Cthulhu Fhtagn!

by Laird Barron

  If not for that mystery, I might not have been paying close enough attention to see what happened next. I had my own life now, after all, my own concerns. I’d met a girl in my freshman ethics class—with straight brown hair down her back, and cute freckles across her shoulders and cheeks—and I spent a lot of time on the phone with her that summer, since she’d gone back home too, a couple of states away. But Mr. Petrie’s absence made me wonder, and wondering made me watchful. I could see just a corner of his house out of my bedroom window, and at night, when I was waiting to go to sleep, my arms sore from unloading boxes, I would look out that window at the dark shape of his house past the streetlights.

  That’s why I saw it, a flash of purple-blue light, like one of Mr. Petrie’s bug zappers going off. But they were gone, all of them missing from their hooks on the porch, and the flash had seemed too bright for that anyway. It was enough to drag me out of my bed—where sleep was hard in coming, the summer night sticky, my parents, as always, too cheap to run the window units after dark. I pulled on my shoes and crept downstairs, not turning on any lights, not waking anyone, and out the door and onto the street. I passed under the streetlights and beneath the trees where as a kid I had seen Mr. Petrie eating bugs. I went up the front steps of his darkened house, but not onto the porch.

  I don’t know what made me hesitate. Why I didn’t just ring the doorbell—besides that it was two in the morning—and instead slipped around the side of the house. I felt like a kid again, that thrill up your spine that comes with trespassing, with transgressing. I felt like I was on a dare, creeping up to peer into Mr. Petrie’s darkened windows.

  There was a glow coming from the back of the house, and my first thought was that Mr. Petrie had moved all his bug zappers to the screened-in back porch, though what good they were going to do back there I couldn’t say. But no, the glow wasn’t coming from bug zappers. It was brighter, and it emanated from a single source.

  In that unearthly light, I saw Mr. Petrie. He knelt on the all-weather carpet next to his favorite chair, his hands held up in some kind of supplication, his mouth moving constantly, though I couldn’t hear any words coming out. He looked like he’d aged ten years in the few months it had been since I saw him last, the strange violet light mottling his complexion, making his already papery skin look almost translucent.

  Before him stood what I initially took to be a man in a suit of armor, but there was something wrong about that. The shape was a little off, the plates too shiny. The glow was coming from this figure, somehow. Radiating from it like a cave fungus, oozing out from beneath the plates of its armor, from the gap between the horns that sprouted from its head. Below the arms, two smaller, supplementary arms jutted, and between them they held a ball of squirming purple-blue light. We’d learned about plasma in my freshman science class—the boiling, liquid energy of which the sun is made—and aside from the color this was exactly how I’d pictured it.

  It was the arms that made the figure make sense—the horns sprouting from the helmet not horns at all but mandibles, working gently back and forth, the glowing orifice below a nest of moving mouth-parts, the armor a carapace from which lace-delicate wings might unfurl.

  In that final moment, I think Mr. Petrie saw me. He looked over, his eyes black in the strange light, and he seemed like he was about to speak to me, but then the ball of energy that the armored figure held leapt from its hands, arced through the space of the porch and touched Mr. Petrie. For a moment he was made translucent by the light, his skeleton visible through his parchment flesh, and then the whole scene exploded in a flash that left miniature purple suns dancing in my vision.

  Neighbors reported seeing a bright light in the back of Mr. Petrie’s house, and when the sheriff broke in they found nothing of Mr. Petrie or the thing that had killed him except a singed spot on the carpet and a pile of black ash. Chalk another one up to those reports of unexplainable spontaneous human combustion. I looked it up later, and found that there have been over 200 unverified reports over the years. That’s something to think about, late at night.

  I was gone before the sheriff arrived, and no one ever reported seeing me near the house. No one asked me about what had happened, and I never told. Mr. Petrie’s own life lessons had taught me the reward that came with sharing that kind of revelation.

  Here’s what I wonder, though: If old Mr. Petrie really was some kind of real-deal psychic, could he have conjured up the specter of his own demise from nothing more than his own fear? Would he have had the power to create the thing that he believed was one day going to kill him, a kind of psychic suicide? And do I find that thought more or less distressing than a beetle assassin come back from the future to slay him with a lightning bolt?

  THE BODY SHOP

  Richard Lee Byers

  One man is black, good-looking, and lanky, the other, white, homely, and squat like a bulldog. Yet in the ways that matter, they look alike, both dressed in urban camouflage, both carrying M4 rifles they may have scavenged from the corpses of Army Rangers, and both still holding on to anger. I see that last in the way they carry themselves.

  In other words, not my typical customers, who tend to be ragged, hungry, and desperate. Some are downright twitchy.

  So right away, I wonder. But I have a successful business and the comforts it provides in a time when most people live like savages or rats, and I keep it going by trying to accommodate anybody who walks in the door. So I pull the buds out of my ears—I give good value for iPods and such if they have plenty of New Country on them—smile, and stand up to greet the newcomers.

  “Clark Davis,” I say, extending my hand.

  The black man takes it in a strong grip. “Bill Pryce. My friend is Paulie Larocca.”

  Larocca looks around the front of the store. It was a tattoo and piercing parlor before the aliens came, and the outer area still is, give or take. “You’ve got electricity,” he says, envy in his voice.

  “I have a generator,” I reply, “and I accept gasoline as payment. So that’s one way we might be able to do business. If you want to tell me how I can help you?”

  “I’m not sure,” says Pryce. “I mean, obviously, we’ve heard something about what you do, or we wouldn’t be here. But I don’t know if what we’ve heard is exaggerated or…” He shrugs.

  “And you don’t want to put yourself in my hands until you do know,” I say. “I’d feel the same way. I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I give you the tour? That way, you’ll see the full range of services I have to offer.”

  Pryce nods. “That sounds all right.”

  “Then we can start right here.” I wave my hand at the walls. Before the invasion, they were hung with flash and photos of work I’d done on customers. They still are. But not the same flash or the same photos.

  “I guess you understand the basics,” I continue as they move in for a closer look. “Since the invasion, some people have changed. Sometimes the monsters take them and experiment on them. Other times, the changes just happen. It could be poison in the air or water. Or maybe the king alien, the god that’s moved into—”

  “It’s not a god!” Larocca snaps.

  It’s possible he hasn’t yet glimpsed it in his dreams. Anyway, why argue? “Sorry. Or maybe the thing living in the Macmillan Center affects the city just by being here. No matter why it happens, the fact is, once a person is altered, the aliens are less likely to attack him.”

  Pryce grunts. “Less likely.”

  “There are no guarantees,” I answer. “But if somebody wants to play the odds, that’s where I come in. Maybe you’ve heard about the dead rising or seen some of them yourself? Then take a look at this.”

  The imitation zombie in the photo has a gray cast to her skin, shadowing under her eyes and cheekbones, and what look like little rotten patches spotting her face like acne. The customer heightened the illusion with a slack mouth and empty stare.

  “Yuck,” Larocca says.

  I smile. “I’ll take that as a
compliment. But really, this is only the most basic kind of disguise. If the customer is willing to take the next step, we can do something like this.” I point to a different photo.

  Larocca winces. “Her nose!”

  “And her left ear, part of her upper lip, and the last digit of her left pinkie. Obviously, I don’t take anything the person can’t manage without, but short of that, the more the customer is willing to part with, the more convincing the results.”

  It’s Pryce’s turn to point. “But these are better still?”

  He’s indicating the picture of a shirtless middle-aged man. I inked the suggestion of blue scales into his skin, cut a long horizontal scar onto his chin, and melon-balled pieces of flesh out of his chest so the hollows march down from shoulders to waist like a double row of buttons. He looks like his body was trying to develop the second mouth and extra eyes of a Subway Howler, but the change didn’t take.

  “Yes,” I say. “The aliens are less likely to bother a zombie than they are a living person, but less likely still to mess with a person who looks like his body is trying to mutate into one of their own kind. I have to warn you, though, there’s no way to get to any version of this without a fair amount of cutting and shaping.”

  “But afterward,” says Pryce, “it’s at least near-perfect protection?”

  “Sure,” I say, “from a block away. Closer than that, though, and all these options start to run up against the same limitations. The creature may recognize the tattooing or scarification for what it is. Or maybe its sense of smell comes into play. Who knows? But if you stick to the parts of the city where there aren’t as many of them—which is what smart people do anyway, right?—it will definitely improve your chances.”

  “But what if you have no choice but to get up close?” asks Pryce. “Is there anything more?”

  I eye him for a moment but don’t pick up on any clues to what he’s got in mind. I tell myself it’s none of my business anyway.

  “There’s more,” I say. “Follow me.”

  We push through the beaded curtain that separates the front room from the next one. I flip on the fluorescent lights, and Larocca mutters, “Shit!” He isn’t the first. It’s a pretty good collection if I do say so myself.

  Writhing slowly, a severed tentacle floats in an aquarium. Across from it, the head of a Laughing Cyclops grins from its own jar of alcohol. I’ve opened the torso of a Black Kid and sawed away the tangled ribs to expose the glistening organs that crowd the chest cavity.

  The specimens are impressive, but their only purpose is to convince people I really can deliver the goods. This is all material that I suspect—it’s hard to tell for sure—has passed its Sell By date. The real merchandise is in the freezers.

  “This is the next level,” I say. “Instead of giving you fake monster parts, I give you real ones. Real spurs on the backs of your legs. Real Cold Moth wings attached to your shoulder blades. A real set of Blind Dog feelers on your face. The face is always the best if you can stand it. Take a look at these.” I gesture to the photos on the wall.

  I think the work on display in the front room is pretty darn convincing. But when a person lays eyes on what I can do with real parts, he sees the difference. And occasionally throws up in his mouth a little.

  Or resists believing the pictures of the human form blended with things from beyond can possibly be real. “These are fakes, too,” Larocca says. “Just better fakes. A real doctor couldn’t graft alien body parts onto a human. The human’s system would reject them. And this guy—”

  “Is only a tattoo artist,” I finish for him. “Except, not anymore. Would you believe, the aliens themselves taught me how to do this.”

  “Convince us,” says Pryce.

  “Okay. Do you know that during the first hours of the invasion, the Burning Flyers snatched up a lot of people and carried them away?”

  Pryce nods. “They nearly got me.”

  “Well, they did get me and took me to one of those domes that popped up all over downtown like mushrooms. Inside was a kind of creature most people still haven’t seen. Like a lot of the invaders, they’re hard to describe. But if you imagine smoke crossed with a pile of maggots, that’s in the ballpark.”

  “Why did they take you?” asks Pryce.

  “They wanted information,” I say. “Not that I knew anything that mattered. But like you saw, they were grabbing people at random. Anyway, the important thing is that when they look into your head, it’s a two-way street. You see what’s in their minds, too.”

  Larocca sneers. “Bullshit. They wouldn’t let a human know their secrets.”

  “It’s not a problem,” I reply, “if they kill the human when they’re done. And as far as I know, I’m the only person who ever went through it and got away afterward.”

  “How?” asks Pryce.

  “Since it was the first night, America still had a military. Bombs fell on the base and blew it apart. The explosions killed the monsters and all the other prisoners, too, but I got lucky and survived.”

  “And came away with the knowledge to do what you do?”

  “At first I didn’t know I had it. I couldn’t understand most of what I’d taken in and didn’t want to try. I was pretty sure that if I didn’t forget it, it would drive me nuts. But over time, the medical knowhow started making sense. Maybe it piggybacked on the skills I already had.”

  “Right,” drawls Larocca, “because really, what’s the difference between a tattoo artist and a doctor?”

  Pryce gives his friend a look that tells him to zip it, then turns his attention back on me. “And after that you started disguising people?”

  “Well, not for a while. It took me about a month to accept that the monsters really had won and we lost. Then the idea had to come to me. Then I needed tools, medicine, and parts. I was able to dig the tools and drugs out of the same bombed-out base where I’d been a prisoner. As for the organs, you’ve probably noticed that these days, the aliens sometimes fight each other. And luckily, don’t always bother to haul the bodies away afterward.”

  “All right,” says Pryce, “I believe you. Just how effective is this?”

  “I already said there are no guarantees. But one customer told me he turned a corner, came face to face with a Cyclops, and it ignored him. Another was sneaking along in the dark, stepped in a patch of Leopard Mold, and it didn’t poof out any spores. You wouldn’t think that stuff is even aware, but apparently it is.”

  Pryce smiles. It’s a cold smile. “Then this is what I need.”

  “Believe me,” I reply, “if we can make a deal, I’ll be happy to sell it to you. But first I have to warn you about the downside.”

  He shakes his head. “That isn’t necessary.”

  “Yeah, it is. Early on, I had a couple dissatisfied customers come back here screaming that they hadn’t understood what could happen. I don’t need that. These days, I spell everything out.”

  Pryce shrugs. “If it will make you feel better.”

  “First off, you’ll almost certainly get to where you can’t stand looking in a mirror.”

  “I don’t do a lot of that anyway.”

  “Fair enough, but other people may not be able to tolerate looking at you, either. Even if they care about you. Even if you keep the deformity covered up most of the time. Even if they’re carrying similar grafts themselves. I transplanted pieces of Window Crab shell onto the faces of a father, mother, and their little son and daughter. You never saw a family that loved each other more. But when I ran into the dad later, he told me they’d all gone their separate ways. They just couldn’t bear to be around one another anymore.”

  “Still not a problem.”

  “Okay. But this could be. Maybe you know that after the monsters change the outside of a person, he sometimes changes on the inside, too, until he basically stops being a person. Well, what I do is more or less what they do. For a different reason, and without any deliberate fooling with the customer’s brain, but still, o
nce or twice my work has pushed people down the same slide.”

  “You mean once or twice that you know of,” Larocca says. “In the long run, maybe it happens to everybody.”

  “Could be,” I say. “But you know the saying: ‘In the long run, we’re all dead.’ And when has that ever been truer than now?”

  “He’s got you there,” says Pryce. “And I know you don’t like any part of this, but I believe what Mr. Davis is telling us. So let’s move ahead.” His eyes shift back to me. “Have you read me the entire warning label?”

  “Pretty much,” I say, “and if it didn’t scare you away, we can start negotiating. What do you have to offer?”

  “Freedom,” Pryce replies.

  I blink. “What, now?”

  “You’re wrong about the Army,” he says. “There’s some of it left outside the cities, and it coordinates with the resisters inside.”

  I hold up my hand. “Stop. I don’t need to know about this. I don’t want to know it. I do what I do to take care of myself, and that’s that. Tell me if you’ve got something real to trade.”

  “Don’t you want the human race to rise up and defeat the invaders?”

  “That sounds like a no.” I sigh. “Look, let’s say that whatever your little scheme is, thanks to the disguise, it works, and you kill a hundred aliens. Hooray for you. Naturally, everybody would be happy to see it. But it wouldn’t change a thing. There are just too many of them.”

  “But we’re not after them,” says Pryce. “The Army gave me a canister of what’s supposed to be the deadliest nerve gas ever invented. I mean to carry it into the Macmillan Center and turn it loose on the king alien. There are scientists who think that if you kill it, its servant creatures will die, too. Or at least their social organization will fall apart.”