Lovecraft Country

by Matt Ruff

  The path curved sharply and Horace saw streetlights up ahead. He’d looped back around to South Park Way. Thoughts of home, where his father and perhaps even his mother would be waiting by now, filled him briefly with hope.

  But another figure loomed in the path: a white policeman. Not a captain or a detective, but a uniformed beat cop, his beady eyes fixed on Horace running towards him. “Hey, champ,” the policeman said. “Where are you going so fast?”

  Not real, Horace thought, and kept running. But the policeman stuck out a foot and sent Horace sprawling.

  “I said, where’s the fire?” The policeman stood over him as he lay gasping on the path. “Where you running from, huh? What did you do?”

  Horace flopped onto his side. He saw the devil doll, standing in a circle of lamplight back at the bend in the path. He tried to point, but the policeman grabbed him roughly under the arms, lifting him up and slamming him back against a tree. “What are you running from?” the policeman demanded. Horace, unable even to wheeze, now, raised his arm and gestured feebly, thinking, Look, look, look . . . But the policeman went on asking the same question, getting more and more angry.

  The doll tilted its head to one side, and Horace saw the policeman tilt his head to one side. The doll lowered a hand to grip the shrunken head dangling from its skirt; the policeman dropped a hand to his belt and unsnapped his gun holster. Then Horace’s full attention was on the policeman as he drew his revolver and cocked it.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” the policeman said. “What did you do?”

  Horace’s mouth opened and closed, uselessly.

  The muzzle of the revolver became the center of the world.

  Then the scene seemed to telescope, as an invisible cable attached to the policeman’s back yanked him into the air and sent him flying into the trees on the far side of the path. Horace slid to the ground. He still couldn’t breathe, and he wondered, a blackness darker than night boiling across his vision, whether he’d been shot after all, if this was what that felt like.

  A warm hand pressed against the center of his chest and his lungs unclenched. He jerked upright, drawing in air in a ragged gasp. Another white man was crouched beside him, a young man in a suit.

  “Easy,” the man said. “Easy, now . . . Sorry to put you through this, but I needed to lure it out into the open.” Shifting his hand slightly, he patted the cigarettes in Horace’s coat pocket. “Hang on to these for me.”

  He stood up, leaving Horace at the base of the tree still sucking in fresh oxygen, and turned towards the devil doll, which had come down the path and now stood less than a dozen feet away. The doll had its arms up and was waving its medicine stick menacingly, but the white man seemed more amused than threatened. He bent down and picked up the doll by its braids and held it suspended in the air with its legs kicking.

  “Fascinating,” Caleb Braithwhite said, and then gripping the devil doll with both hands, he ripped off its head.

  Once again, Horace was made to hold still while a white man massaged his scalp. At least he was in more pleasant surroundings this time: at home, in the kitchen, with his dad sitting at the table beside him and his mom standing by the sink with her arms crossed.

  Caleb Braithwhite finished his examination and sat back. “It’s a mark, all right. Surprisingly high level of artistry, too.”

  Horace’s mother didn’t care about the level of artistry. “Someone put a mark on our son’s head?”

  Braithwhite nodded. “There’s a branch of the art that deals with bringing inanimate objects to life: dolls, statues, corpses occasionally. It’s not one of my specialties, but I know Hiram Winthrop made a study of it. It looks like Lancaster has, too. This is more than I would have expected of him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Horace’s father said. “What’s any of that got to do with a mark?”

  “The mark is a catalyst,” Braithwhite explained. “You could think of it as a kind of opportunistic curse: It uses the subject’s own senses and emotions to find an object to animate—ideally, something the subject is afraid of.”

  “And what it animates tries to kill you?” Horace said.

  “That’s the general idea. You’re lucky Lancaster made the mark with saliva,” Braithwhite told him. “Marks made in blood are much more potent, and almost impossible to remove.” He reached into the bag he’d brought with him and pulled out a silver flask. He uncapped it and soaked a handkerchief with the contents; a sharp vinegary smell filled the room. “This will sting a bit.” He leaned forward and scrubbed Horace’s scalp with the handkerchief. It did sting, but it also made Horace feel better; he breathed easier than he had in days.

  “But why?” George wanted to know. “Why would Lancaster go after Horace?”

  “It’s his way of sending me a message,” Braithwhite said. “Lancaster thinks I’m planning to betray him, and he’s right—but as it happens, the particular incident that set him off had nothing to do with me.” He glanced over at Horace’s mom. “On Solstice Night, your wife trespassed on a piece of property controlled by an Ancient Dawn lodge in Wisconsin. Apparently Lancaster thinks she was acting on my orders.”

  George turned to his wife. “Hippolyta? What’s he talking about? What did you do?”

  “Don’t you look at me that way, George Berry,” Hippolyta replied. “How long have you known Mr. Braithwhite here and not said anything?”

  George opened his mouth, and shut it again. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said.

  “Yes,” Hippolyta said, “we will.”

  “The point is,” said Braithwhite, “Lancaster thought I was making a move. When he couldn’t get your son to act as his spy, he decided to kill him—in part to punish your wife for conspiring with me, but more as a way of letting me know that he was on to me. Which is good news.”

  “How do you figure that?” George said.

  “If Lancaster were really worried, he’d have tried to kill me, not your son. The fact that he’s playing games means he thinks he can still dominate me.” Braithwhite smiled. “He’s made the same mistake about me that Hiram Winthrop made about my father. He’s underestimated me.”

  “So now what? You’re going to kill him?”

  “Not me,” Braithwhite said. “Us.”

  THE MARK OF CAIN

  Now art thou cursed and banished from the land, which hath opened its mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield thee its strength; a wanderer and fugitive shalt thou be on the earth.

  —Genesis 4:11–12

  They gathered at the Freemasons’ temple in the late evening, under cover of a light but driving snowfall. George and Hippolyta and Horace were the first to arrive. His parents’ attitude was solemn, but Horace could barely contain his excitement at being admitted to the secret meeting room; he gazed in wonder at the two Solomonic pillars, the altar with its copies of the Holy Bible and the Koran laid out side-by-side, and, sitting forgotten and gathering dust in a corner, the scale model of King Tut’s tomb. “Is this a game?” Horace asked, of the model. But his father didn’t answer and his mother said only, “Remember what I told you.”

  Pirate Joe and Abdullah came next, followed by Mortimer Dupree. Atticus, Letitia, and Montrose showed up together a few minutes later. Last to arrive was Quincy Brown, the lodge door-warden, who took up his post outside the room, armed with a sword. The sword was ceremonial, but Quincy, who’d been captain of the saber team at Wayne State, could handle himself quite well with it—and tonight he had a pistol in his pocket for good measure.

  The others sat facing one another beneath the pillars of Solomon, like wizards embarking on a ritual whose outcome was far from certain.

  Montrose went first. He told the story of how Caleb Braithwhite had contacted him last June, and how he’d been lured to Ardham and chained up in a cellar. Then Atticus took up the tale, describing his own journey to Ardham with George and Letitia, and what happened wh
en they got there.

  When Samuel Braithwhite and the Sons of Adam had been reduced once more to piles of ash, Letitia took her turn, explaining, with no small amount of pride, how she’d come to be the landlady of a haunted house. Her mood soured when Atticus added his coda about who the Winthrop House really belonged to; Letitia had learned the truth herself less than twenty-four hours ago, and she was still upset that Atticus hadn’t told her sooner.

  She wasn’t the only one angry at having been kept in the dark. Hippolyta fumed as George recapped the Freemasons’ trip to the museum to retrieve The Book of Names. But she was revenged a few moments later with the telling of her own story, which no one but George had heard yet; he wisely kept quiet as she told it, leaving it to Montrose to ask, “You went there alone in the middle of the night?” while Horace said, awestruck, “Another planet? For real?”

  Though reluctant even now to betray her vow of silence to Ida, Hippolyta told them everything, for that was the point of this exercise: to share all, as any detail might prove important. In the end, the matter of most immediate concern to her listeners was not the old woman stranded at the far end of the universe, but the five dead white men.

  “Holy God,” Mortimer Dupree said.

  “Yeah,” George added, breaking his silence. “You can see why Lancaster might be feeling paranoid, if he thought Braithwhite was behind that.”

  “It’s not just paranoia, though,” said Montrose. “Braithwhite really is double-dealing . . .” And he told the story of the trip to the Narrow house. Hippolyta took the news of Pearl and Henry junior’s fate hard. “That poor child,” she said. “Poor Ida.”

  Then it was Horace’s turn. As he described how he’d been cursed, stalked, and nearly killed, his excitement once more got the better of him, so that he sounded more thrilled than terrorized by the experience. But the adults’ expressions were grave.

  George finished up, recounting how Braithwhite had cleansed Horace of Lancaster’s mark, and what he’d said afterwards. “So that’s where we’re at,” George concluded. “Braithwhite’s going to war, and he wants our help.”

  “He doesn’t want our help,” Montrose corrected his brother. “He expects it. Braithwhite thinks he owns us.”

  “Yeah,” Atticus said, “and even if he does beat Lancaster, that won’t be the end of it. He says he’ll leave us alone, after, but . . .”

  “Has he told you what his plan is?” Abdullah asked.

  “Not yet,” George said. “But he’s sending someone, to give us our marching orders.” He checked his watch. “They should be here any minute.”

  Soon enough, there was a knock at the door. George answered it, and Quincy stuck his head in and whispered something that made George say, “Who?” Then George stepped back, opening the door wide to admit Braithwhite’s messenger.

  “Ruby?” Letitia said.

  So they listened to one more story. Ruby described how she’d lost her job, and how on New Year’s Eve, seemingly by chance, she’d met Caleb Braithwhite.

  “And you went off nightclubbing with him?” Letitia said. “That’s why you didn’t come to my party?”

  Ruby gave her sister a look. “Tell me again how God wanted you to have the Winthrop House,” she said.

  Ruby’s account of the rest of New Year’s Eve was heavily abridged and revised. There was dancing and some drinking, but no kissing, and while the night culminated in a job offer, there was no magic potion. “He said he worked for the government and he was in Chicago on a special assignment. He said he needed a housekeeper for this safe house he’d set up—someone who’d be discreet and not mention his name to anyone.” Ruby shrugged. “It was work, and it paid well.”

  Her description of the job itself was as close to the truth as she could make it without mentioning Hillary. She even told them about some of the errands Braithwhite had sent her on, though in this version of the story they were “patriotic missions” whose significance Ruby was left to guess at. “The men he had me spy on looked like gangsters, so I figured he must be with the FBI.” She finally did get suspicious, though, after he started asking her questions about Letitia. And then a few days ago, while Braithwhite was out of the house, she found the basement door unlocked . . .

  Her description of Braithwhite’s workshop omitted the glass coffin in favor of a vague assortment of strange devices that seemed more suited to devil worship than government work. “There were files, too,” Ruby said. “He had a folder with Atticus’s name on it, and another that was all about the Winthrop House. I’d only started to look at that when Braithwhite came back and caught me. Scared me near to death, but he wasn’t mad. He said he’d be needing more of my help soon, and it’d be easier if I knew the truth . . . So he sat me down and told me his story, his real story. It sounded crazy, like something out of one of Horace’s comic books, but he got me to believe it.” She looked around the circle. “I guess you all believe it, too.”

  “So you know what he’s up to?” George said. “What he wants from us?”

  Ruby nodded. “Right about now, he’s on the phone to Captain Lancaster, setting up a parley to work out their differences. There’s a country club up in Forest Glen that belongs to Lancaster’s coven, and Braithwhite’s going to offer to meet there, tomorrow night. He wants to bring Atticus with him.”

  “What for?” Atticus said.

  “That’s easy,” said Montrose. “You’re the peace offering.”

  Ruby nodded again. “Something like that.” She looked at Atticus. “He’s not really going to offer you up, though. That’s just a ruse, to get Lancaster to lower his guard a little . . . And that’s where the rest of you come in.” She opened her purse and pointed to the altar. “May I?”

  George and Abdullah moved the holy books aside. Ruby unfolded a map that showed the layout of Lancaster’s club and the surrounding grounds. For the next ten minutes, she explained Braithwhite’s plan.

  “That’s a lot of moving parts,” Pirate Joe said when she’d finished.

  “Yeah, and if one thing goes wrong, we’re all cooked,” said Mortimer.

  “We’re cooked either way,” Abdullah pointed out. “Even if the plan works, all we’ve done is give Braithwhite a clear field.”

  “I think it will work,” Ruby said. “I haven’t known Mr. Braithwhite as long as some of you, but I’ve seen enough of him to know he’s good at getting what he wants. But I’ve also seen enough to know that what he wants, can’t be good. He’s likable enough, for a white man. But he’s—”

  “Evil,” Montrose said.

  “Yeah,” Ruby said. She gestured at the map. “So you’re right, this isn’t enough. We need to get rid of him, too.”

  “I think we’d all be on board with that,” George said, “if we knew how. The problem is that damn immunity of his. If we could get around that . . .”

  “I don’t know how to get around it,” said Ruby. “But I know where it comes from.” She told them about Braithwhite’s mark.

  Letitia’s eyes narrowed. “A tattoo on his chest?” she said. “How would you know about that?”

  “I’m the help, not a big-shot landlady,” Ruby replied. “You think he’s going to throw a shirt on just because I come in the room? I saw it once when he was shaving, and that’s what he said, that it was his mark of Cain and that it protected him. I thought he was joking, but when I found out he was a warlock—”

  “This tattoo,” said Atticus. “It’s red? Like blood?”

  “Yeah.”

  Atticus looked at George. “What did Braithwhite say to you? Marks made with blood are more potent . . .”

  “ . . . and almost impossible to remove.”

  “Almost impossible,” Hippolyta said. “Which means it’s possible.”

  “Yeah, OK,” said George. “But we still don’t know how.”

  “No, we don’t,” agreed Montrose, suddenly thoughtful. “But I’ve got an idea who we can ask.”

  The snow continued to fall. The street ou
tside the Winthrop House was hushed as Atticus and Letitia and Montrose drove up.

  Inside was a different story. Mr. Fox was on the phone in the atrium, shouting to be heard over a bad connection and over the sound of his daughter skipping rope just a few feet away. In the dining room, Charlie Boyd and a group of friends were engaged in a boisterous card game. Meanwhile Mrs. Wilkins, awakened not by the noise but by thoughts of her late husband, was wandering perplexed along the gallery, trying to remember where she was.

  “Mrs. Wilkins?” Letitia called up to her. “You all right?”

  “Jeffrey?” Mrs. Wilkins responded, her rheumy eyes focusing not on Letitia but Montrose. “Jeffrey, are you home?”

  “This is Mr. Turner, Mrs. Wilkins,” Letitia said. “Wait here,” she told Montrose and Atticus. “She’s been getting this way after dark lately . . .” She started for the stairs.

  Atticus turned to his father. “So where do you want to do this, Pop? Basement?”

  “It’s not up to me,” Montrose said, looking at Hecate. He held up the satchel he’d brought with him as if to present it to the statue. “Mr. Winthrop? I got something here that belongs to you.” He undid the catch and opened the satchel, sending a puff of ash up into the air. “Got some bad news about your son, too . . .” He drew out the notebooks, sending more ash flying.

  The motion of the ashes caught Atticus’s eye and he watched, mesmerized, as they whirled more and more slowly in the light and then stopped completely, frozen in midair. Looking past them he saw the girl, Celia, frozen too, both feet off the floor while a blur of rope hung beneath them. Behind her, her father posed motionless with the phone against one ear and a hand pressed to the other. In the dining room Charlie Boyd, mouth open in a now-soundless laugh, was caught in the act of slamming a pair of aces down on the table. Letitia’s foot hovered over the top riser of the stairs, while Mrs. Wilkins stood paralyzed in confusion on the gallery.

  “Pop?” Atticus said, spooked by the sound of his own voice in the abrupt stillness. “Are you—”