout by Courtney Kelly
Interior decoration designed by Alvaro Cabrera | Freepik
Proof-reader: Carolyn Macdonell-Kelly
First Edition All Rights Reserved
TRADE ISBN: 978-1-988964-22-5
LIMITED HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-988964-23-2
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons—living, dead, or undead—is entirely coincidental.
Undertow Publications Pickering, ON Canada
undertowpublications.com
Publication history appears at the back of this book.
Smashwords Edition License Notes
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‘To the everlasting spirit of Rosaleen Norton,
this lot of shadows & masques is offered.’
“If the objects of horror, in which the terrible grotesque finds its materials, were contemplated in their true light, and with the entire energy of the soul, they would cease to be grotesque, and become altogether sublime.”
— John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice (1853)
Contents
Banishments
Fragile Masks
Neithernor
Deep Eden
The Patter of Tiny Feet
The Rasping Absence
Scold’s Bridle: A Cruelty
Crawlspace Oracle
After the Final
The Sullied Pane
Cast Lots
Notes on the Aztec Death Whistle
Headsman’s Trust: A Murder Ballad
Chain of Empathy
Three Knocks on a Buried Door
Ten of Swords: Ruin
Publication History
About the Author
Banishments
The storm had swollen the creek and infused it with sludge. The brothers had come to the bank to take in some of the elements’ power, perhaps even to feel rinsed and purged by these forces. But the sight of the muddied current gushing past caused Will to think that the tired cliché was untrue, for this brackish water did indeed seem thicker than the blood that supposedly bonded him to the man standing beside him.
Mutely they watched the parade of bobbing wreckage; a porch rocker, a bicycle tire, the tattered remnants of a tarp. These and more seemed to be flaunted by the roaring current, like a victor showcasing the spoils of battle; trophies from the homes this hurricane had pummeled.
Will sighed melodramatically; a wordless urging for them to be moving on. The pair stood under a dull sky. Will was secretly counting the seconds until this ritual of contrived grief over the fate of Dylan’s neighbours, most of whom had been strangers to Will since childhood, could be tastefully concluded. He opened his mouth to speak, to remind Dylan that his house had been scarcely grazed by the storm, when they witnessed Death encroaching.
It came shimmying along the bends, using the current as its pallbearer. Under a sky whose grey conveyed a celestial exhaustion, Death swam swiftly.
It came in the form of an oblong box of tarnished iron. A fat padlock in the shape of a spade bounced upon its latch, clunking against the angled side; a lone drumbeat that provided this funeral its dirge. The coffin bobbed, spun in an eddy, then jutted toward the bank behind Dylan’s home. Its motion was so forthright that for an instant Will believed the box was meant to reach them. It quickly became entangled in the low-looming branches and thickets that bearded the muddy bank.
Will watched as his brother charged down the embankment and entered the creek until its rushing waters rimmed his waist. Dylan managed to grip the end of the case just before it drifted out of reach. Dragging it toward him, Dylan nearly lost his footing, the sight of which inspired Will to leap to the water’s edge.
Both of Dylan’s hands were now clutching the oblong box. His movements were unnervingly jerky.
“Heavy!” he shouted. Will reached out to keep his brother righted.
The case struck the bank with a thump, which was soon followed by a faint sucking sound as the clay began to dutifully inter it. Will concluded that it must have been a struggle for the creek to keep this weighty thing afloat.
Dylan stood shivering. His pants sat slick upon his legs and his boots were weighted with frigid water. The brothers took a moment to study their treasure, which was, they discovered, more akin to a basket than a box. It was composed of iron bands, each approximately ten centimetres wide. The bands were woven together as one might do with wicker. The knit was airtight. Not a speck of the interior was visible. Will used the heel of his hand to wipe away some of the moisture from the lid. Two of the bands—one vertical, the other horizontal—felt rougher than the rest. Kneeling, squinting, Will surveyed the engravings.
If they were words, they were in a language of which Will knew nothing. If symbols, Will had neither faith nor imagination enough to decipher them. The markings were crude. Their asymmetry and jagged texture suggested that the engraver was rushed, or possibly enraged. The wedges, gashes, and curlicues formed a decorated cross that stood out from the rest of the iron weave.
Will was suddenly seized by a divergent memory: he hearkened back to Dylan’s and his parochial education. He
envisioned the two of them now as being Pharaoh’s daughters, rescuing a floating ark from its reedy doom.
“Let’s get it inside,” Dylan said, breaking his brother’s reverie. “I’m freezing to death.”
They returned to the house. Will entered first, snapping on the chandelier as a defense against the gloom. The light made the dining room inappropriately cozy. It also illuminated Julie’s letter, which had been left on the walnut table; two tiny islands of white upon a sea of black wood. When Will had first arrived he’d found his younger sibling locked in a toxic fixation with this missive. Dylan had not merely studied it to the point of being able to recite both pages from memory but had begun to autopsy its script in search of hidden truths. Like a cryptographer, he’d started compiling lists that twisted the Dear John note into anagrams, into weird insect-looking hybrids of letters, not unlike the iron basket’s engravings in fact.
Will hurried to the table and swept away the handwritten leaves and the handsome envelope that had held them.
Dylan approached the table.
The foul runoff from the iron case made a brown stippling pattern on the carpet. Dylan grunted as he set down the box.
Will held out his hands dramatically. “What now?”
Dylan, breathing heavily, tapped the heart-shaped padlock and then exited the room. For Will the wait seemed vast. When his brother returned, he came bearing a small tool chest. Silent with focus, Dylan went about unlocking the oblong box.
A squeeze of bolt-cutters made short work of the heart-shaped lock, which fell uselessly to the floor. Will studied this heart, which, despite being made of iron, could evidently be broken as readily as any other.
“Ready?” asked Dylan. Will shrugged. He truly was unsure.
The clasps that held the lid in place made a shrill peeping noise as Dylan peeled them back. He asked for his brother’s assistance in lifting off the lid.
One glimpse of what the box contained caused Will to lose his grip. The lid crashed against the dining table, knocking over one of the high-backed chairs in its descent. Dylan brought a hand to his mouth.
The infant corpse was hideously well preserved. Its flesh, which looked as though it had been doused in powdered azure, still sat plump upon the bones. Its eyes were shut but its mouth was mangled wide, its final mewl trapped silently in time. Naked as the day it was born—if born it had been—the babe’s body glistened under the electric chandelier’s clinical light. Will, who was unable to bring himself to study the thing closely, assumed this sheen was creek water, but he made no effort to confirm this.
The creature’s head was horrible. Will was unsure whether it was supposed to be a canine or a swine. Either way it was misshapen, like a hammer-forged sculpture by an unskilled artist. It also looked like it had been skinned. Its anatomy was terribly apparent.
“Look,” urged Dylan, “come see. This figure. It’s just so…”
“Gruesome?” offered Will.
“…so real…”
He was touching it now, his fingers passing in a reverential pattern over arms, belly, and tortured face. “Feels like it’s made of wax.”
This process ended with a hiss. Will looked at his brother, whose fingers were welling up with blood.
“Its eyes are filled with pins.”
Will’s brow furrowed. He leaned into the coffin. His brother’s blood droplets sat as miniscule gems upon the infant’s livid brow, shimmering like beads of a sanguine rosary. Dylan was correct; what had been inlaid into the waxen eyelids were not lashes but rows of keen pins. The tongue appeared to be some form of curved blade. Will was also able to see the strange studded rows that lined the baby’s wrists, shoulders, waist. They were nails; rugged and angular, the kind an old-world blacksmith might have wrought with hammer and flame. Some of the nails had been welded to the coffin itself. These held the figure in place, bound it. (Though he hadn’t meant to, Will accidentally observed that the infant was sexless.)
“There’s salt in its mouth,” Will added.
Radiating from the casket’s interior was the stench of musty vegetation, the decay one smells just before winter buries autumn’s rot. Shielding his nose, Will stared down at the collection of waterlogged roots, leaves and petals that clung to the bottom of the box. This strange potpourri had formed a bed for the idol of crib death. The underside of several iron bands also bore the same mad engravings as the cross on the lid.
“We should call someone,” suggested Will.
“Like who, the police? There’s been no crime here.”
“Maybe not, but this isn’t right.”
Dylan replaced the iron lid. “We don’t even know what this is. It could be valuable. A work of art, maybe even a relic. I’ll do some online research later.” Dylan lifted the casket with a grunt.
“Where are you taking it?”
“Downstairs. I’m going to towel it off so I can get some clear pictures of those engravings. Somebody has to know what they mean.”
Will stood listening to the clunks and puttering noises coming from the basement. His brother then began to whistle some cheery, improvised tune.
*
For supper Will prepared them pork chops and steamed greens. They ate at the tiny kitchen table, for Will was unable to bear eating where the casket had been.
The only soundtrack to their meal was the sound of their own chewing. Dylan scarcely lifted his gaze from his phone, which sat next to his plate. He scrolled through photo after photo of the infant effigy, of each incised character upon the iron coffin.
“How many pictures of that thing did you take?” Will finally asked, uncapping a fresh beer. He did not take his eyes off his brother as he drank.
Dylan merely shrugged.
“Why don’t you put that thing away so we can talk about what’s really going on?”
The wooden chair creaked as Dylan leaned back. “What’s there to say? Julie left. End of story.”
“There’s a whole lot to say,” replied Will. “For starters, why don’t you tell me how it reached this point? As far as I knew, you and Julie had the perfect marriage. Not to mention a free house with no mortgage to carry.” Will could hear the edge creeping into his voice but did not care. “No kids to take your money or your time, and then two days ago I read this panicky social media post from you telling all your friends that she’s gone. When I phoned, you sounded like a shattered man. You were barely coherent. I tell you I’m coming home to see you, and now you expect me to believe that after just one day you’re fine?”
“I’m getting there.”
“Well that’s something, I suppose.” Will rubbed his chin, sighed. “Can you tell me what happened at least? I mean, not every detail, just what led to Julie walking out?”
Dylan coughed into his fist. “Two days ago, she left me that letter telling me that we’ve drifted apart,” he explained. “She said she didn’t love me anymore, so I called her cell and left a voicemail saying that if that was true I want her to stay away for good. End of story.” Coolly, he then took up his phone. “So it looks like those engravings are a mix of all sorts of different languages; Coptic, Germanic runes, ancient Greek.”
Though he didn’t fancy talking about their grotesque find, Will resigned himself to the fact that the topic of conversation had irretrievably shifted. “Did you find out what any of them mean?” he asked. He was given a simple ‘yes’ as an answer but received no elaboration. After a few frustrating moments had passed Will rose and hastily collected the plates.
Later in the evening he went down to their father’s old workroom, where the casket sat upon the antiquated workbench. Dylan had already settled onto a wooden stool and had resumed his study of the etchings, referencing them against various websites on his phone.
“Where do you suppose it came from?” Dylan’s tone was so wistful it rendered his question rhetorical. “Upstream obviously, but from where?”
“What, are you planning on returning it somehow?”
“I wa
nt to see if there’s more. I want to know.”
“Know what? Dylan, you’d better start giving me some straight answers. I came all the way back here to help you, so the least you can do is be honest with me.”
Unable to bear being ignored, Will retreated upstairs in a manner both childish and melodramatic. Storming off to the bedroom he’d occupied until he left home at sixteen felt surreal, but surreal in an ugly, off-putting way, as though he was willingly stepping back into the very cell from which he’d managed to escape years earlier. The original wardens might have perished, but the prison was still being maintained by the heir apparent.
He stood listening to a house that had grown too still. Stepping into the hall, he found it vacant and dim. Descending the stairs, Will’s nose was affronted by the scent of smoke.
“Dylan?” he called. When no reply came, Will hurried to the basement, where the smoke was thickest and its fragrance was chokingly strong. His eyes stinging, he made his way to the workbench, where faint embers spat upwards like tiny fireflies.
The floor suddenly went unstable beneath him. Will was hurled forward. Peering through the billowing plumes, he could just discern the dozens of woodscrews that carpeted the concrete and had tripped him up. Turning his gaze to the workbench, he saw the last of the embers fluttering down in grey husks to the open Mason jar that sat half-filled with the black remnants of burned paper. The jar was one of dozens their late father had used to store screws, nuts, bolts. This one had been set atop the casket.
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