“There, there, baby. Don’t you waste another thought on that creep. You’re too good for him. Want me to eat him?”
Sarah shook her head emphatically. “Don’t you see? This letter isn’t right! It doesn’t sound like Robin at all. He loves me—I know he does—and he wouldn’t ask me to go back to Arkham just like that. It was all his idea that we come to New York. He said there were lots of things I ought to learn about publishing firsthand. Why would he change so radically, so suddenly? Something’s the matter. Something has forced him to write this letter; some influence of abhorred and acherontic evil.”
“Hey! Don’t look at me!” Nyarlathotep protested. “I was out walking the Hounds of Tindalos all morning.”
“Give me the letter,” Great Cthulhu said. He held the paper up to the light, inhaled its distinctive fragrance, and munched on one corner of the Columbine Press stationery before rendering his verdict. “Yes, Sarah, you are correct. There is great evil at work here, a horror of unspeakable proportions, an abomination of such grotesque depravity as to send the sane mind reeling madly down the nightmare corridors of—”
“Get on with it, blubber-breath!” Hastur heckled from the air shaft.
“Go kiss Tsathoggua, you refugee from a Carl Sagan special,” Cthulhu responded. “You’re just pissed because I got a double-column entry in De Vermis Mysteriis and the only reason you got that one lousy paragraph in the Necronomicon was because you sent Abbie Alhazred those five dancing girls and a fruit basket.”
“Ghouls and dholes may drink our souls, but names will never hurt me!” Hastur shot back.
“Please, Great Old One,” Sarah said, laying a hand on Cthulhu’s scaly forearm. “This unhallowed menace that has enslaved my Robin—can you vanquish it? Will you help us?”
“I don’t know,” the Ancient One admitted. “I can only try. I’ve never dealt with an editor-in-chief before.”
* * *
Marybeth Conran checked the time on her Rolex and scowled. “It’s almost ten o’clock. This had better be good,” she said between gritted teeth.
Robin Pennyworth took his thumb out of his mouth long enough to reply, “I’m sorry, Ms. Conran. I honestly don’t know any more about this meeting than you do. Sarah sent me word to stay after work tonight and report to your office at nine. I guess she told you the same?”
“She requested the same of me.” Ms. Conran spoke in clipped tones that instantly conveyed the message, There is only one party around here who tells other people what to do. Columbine Press’s editor-in-chief shuffled a stack of fax flimsies irritably. “She gave me to understand that she wishes to amend her contract.”
Robin gulped burning air. “Ms. Conran, I swear I had nothing to do with that! I did just what you told me: I didn’t let her near anyone who knows anything about publishing. I kept her busy. I urged her to go back to Arkham. In the short time she’s been in the city, she couldn’t have met a soul who’d tell her what a miserable—uh—unique contract she’s got with us. Even if she did, there’s no way she could renegotiate it and—”
“You’re babbling, dear boy.” Ms. Conran’s expression was inscrutable. “A pity you can’t claim credit for Ms. Pickman’s notion to change our working agreement. You see, she has asked to meet with me in order to insert a clause requesting no advance monies to be paid on publication of Fires; or at any time, for that matter. Straight royalties all the way.”
Robin shuddered for his naive beloved. Columbine Press had a reputation in the trade for the highest per capita rate of authors reduced to slobbering conniptions while trying to get a cogent royalty statement out of their Accounting Department. And as for extracting an actual check—? Rumor had it that by the time you saw your money, you’d have to cash the draft at the First National Bank of Doomsday.
“At least now I know why you hung around here so late, you old bat,” he muttered.
“Did you say something, Robin?” Ms. Conran’s eyes glittered with a cold red light. He was quick to assure her of his absolute and obedient silence. “Good.” Her fingernail began to carve little notches on the edge of her desk blotter.
Ms. Conran had reduced the blotter to fringe before Robin calculated it was safe to make a fresh inquiry. “Um … did Sarah happen to explain why she wants to make that contract change?”
The question was shrugged aside. “Some silly Yankee work-ethic qualms about taking money she had not yet properly earned. You know, the scruples thing. You know me, Robin: anything to set our authors’ minds at rest.” She checked the Rolex again. “However, if that precious clot-brain bimbette of yours doesn’t show up soon, I’m going to—”
There was a knock at the door.
“That’s odd,” Ms. Conran mused. “No one’s supposed to be able to get up here at this hour without Security ringing us first. Who’s there?” she called.
“Cthul!” came the answer.
“Cthul who?” Ms. Conran’s logical response was greeted by much raucous merriment from the far side of the closed door. Chittering laughter came to an abrupt halt with the sound of many healthy cuffs, slaps, buffets, and upside-the-heads being meted out to the deserving.
“Stupid shoggoths,” someone snarled.
“Who-is-there?” Ms. Conran bellowed. The door opened by degrees, and Sarah Pickman crept meekly into the royal presence.
Robin flew to her side at once and clasped her to him, heart pulsating with love’s wild surrender. Her eyes held all passion’s tender fury as their gazes met, and only sweet, savage sensibleness kept them from devouring each other with an onslaught of rapture’s fiery kisses right in front of the dumbstruck and visibly queasy Ms. Conran.
Robin’s superior coughed up a whole symphony of hem-haw noises before she could crowbar their attention away from each other. “I believe you wished to see me, Ms. Pickman?” Treacle hardened into crackling shells over her every word.
Sarah separated herself from Robin with the greatest reluctance and approached the throne, hand extended in fellowship. “I’m so pleased to meet you at last, Ms. Conran,” she said, beaming.
“Mutual.” Ms. Conran yanked open a drawer and slapped a copy of the infamous contract onto her desktop. “Robin can go out to my secretary’s workstation and whip us up a cup of cappuccino while we make those contract changes you requested. It’s rather late, Ms. Pickman, and I think we’ll all feel so much better once we get this little business done and we can all go home. Especially since I believe you will be heading back to Arkham tomorrow?”
“Oh, not tomorrow.” A twinkle touched Sarah’s eyes, making them resemble sequined Ping-Pong balls.
“The day after, then. Such a shame. I did so want to show you a little of New York.” It would have required radical cardiac surgery to make the invitation any more halfhearted. “Since you’ll be leaving us so soon, I suppose I must also forgo the pleasure of meeting your chaperones.”
“No, you won’t.” She turned gracefully toward the door. “Ahem. Iä. Iä! Yoo-hoo? Iä, everybody!”
The door swung wide, revealing an impossible avenue of cyclopean megaliths whose gleaming basalt surfaces were carved with cryptic writings of hideous significance. Faceless, misshapen creatures shambled between the pylons, while farther off in the distance, leprous forms gyred and capered in savage, degraded revelry.
“Good God,” Ms. Conran breathed.
“Anyone out there seen a cappuccino-maker?” Robin piped.
And then, half-creeping, half-shuffling down that monumental way, there came the ultimate vision of noisome horror, lashing tentacles still draped with the clammy seaweeds of his sunken kingdom. Inexorably on and on he came, his hellish minions cavorting in his wake. Their blasphemous litany accompanied his progress until, at last, his sinister bulk overshadowed office, desk, and trembling Marybeth Conran.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Cthuhu. I tried to call, but I kept getting your stupid answering machine.”
Marybeth fainted.
From the Desk of Clarissa Ashl
ey Smith, Publisher, Columbine Press, Inc.
November 2, 1990
Dear Mr. Pennyworth:
I would like to thank you personally for taking over the duties of our former editor-in-chief, Marybeth Conran, during what was a period of grievous trial for all of us here at Columbine Press. In addition to covering her regular duties, as well as your own, you are to be commended for taking the bold, independent, and innovative step of rushing Fires on the Sea into print. Our salespeople inform me that buyer response is of such unprecedented magnitude and enthusiasm that Steel, Krantz, Plain, and Barker had best look to their laurels. From this day forward, Lovecraft will be a name with which to reckon.
In recognition of your contributions to the market success of Columbine Press, it is my pleasure to offer you the recently vacated position of Editor-in-Chief. It is my most earnest desire that you utilize your new situation to vigorously pursue additional fresh talent in the Romance field, hopefully on a par with that of Ms. Lovecraft herself.
The enclosed check represents your adjusted salary, plus a small token of my goodwill and best wishes to you and your new bride on the occasion of your marriage.
Sincerely,
Clarissa Ashley
P.S. I regret I do not have better news to pass on to you regarding the state of Ms. Conran’s mental health. Her attending physicians at Dunwich Hills Sanatorium inform me that when she is not whispering in darkness she is lurking on thresholds.
From the Desk of Robin Pennyworth, Editor-in-Chief, Columbine Press, Inc.
November 3, 1990
Dear Ms. Cromwell:
Thank you for submitting your historical romance, The Barbarian’s Woman, to Columbine Press. We are all very excited by it and think it will be a significant contribution to the field. We are prepared to offer you a $10,000 advance against royalties, full terms explained in the enclosed contracts. Please sign all three copies and return them to us as soon as possible.
Of course you realize you will have to make a few minor changes in the manuscript, to meet the demands of a changing Romance market. Your heroine is made-to-order for our readership—a strong woman who is not afraid to say “No” to the wrong man—but her name suggests a Russian setting. Czarist, perhaps, or do you intend the sobriquet “Red” in its political sense? You could then have your Sonja use a troika whip instead of a broadsword to defend her virtue in the first scene. Not only would this be a more romantic, exotic, and ladylike weapon, but we can avoid any possible allegations of sexism likely to crop up in response to the term broadsword.
I do wish it were feasible for me to edit your delightful book myself, but my administrative obligations will not permit this, alas. Our Mr. Alhazred will give it the care and attention it deserves, being himself a writer as well as one of our best editors. I promise you, he is just mad about The Barbarian’s Woman.
Very truly yours,
Robin Pennyworth
P.S. One more preliminary question about a detail in your manuscript, if I may: while I looked and looked for mention of a place-name you use, consulting the Britannica and the geographical listings in the Unabridged, it only shows up as an adjective. It sounds so familiar. I think I may have heard of a Trump resort located there, but correct me if I’m wrong.
Where is Stygia?
The Last Feast of Harlequin
THOMAS LIGOTTI
1.
My interest in the town of Mirocaw was first aroused when I heard that an annual festival was held there which promised to include, to some extent, the participation of clowns among its other elements of pageantry. A former colleague of mine, who is now attached to the anthropology department of a distant university, had read one of my recent articles (“The Clown Figure in American Media,” Journal of Popular Culture), and wrote to me that he vaguely remembered reading or being told of a town somewhere in the state that held a kind of “Fool’s Feast” every year, thinking that this might be pertinent to my peculiar line of study. It was, of course, more pertinent than he had reason to think, both to my academic aims in this area and to my personal pursuits.
Aside from my teaching, I had for some years been engaged in various anthropological projects with the primary ambition of articulating the significance of the clown figure in diverse cultural contexts. Every year for the past twenty years I have attended the pre-Lenten festivals that are held in various places throughout the southern United States. Every year I learned something more concerning the esoterics of celebration. In these studies I was an earlier participant—along with playing my part as an anthropologist, I also took a place behind the clownish mask myself. And I cherished this role as I did nothing else in my life. To me the title of Clown has always carried connotations of a noble sort. I was an adroit jester, strangely enough, and had always taken pride in the skills I worked so diligently to develop.
I wrote to the State Department of Recreation, indicating what information I desired and exposing an enthusiastic urgency which came naturally to me on this topic. Many weeks later I received a tan envelope imprinted with a government logo. Inside was a pamphlet that catalogued all of the various seasonal festivities of which the state was officially aware, and I noted in passing that there were as many in late autumn and winter as in the warmer seasons. A letter inserted within the pamphlet explained to me that, according to their voluminous records, no festivals held in the town of Mirocaw had been officially registered. Their files, nonetheless, could be placed at my disposal if I should wish to research this or similar matters in connection with some definite project. At the time this offer was made I was already laboring under so many professional and personal burdens that, with a weary hand, I simply deposited the envelope and its contents in a drawer, never to be consulted again.
Some months later, however, I made an impulsive digression from my responsibilities and, rather haphazardly, took up the Mirocaw project. This happened as I was driving north one afternoon in late summer with the intention of examining some journals in the holdings of a library at another university. Once out of the city limits the scenery changed to sunny fields and farms, diverting my thoughts from the signs that I passed along the highway. Nevertheless, the subconscious scholar in me must have been regarding these with studious care. The name of a town loomed into my vision. Instantly the scholar retrieved certain records from some deep mental drawer, and I was faced with making a few hasty calculations as to whether there was enough time and motivation for an investigative side trip. But the exit sign was even hastier in making its appearance, and I soon found myself leaving the highway, recalling the road sign’s promise that the town was no more than seven miles east.
These seven miles included several confusing turns, the forced taking of a temporarily alternate route, and a destination not even visible until a steep rise had been fully ascended. On the descent another helpful sign informed me that I was within the city limits of Mirocaw. Some scattered houses on the outskirts of the town were the first structures I encountered. Beyond them the numerical highway became Townshend Street, the main avenue of Mirocaw.
The town impressed me as being much larger once I was within its limits than it had appeared from the prominence just outside. I saw that the general hilliness of the surrounding countryside was also an internal feature of Mirocaw. Here, though, the effect was different. The parts of the town did not look as if they adhered very well to one another. This condition might be blamed on the irregular topography of the town. Behind some of the old stores in the business district, steeply roofed houses had been erected on a sudden incline, their peaks appearing at an extraordinary elevation above the lower buildings. And because the foundations of these houses could not be glimpsed, they conveyed the illusion of being either precariously suspended in air, threatening to topple down, or else constructed with an unnatural loftiness in relation to their width and mass. This situation also created a weird distortion of perspective. The two levels of structures overlapped each other without giving a sense of depth, so tha
t the houses, because of their higher elevation and nearness to the foreground buildings, did not appear diminished in size as background objects should. Consequently, a look of flatness as in a photograph, predominated in this area. Indeed, Mirocaw could be compared to an album of old snapshots, particularly ones in which the camera had been upset in the process of photography, causing the pictures to develop on an angle: a cone-roofed turret, like a pointed hat jauntily askew, peeked over the houses on a neighboring street; a billboard displaying a group of grinning vegetables tipped its contents slightly westward; cars parked along steep curbs seemed to be flying skyward in the glare-distorted windows of a five-and-ten; people leaned lethargically as they trod up and down sidewalks; and on that sunny day the clock tower, which at first I mistook for a church steeple, cast a long shadow that seemed to extend an impossible distance and wander into unlikely places in its progress across the town. I should say that perhaps the disharmonies of Mirocaw are more acutely affecting my imagination in retrospect than they were on that first day, when I was primarily concerned with locating the city hall or some other center of information.
I pulled around a corner and parked. Sliding over to the other side of the seat, I rolled down the window and called to a passerby: “Excuse me, sir,” I said. The man, who was shabbily dressed and very old, paused for a moment without approaching the car. Though he had apparently responded to my call, his vacant expression did not betray the least awareness of my presence, and for a moment I thought it just a coincidence that he halted on the sidewalk at the same time I addressed him. His eyes were focused somewhere beyond me with a weary and imbecilic gaze. After a few moments he continued on his way and I said nothing to call him back, even though at the last second his face began to appear dimly familiar. Someone else finally came along who was able to direct me to the Mirocaw City Hall and Community Center.
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