by Laird Barron
“You ever hear of the Church of the Returning King?” he asks.
I nod slowly. “Yeah, I think so. Kind of a small little religious thing. Fair number of rich guys and socialites in the city. Lots of philanthropy. There was kind of stink a few years back about something, though. Can’t quite remember what.”
Jim reaches back and pulls out a couple of printouts from a random stack on his desk and hands them to me. The headline on the first one reads: “Church hit with ritual allegations.” The next: “The Church of Kink?” The third: “Former CRK member recounts abuse.”
“So the CRK was big on the Upper East Side, you know? Jane’s family had been members a long time, and I figured, okay, that’s nice. I figured it was a little like Scientology, though. Kind of weird but basically harmless,” Jim says. “I went to some of their services, the ones open to the public. Talked about devotion to the Returning King, how he’d come again to rule the world and remake it in his image. Honestly, sounded like an amped-up version of the Protestants. Hell, most of the folks at the services looked like Protestants.”
Jim laughs at his own joke as I set the papers down gently. “And?” I ask.
He takes another swig of beer. “Well, it ain’t like that,” he says. “I mean, I didn’t even know Jane was one of the Church leaders until I got engaged, and I had known her for years. Really took me by surprise. She was never one to keep secrets, or so I thought. But here she is, talking about the Returning King in services.”
He pauses a moment and gets a little lost in his head again. I wait until he winds back up. “Anyway, she says it’d mean a lot to her if I got involved, so I did. There was some one-on-one counseling, some reading. Pretty innocuous. I mean, they were rigorous and all about services and stuff, but I figured that’s where Jane got her discipline from, you know? She was always so focused….”
His voice trails off. I can tell I’m losing him again. Already. “Okay, so were the stories true, then? Kink? Abuse?”
He downs the rest of his beer and crumples the can in his hands in a swift motion that makes me jump again. “Worse,” he growls. “They got this philanthropy going, they do all these good works, they come off as just some kind of Protestant sect, like a weird cross between Hollywood liberals and neocon religious freaks. But, you know, I’m supporting Jane, so I go and do the study and a couple years after we get married, I get baptized. In blood.”
And this is where we start to head off the rails. “Blood?” I ask.
“Yes, blood. Real human blood,” he says. “The priest there, he cuts himself and just smears some kind of sign on my forehead. Wasn’t a cross, I can tell you that much, but it smeared pretty bad so I couldn’t see what it was. I have some ideas, though.” He reaches forward and pulls another sheet of paper from a stack on the coffee table. It’s a picture of a star with what looks like an eye inside. “I think it was that.”
I stare at the image, dumbfounded. I mean, what do you say to that? “What is it?”
“Can’t even speak the words, man,” Jim says quietly. “It’s bad, though. See, I thought this whole Returning King thing was Jesus Christ, you know? I mean, they never actually said the name, but they had the death and resurrection, the second coming, all of it. Judgment. The chosen ones. Getting humanity ready for the Return.”
“But it wasn’t Christ?”
“Nope,” Jim says, and I swear there’s a hint of satisfaction in his voice, like this is the result of all his hard work since losing his marbles. “It’s something worse. Far worse.”
“Well, this does look a little like a pentagram,” I allow. I really kind of want to wrap this up at this point and just get out of here. “So they were Satanists?
Jim barks out a laugh. “You’re kidding me, right? Please. Satanists are Saturday morning cartoons compared to these guys!!” He calms down, leans forward and stares me right in the eye. It’s creepy as hell. “This shit’s older than Satan. Older than Christ. Older than the planet. And it’s coming back.”
I open my mouth to speak, but the words just aren’t coming. He leans back and smiles at me again.
“Steve, Steve, Steve…I knew you wouldn’t get it,” he says. It sounds menacing, but honestly, I’m pretty well freaked out by now, so who’s to say? “There’s stuff in the world that you just don’t hear about. The Church, the other groups that are out there, they make sure you don’t hear about it.” He gestures around the room. “It’s taken me years and years to collect all this. They’re in government. Business. Entertainment. They’re making us good and fat and happy and clueless every day goes by. We’re lambs to the slaughter, Steve.”
I look around again. Years and years of work. He’s been doing this conspiracy thing since before his life went to crap. “So what happens, then?” I ask. I try not to make it sound like a challenge, but it comes out that way. “Who’s coming back? Space aliens?”
I thought this might make him laugh, but his eyes widen and he grows really disturbingly intense about it. “Steve, it’s already here. On Earth. The Church, they know where it is. They sacrifice to it.” He must’ve caught a look on my face, because his eyes flash and he frowns hard. “Yes, dammit, sacrifice! I’ve seen it, Steve! My God, I’ve seen it! Jane…she….”
And he loses it. He tries to spit out the words, but the tears come instead, and soon he’s wracked with choking sobs. The only two words I can hear clearly are, “Our baby.”
I don’t know what to do. I let him cry it out. It takes about five minutes before he swipes a grimy hand across his face to stifle the sniffling. “Sorry, man,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I say, trying hard to stay calm and rational. “You say you saw this yourself?”
He nods, still trembling. “I wasn’t supposed to be there. I wasn’t high up enough yet to be there. But…I had some great news at work, and I wanted to tell Jane. She’d been up at her folks’ house in Massachusetts for the whole summer while I worked, but she texted to say she’d be back at the Church meeting house and then come home right after. So I went to the house. I’d had my doubts about the Church for months, and I wanted to see about this rite they were supposed to be doing. But really, I just wanted to see her.”
Jim puts his hands on his knees and straightens his back, looking down at the coffee table. The words come out in a rush. “I saw them there. In a circle. Inside, on the altar, was a baby. I thought it was like a baptism, but the baby seemed, you know…really fresh. Just born. And they were chanting. I could hear it. I remember it word for word.” He closes his eyes and recites: “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
He grips his knees hard and rocks back and forth. “And then…and then….” He can’t finish it.
“I get the idea,” I say gently, reaching out to touch his hand. “And they saw you there after, didn’t they.”
Jim nods. “It was all downhill after that,” he says. “Jane never came home. I didn’t know what to do. I mean….” He shakes his head violently as if to clear it. I know it won’t come clear, though. Not with that look on his face. “So I go to work the next day. I mean, I’m in shock, right? Do I call the cops? I have no clue. So I go to work. And that’s when the trade went south.”
Of course. “And then you left town,” I say.
“I had to!” Jim says, that intense look back on his face. “They knew everything about me! I worked right next to two Church members! Jane’s family…the police…the guys in the attorney general’s office…all members of the Church. I had to go.”
I take my hand off Jim’s and place it in my jacket pocket again. “And here you are.”
Jim nods and slumps back in his chair, staring off into space again. “And here I am.”
I sit in silence for a few moments, weighing my options. I know now he’ll never come back on his own, and forcing him to come with me is going to be…difficult. Probably too difficult.
“Jim, I want you to look at me,” I say finally, deciding to give him one last
chance. He turns his head and I can see the dull ache in his eyes. The despair is palpable. “This isn’t your fault. You can still go back. You can get help. You can—”
Jim laughs again, bordering on maniacal. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve been telling you?” he says. “There’s no way I’m going back! Soon as you clear out of here, I’m packing up and leaving. This is the last time you’re going to see me, Steve.”
I nod, sadly, and pull my backup out of my pocket, my fist enclosed around it. “I guess you’re right, Jim,” I say. “This is it.”
He looks at me quizzically. “Just like that?”
“Just like that,” I say, standing up from off that godawful couch. “You’ve got a rifle and a gun, so calling the cops or mental health services would probably be a waste of time.” I walk over to the door and start undoing the locks, one by one. “You believe your story wholeheartedly. I can tell there’s no talking you out of it.”
I hear him stand up behind me. “That’s it?” he demands. “I tell you all this and that’s all you’re going to say?”
I turn around and see him, arms spread wide, looking even more distraught. I think he expected more arguing from me.
“Pretty much,” I say. “You’ve been through a lot. You lost your job, your wife, your money. Even your baby, if that’s what you think you saw. So yeah, what do I say to that?”
I open my hand. The flat stone, carved with the Elder Sign, begins to glow.
“In fact, I think you should probably just shoot yourself in the head and be done with it,” I say.
The shot rings out a moment later. Thankfully, he didn’t turn his head in my direction. Instead, it spatters onto the wall in a shower of black and crimson.
I ponder calling 911 to report Jim’s suicide, but I’m tired of play-acting and I doubt I’d nail the terror and horror of it all. I’ve seen too much to fake it well enough. I think about just setting the place on fire, but why bother? With winter just around the corner, nobody would be coming up here for months.
Instead, I go through all his evidence and gather up the most incriminating bits, leaving behind just enough red herrings to put overly ambitious investigators off track. I use the stone to lock the doors behind me, with the keys still in Jim’s pocket inside.
I go back to the rental car, fire it up and head back down the dirt road. When I’m a good fifteen miles from Jim’s place, I pull out my cell phone and make the call, but I get voicemail. “Jane, it’s Steve. It’s done. He’s gone. Details later.”
Jane won’t be happy. She wanted me to bring him back so she could really go to work on him. He was going to be the next one in the circle. He would’ve suffered for days, his horror and agony fueling the rise of the Returning King from R’lyeh.
Instead, I gave him the easy out. I guess I’m still capable of compassion.
I’m sure that won’t last long.
The Prince of Lyghes
Anya Martin
Jenny didn’t go looking for it. Todd didn’t mean for her to find it.
She felt an odd sensation after dusting a book or maybe wiping a shelf, like a spider slipping onto her arm, scuttering rapidly up her sleeve and wriggling into her ear. She slapped her hand up quickly, wondering if perhaps a mosquito had bitten her or maybe the itchy burn of built-up wax. Then she sensed something squishy behind her eyes for just a moment. Perhaps a speck of dust that could be washed away with a stray tear? Finally a squeeze around the nape of her spine like something grabbing hold with tiny pin-like claws.
Later a vague pain developed that a pair of aspirin did nothing to relieve. That evening she planned to go to bed early, thinking that sleep would cure her headache, but somehow she stayed up late washing the dishes and then the laundry while Todd locked himself up again in his office.
Business, he said. Always business: emails to Hollywood executives about the latest potential deal that never happened, self-consciously clever social networking updates that generated fawning responses from a few of his four thousand acquaintances, messaging sessions so crucial that dinner had to be postponed for an hour or two, and then he would complain about it being cold or overcooked or just plain shit. Everything was shit when the side dish was Scotch or 1.5-liter bottles of cheap white wine. Not that she ever saw the bottle until the dead soldiers lined up behind a door. Nor did he ever admit he was drinking.
As Jenny headed downstairs to unload the clothes from the dryer, she noticed the door to Todd’s office was now ajar. Through the crack, she could see his body collapsed and akimbo over the cluttered paperwork on the forest-green carpet. A snort from his nose trumpeted, made her head twinge again. Or maybe it was a light pressure as if something behind her temples were expanding?
Basket full in hands, she headed back up to their bedroom, emptied its contents into the dresser drawers and changed into pajamas. For most of the twelve years of their marriage, Todd had come to bed and held her, at least for part of the night. She’d taken those embraces—hugs that joined the two into a comma—as proof of his love for her even when they’d had arguments the day before. But now he rarely came to bed, and if he did, he barely held her at all.
When Jenny woke alone the next morning, cigarette smoke wafted in through the heating vent. The heavy aroma of tobacco intensified her headache, and a slight pain now welled in her mid-back and curved around to her stomach. This time, she took three aspirin. Maybe later she’d try four ibuprofen.
Was her heartbeat a bit quicker, too? Surely that was just because she was so angry at Todd not only for starting to smoke again after seven years of kicking the habit but also for breaking the inside house no-smoking rule. She thought about confronting him, but didn’t want to hear his derisive denial again, or worse, risk him striking her. So she lay in bed and fumed quietly, waiting for the pain in her head to ebb enough for her to crawl downstairs and start a pot of coffee.
***
Jenny could usually concentrate herself into a machine and grind through even the most mundane and boring of design assignments. But today, even after two cups of coffee, the odd tactile aches and sensitivities made it difficult for her to focus. She had to email one of her clients for a deadline extension—something she hated to do in this unstable economy. She met Todd briefly in the kitchen, making himself bacon and eggs and baked beans. All she could stomach was one slice of toast with honey. They exchanged a few vague words about weekend plans and who might go grocery shopping, though she doubted he’d be sober enough to drive to the store. If he insisted, she’d have to choose between letting him and risking one more DUI or triggering another fight, another blow to her head. She watched him carry the plate downstairs, suspecting he’d eat no more than a few bites. She wondered if he’d remember to return the dish or abandon it on his desk until the leftovers attracted roaches.
Jenny’s only other contact with Todd today was when a deliveryman rang the doorbell with another box. As always, she noted the same return address—Kolonia, Pohnpei, FM. When she looked it up, she found the abbreviation stood for Federated Micronesia, until 1986 a U.S. territory and still closely tied. She carried it downstairs to his office and knocked gently on the door.
“Todd, you’ve got another package.”
Todd cracked open the door, eyes glazed, thinning hair disheveled, chin peppered with brown and gray stubble, wearing a faded black Led Zeppelin T-shirt and sweat pants so gnarly with holes that they belonged nowhere but the trash.
The customs labels always simply read “books,” and Jenny assumed they contained books. After all, Todd was a writer and owned lots of books, so why shouldn’t they be books? She sometimes asked him what books they were, worrying about the high cost of ordering books from so far away. They’d already taken out an equity line to reduce the interest rate on his credit card debts. He told her that books in English weren’t popular in Asia and the cost of living was cheap, so Micronesian book dealers were willing to sell whatever was left from the libraries of Americans from territorial days
, which often could be extensive, for surprisingly inexpensive prices. And the sellers gave good deals on shipping, too.
If Jenny pushed Todd a little further, he’d get increasingly edgy. He’d say that he was researching entomology or otolaryngology or the archaeology of some ancient city—what was it called? Yes, Nan Madol—or some other obscure topic that she would have no interest in, and remind her he didn’t ask questions about her packages. Not that she received many, for she was very frugal with her meager earnings which barely supported both of them. Todd rarely made much money any more and seemed to spend all of it paying off an unknown amount of credit card debt, which Jenny assumed was spent mostly on booze, cigarettes, and the contents of the packages. She knew she ought to demand that he tell her his card balances, but he’d get so angry when she asked. One time when she suggested he take out a new card with a 0% balance transfer offer, he punched her so hard that he broke one of her ribs.
Jenny preferred to hunt for her bargains in person at thrift shops or discount stores—“treasure-hunting,” she called it. She excelled at finding that unique vintage dress or perfect-fitting pair of tight jeans at a great price. Today she was wearing a Bettie Page-label pencil skirt and a tight-fitting red shirt with white polka-dots and ball sleeves.
But Todd didn’t notice how cute she looked in her pin-up ensemble when she told him she was lunching with a friend. His eyelids fluttered as if he could barely focus. He just coughed and spit a gelatinous ball of brown tobacco phlegm on the rug. Then he took the package from her hands and closed the door. She could hear him shuffle his feet over the papers on the floor, the loud rustling of unpacking, then what sounded like a tiny chirp. She turned away and headed back upstairs to fetch a paper towel and carpet cleaner before the gooey stain set in the fabric.
Halfway up, a pang of nausea assaulted her, and she grasped her stomach. But the pain passed swiftly, and after the clean-up, she stumbled back to her computer screen. An hour later she had canceled lunch and curled up in a ball on the bed, trying to nap away throbbing pain that began between her temples and descended deep into her abdomen.