by S. T. Joshi
5
MIDNIGHT.
Anastasia was collapsed in the high-backed chair, dozing, the empty glass of Sambuca cradled in her hand. Vanderbulle looked at her, the lights of Dubai illuminating the scene.
“The time has arrived,” he whispered. At that moment, a gong resonated throughout the cavernous dining room, startling her awake.
“Jesus! I-I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?” she asked, wiping her eyes in confusion.
“The time is nigh! Welcome to this year’s Festival!”
Vanderbulle stood, offering his hand to her. She took it and they stepped down from the platform near the window.
As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she could see that there was a group of about fifteen people standing around a large table that was simply adorned with plates, flatware, lighted candles, and a white tablecloth. The weak flicker of candlelight was the sole illumination in the room; she could just make out that everyone around the table were dressed in dark hooded robes.
“Wow,” she said, pulling closer to Vanderbulle. “This is sort of creepy.”
He chuckled softly. “You’ll understand everything better in a few moments. Please stand here next to me while I recite the invocation.” They took a place at the head of the table.
“Welcome,” he began, “to the Festival. I would like to present an unforgettable evening of debauchery, of revelations, of mania and degeneracy. Remember our axiom: ‘You change the world, do not let the world change you.’ Thank you all for coming. Let us begin. Om, please?”
With that, Om—the concierge staff member from the helipad—appeared from the darkness in the rear of the room, which had taken on the ominous aspect of a mausoleum rather than a restaurant in the world’s most expensive hotel. In his hands was a serving tray holding a platter covered with a domed, silver lid. He placed the tray on the table in front of Vanderbulle and Anastasia.
“As the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw sagely observed, ‘There is no sincerer love than the love of food.’ To that end, the Burj al-Arab is most humbled and pleased to present Chef Damon’s newest Festival masterwork, which he calls Oscurità Vivente. He bids you enjoy.”
Om raised his hands high and loudly clapped three times. Everyone in robes unsashed and let them fall to the floor, their naked bodies lit by the flickering candles. Starting with Om, the group of men and women began to emit a low sound, a humming tone that rose in volume.
“Now, it is your turn,” Om prompted with a graceful flourish of his hand.
Anastasia felt faint. “I-I don’t know—”
Vanderbulle removed his jacket, unknotted his tie, and untucked his shirt. “But you must, Anastasia. It’s part of the Festival.” He pulled his shirt off, stepped out of his shoes, then out of his pants. She was surprised to see his throbbing erection and closed her eyes for an instant, trying to process what was happening.
She opened her eyes, and the tuneless humming grew louder. “I-I’m not feeling well. I think I’ll just go back to our room . . .”
“Om, please assist the young lady,” Vanderbulle said, his eyes steely.
“My pleasure, sir.” Om reached over and tore her dress off in a violent motion, and she was completely naked along with the others. Too startled to protest or cry, she just stood there in shock.
“Before we begin, let us feast to be in the proper mood,” Vanderbulle said, and the humming stopped. Everyone sat down in unison.
“Bon appétit,” Om said, removing the cover from the dish. He then bowed, saying nothing further. The little man turned, placed the dome on a cart behind him, and trundled from the room.
Illumined by the candles, Anastasia was disgusted to see the thing on the platter was still alive, apparently. The size of a large turkey, it looked to be a type of animal—or part of one, at least. The covering was a mucoid paste of transparent slime, beneath which was an oily black hide, iridescent and emitting a soft green and purple glow. Embedded in the skin in random places were what looked to be dark red eyes with slitted pupils, which searched back and forth in the dim light of the room. On one end, it appeared to have a grouping of pointed dentition that recurved inward to a dark hole; the other end was drier and had a puckered, scabby appearance, as though it had been severed from a larger organism and then cauterized.
“Have you actually read any Lovecraft, Anastasia?” Vanderbulle asked.
She shook her head slowly, her eyes fixed on the thing pulsing on the platter. “N-no. I refuse to because of his horrible views. As an aspiring writer, I want no undue influence on my own work, especially my weird fiction.”
Vanderbulle smiled, nodding in reply. “I see. Well, in his great masterpiece, At the Mountains of Madness, Lovecraft mentions a race of beings that serve the Elder Things. He called them shoggoths. The Elder Things and the shoggoths are aliens that possess both animal and vegetable aspects, and—in the case of shoggoths—are mutable, capable of regeneration, and prolonged periods of deep, deep hibernation when exposed to sub-zero temperatures.”
She nodded as she listened, watching the noisy creature on the platter as it writhed and reshaped, becoming more active as he spoke. It began to huff audibly, propelling slime from the mouth end of itself.
“Well, good old HPL didn’t know about the true wilderness of Antarctica; he was doing the best he could with the limited knowledge he had at his disposal, after all. How could he have known that there really were creatures similar to what he imagined underneath the ancient ice sheets of the frozen South? In fact, there is a huge chain of mountains, even a massive lake, buried deep under the ice—the abiding ice. And, within that ice, as global warming has increased, things have risen to the surface.” He motioned to the platter. “Now this isn’t a shoggoth—those are from Mr. Lovecraft’s imagination, of course—but it is something otherworldly. I procured it from a Russian research facility several years ago. They need money, and I have a lot of it, so it all worked out. No, what we have here is a part of something—the rest is still languishing in a dreamless sleep in the underground freezer beneath the hotel.”
The thing on the table emitted a shrill, multi-timbred call.
“Ah, yes. Old Screech, as I call it! That’s the sound,” Vanderbulle noted. “To summarize: my scientist friends have declared whatever this is to be of extraterrestrial origin. In fact, the U.S. government has repeatedly issued threats for me to turn the beast over, which I have refused. I want to keep it my little Top Secret for just a while longer—just until I have consolidated a bit more power. And that is the purpose of the Festival: to gain wisdom, to grow my power.”
Vanderbulle stood, then picked up a knife from his place setting. He looked at her, cupping her chin in his hand. “I learned by experimenting that partaking of it—flesh of its flesh, as it were—engenders great wisdom, tremendous insight. Eating it creates a powerful, long-lasting sexual and hallucinatory effect on humans, and this is the source of my success—the realism in my books has been earned. I’ve earned it through my consumption of the great beast. And, as in life, the dose makes the poison—some will pass on into another form from taking too much, and others of us will attain ever more cumulative power. But I control who gets how much, you see? So, in other words, I control the world—and I will not be yielding that power anytime soon.”
His lips turned up in a mirthless grin, his dead eyes reflecting the glowing candlelight. “And you, my dear Anastasia, are part of my plans this year.” With that, he plunged the blade into the thing on the table, which responded by jetting a luminous blue-green liquid onto his naked chest.
The rest of the group descended on the being, which fought with superhuman strength, tearing flesh, biting off appendages. A few of the participants fell by the table, dead from the fight, while others cut away and tore off chunks of the mewling creature, eagerly consuming them. The glowing blood of the beast showered the room like some Luminol-enhanced crime scene.
“And now, you . . .” Vanderbulle, covered in human and in
human gore, said to her. As she protested and cried in revulsion, he presented a quivering, squirming tatter of the thing’s torn flesh in his fist and forced her to eat it, making sure she swallowed it completely.
A lustful, mad orgy ensued, the ultimate exhaustion of the revelers marking the Festival’s climax.
6
THE WOMAN’S NAKED BODY LAY EXPOSED IN THE desert for a long time: undiscovered by man, unperturbed by beast. She had the marks upon her body, upon her sleeping consciousness, and nothing would dare disturb her.
During the following months—as the sun and the stars traded places, and the ceaseless transit of the planets continued overhead—she quickly became desiccated, mummified by the uncaring heat and dryness of the desert. She had once been nothing and was now transmogrified again into a state of the same: all her yearnings, all her memories, all her knowledge had died with her on this barren plateau, and the things she may or may not have learned in the final moments of her existence mattered not, and never would again.
Then, one day, when the rains returned, she swelled, reawakening into a new life, with a concomitant renewal of purpose: to serve, to satisfy. She had reached a state of supplication and had no desire to engage with her former self. Around her, others emerged from the sand dunes, stripped and branded in the same manner. They too had reached a point of satiety, and there was no longer a place for them in the living realm, in the world known as modern society. They were legion and destined now to serve only one—the man who would soon call them together; the man who would gather them from his station within the great structure in the sea; the man who had shown them the truth. Until then, they would position themselves and wait, no matter how long that might be.
Slouching toward Dubai, her afterlife—like the others before and ones destined to be—began as it had ended: blank, mindless, obscure.
Provenance Unknown
STEPHEN WOODWORTH
Stephen Woodworth is the author of the New York Times bestselling Violet series of paranormal thrillers, including Through Violet Eyes, With Red Hands, In Golden Blood, and From Black Rooms (Random House). His short fiction has appeared in such publications as Black Wings 4 and 5, Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Year’s Best Fantasy, and Midian Unmade. His new novel, Fraulein Frankenstein, has just been published as a Kindle edition.
ERIN VANCE SAUNTERED INTO THE DARKENED warehouse in her red Dolce & Gabbana pantsuit, perfectly aware she was overdressed. When dealing with sharks like Aram, she strove to intimidate them as much as possible, never letting them forget she was the buyer.
A bald goon met her at the front door. His suit clung so close to the bodybuilder bulge of his chest that it outlined the lump of what was undoubtedly a concealed gun on his left side. He conducted her down an aisle between shelves of imports that walled them in on either side: contraband ivory carvings from Asia, looted antiquities from Iraq and Syria, “Old Master” paintings that were either stolen or forged or both. Erin did not sully her hands with such stuff—Christie’s and Sotheby’s wouldn’t touch it, and you could only fetch a fraction of its real worth on the black market. She was after the big game, the true treasure that would draw legit collectors with deep pockets.
If Aram actually had the item he’d promised—and the documentation to back it up—she might have a sale that could literally make history.
The thug ushered Erin into Aram’s office, and the small Armenian practically leapt from his desk to greet her.
“Erin! How lovely to see you again.” Natty as always in his three-piece suit, Aram rose on tiptoes to kiss her on both cheeks. “Is it my imagination or have you grown even more beautiful?”
She tolerated his embrace and smiled as if they were actually flirting. “Careful what you say! I might start to believe you.”
Her gaze strayed past him to an object on his desk about two feet tall and one foot in diameter, sheeted with a cloth of burgundy satin. The thug discreetly bowed out of the office and shut the door.
“Can I get you anything?” Aram asked, fussing over her like a maître d’ at the Ritz. “A plate of madeleines and coffee? Armenian coffee—better than Turkish!”
Erin hid her impatience. “Thanks, but I just had lunch. And I’m really excited to see the Object. What a find!”
“Of course! Of course! Wait until you see.” He motioned for her to take the chair he had carefully positioned in front of the desk.
She sat and crossed her legs, her hands steepled in front of her mouth in a pose of skeptical anticipation. With a triumphant smirk, Aram whisked the cloth off the hidden shape on the desk with the flair of a magician unveiling his greatest illusion.
It violated every bargaining strategy Erin had ever learned to betray even the slightest interest, much less amazement. Despite this, she uncrossed her legs and shifted forward, mouth open.
Roughly pyramidal in form, the thing on Aram’s desk might easily have been mistaken for a lump of slag from a foundry scrap heap. Its left side was uneven and angular, its lumpy black surface stained reddish-brown in places as if rusted. The right face looked as if had once been the same, but a wedge appeared to have been either broken off or chiseled away.
Curled like an embryo inside the exposed cavity, a far more defined form nestled within the iron shell. The figure, which would probably have stood about eighteen inches high if fully revealed, resembled some distorted crustacean. A segmented carapace akin to that of a trilobite curved up to an oversized, U-shaped head with pincer-like mandibles. Pairs of articulated legs folded fetal claws in toward its hidden underbelly. Unlike the dull, coarse surface of the material that encrusted it, the figure gleamed like polished black tourmaline. With only the left profile visible, the dome of one enormous insectile eye peered out with lidless vigilance.
It’s real, Erin thought immediately. An intense agitation like stage fright—half ecstasy, half dread—seized her, a lapse of volition that left her paralyzed and speechless.
She’d had gut feelings before about whether the items she appraised were bona fide or not, and they nearly always proved correct, but she’d never felt any as strong as this. Then again, she’d never been in the presence of a rarity like the legendary Aldon-Bennington Object. It was like viewing the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail.
“Ah!” Aram smirked. “I knew you would be impressed.”
His gloating snapped her out of her stupor, and she silently cursed herself. Her dumbstruck reaction alone had probably doubled his asking price. Now she would have to put him on the defensive, reclaim her advantage.
“It’s a remarkable piece,” she conceded coolly, “but what about the provenance?”
Provenance. It’s what separated the worthless from the priceless—the intangible value imbued in an item by its extraordinary history. A splinter of wood by itself would be garbage, but if you proved that splinter came from the True Cross that crucified Jesus Christ or the stake that roasted Joan of Arc, it became a relic worthy of worship. Even an empty Coke can might fetch a small fortune if you verified that it had once touched the lips of Elvis Presley.
“The auction houses will want documentation,” Erin said. “Without it, they’ll dismiss the Object as a fraud, albeit an impressive one.”
Aram grinned like a poker player who holds the winning hand everyone thinks is a bluff. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a cardboard file box, which he pushed across the desktop toward Erin. “You will find it all there: bills of sale, photographs, estate inventories. The whole history of the Object, from the South Pole to your doorstep. And I will only charge you another two hundred thousand for it.”
Erin stood and levered open the lid of the box to peek inside. On top of a stack of manila folders, she saw a handful of sepia-toned cardboard prints of parka-clad explorers silhouetted against the white expanse of a frozen waste. “And how much for the Object itself?”
“A million.”
Erin choked out a laugh. “No meteorite has ev
er gone for that much!”
“No meteorite is like this.” Aram reclined in his office chair, fat gold rings on his fat folded fingers. “When the news gets out, you’ll make ten times that.”
He was probably right. The Aldon-Bennington Object could probably garner twice what he was asking for it on the basis of its bizarre history alone. If the figure inside turned out to be the fossilized remains of some extraterrestrial life form, as rumor-mongers had speculated, governments around the world would bid millions to give their scientists first crack at studying it. However, if the creature were actually a sculpture crafted by an alien intelligence billions of years before the dawn of humans . . . the amount acquirers would be willing to pay could literally be astronomical.
Slow down, girl. Don’t count your aliens before they hatch.
“To get my client to pony up that kind of money, I’m going to have to vet the item personally.” She never mentioned Micah by name; she didn’t want to take a chance on Aram trying to contact her buyer directly and cut her out of the deal. Hitching her purse onto her shoulder, Erin stood and reached for the box of files on the desk. “May I borrow these and get back to you?”
Aram’s eyes flicked to the Object, and for the first time he seemed nervous—worried, even. “For you, I have turned down many buyers, Erin,” he replied, suddenly huffy. “Many! To them, I say, ‘No, no, no!’ But I cannot wait. If you will not make an offer, I go back to them.”
Chill, girl. He’s desperate to close.
“I’m sorry. I can’t commit without authenticating the merchandise.” Erin pivoted as if to leave.
Aram jumped from his chair. “Nine hundred thousand if you take today! And I throw in the documents.”
His eagerness to cut the price had red flags waving in Erin’s head. Maybe the piece was a forgery after all. Aram had never palmed off phony merchandise on her before, however, so she paused. “Let me review the provenance. If it holds up, you’ve got a deal.”