by Unknown
Jack is the brightest of the children. He knows how his father died, and how he himself died. And how, but for me, he would now be bearing spawn in his belly.
SANCTUARY
Don Webb
It was the third year after the Aeon of Cthulhu had begun. The second year after Nat’s wife had walked off into the sky, and the three weeks since he driven into Austin to raid a drugstore for antidepressants and vitamins. It was noon; three years ago he would have been at Precision Tune scanning cars whose “Check Engine” light had come on. Now, since it was noon, he would be walking across the street to Tacos Arrandas #3 with Willie, Juan, and Mike. The chicken flautas with sour cream would be pretty good right now with a cerveza. Someone was crying in the Church, but someone was always crying. They would quiet down. Everyone sat upright at Santa Cruz during the day, unless they were praying. If they weren’t out growing vegetables, they stayed here. There were non-Catholics here—Mr. Jones, over there, with his black shiny face, he had been some sort of Baptist minister. The once- fat blonde lady who taught science had been an atheist—what was that word they used in Mr. G’s class? Her hypothesis must have proven wrong. There were gods; mainly they ate us.
Nat hated the Church except for Jesus. Jesus never looked too good to Nat growing up, stuck on that damn cross, couldn’t help anybody, could he? He used to make stupid jokes with the cholos he hung out with: “Why can’t Jesus eat M&Ms? ’Cause they fall through the holes in his hands.” They would tell him that he was going to hell. Guess they were right about that. He still carried his baby-blue rosary from back in the day. It seemed like those from Below didn’t give a shit about colors.
He liked Jesus now. He didn’t understand why Jesus was white when the Virgin was Mexican. Don’t you know that had been a shocker to Joseph? The brown eyes were large and shocked with pain—we should’a known; he was telling it was coming for years. We all look like that now. Jesus had caught up with the times or the times caught up with Jesus. The crying had stopped and praying had started. Prayers were pretty free- form, mainly to Jesus or the Blessed Virgin, but occasionally someone worked in a call to Yog Sothoth; as Keeper of the Gate, he was pretty popular. Maybe he would gate them all back. It was one of the few Names everybody knew. CNN had lasted for twenty-three days after the Rising. So everybody knew something. Even in Doublesign, Texas.
He thought of his youngest brother Xavier. Nat hadn’t been there to witness what had happened to Xavier, but he’d heard about it from people who had, and he could envision it so vividly in his mind that he might as well have been. Not that it would have made any difference.
Xavier had decided the thing to do was get with the program. He rented some horror DVDs from Blockbuster—he figured that he would get in good with the New Bosses. He studied the ritual sequences, the sacrifices. So he drove into Austin, found an occult shop, bought some black candles, some chalk, a fancy knife, and a big chalice to pour blood into. Mama told him to have faith. It was a stupid argument. Had faith kept Cody from getting HIV? Had faith kept Esmeralda’s pickup from being hit by the eighteen-wheeler?
Xavier drove to the parking lot of Sam Houston high school that night. The Moon was full and high and it had not yet opened its Eye. He spray-painted two big circles one inside the other. A crowd of people watched. It was better than listening to what was going on in Japan. You’d think after all them Godzilla movies they could have handled it. No one had told Father Murphy. The witnesses later said they’d wanted to see if Xavier was right. He lit five black candles in the shape of a star. Then he opened a used black paperback book that he had paid top-dollar for in Austin. He read some gibberish by flashlight.
Then he went to his old Chevy half- ton and took his red-nosed pits out. He had them tied up with bungee cords and they were squealing and barking. He dumped them in the center of his circle, put on his black graduation robe and got the Chalice and Knife from the front of his truck. He carried an MP3 player with him and lay it next to the dogs. He cranked up The Symphony of the Nine Angles and started yelling stuff about the “Blood is the Life” and “Passing through Angles Unknown.” I guess I should have paid more attention in Mrs. Gamble’s geometry class, Nat thought, well after the fact, hearing about this.
Xavier picked one of his dogs up and cut its throat. It was not easy to manage this and hold the Chalice and the paperback. The dog made a terrible sound, and maybe someone was going to rush in and stop all this, but no one did. Everyone was scared. Everyone had seen the Terrible City on CNN and the Thing at the North Pole.
He dropped the squirming and whimpering dog. “¡Venga adelante y aparezca O Utonap’stim! ¡Venga! ¡Venga! ¡Yog Sothoth! ¡Beba la sangre se ha ofrecido que! I call you by the Seal that is at once Four and Five and Nine! ¡Venga! ¡Venga!”
The dying dog tried to crawl away. The other screamed like no one had never heard a dog scream. Xavier’s flashlight went out, but it wasn’t very dark because of the Moon. Then the Moon went dark. It was as though every piece of light was sucked away suddenly. People who told Nat about this later claimed they could feel sound being sucked away, too. In Robert E. Lee Park, next to the school, there were the usual late spring lightning bugs flashing on and off. Suddenly they all flew toward the parking lot. They clustered all over Xavier. Everyone could see him struggle, but couldn’t hear a word. He fell over and the dark went away; even his flashlight flickered back on. Finally, someone ran up to him. The bugs had eaten his skin and eyes. Juan found a gun and put the dog out of its misery. The others had trouble getting the cords off the other dog without getting bitten. When they did, she ran away. Somebody burned the book. CNN reported a few days later that if you called them by night they came.
Nat didn’t like thinking about that. But you couldn’t think otherwise. He looked at poor white Jesus. Poor bastard. Even being white didn’t save you now.
Nat was rich right now; he had made a run into Austin with Jesús’ truck. He had found an HEB that hadn’t been looted. Dried pinto beans, jalapenos, canned ham, tangerine jello, soup, flour (without too many weevils), and a large can of fruit cocktail. Mama invited over the MacLeods from next door. Dr. MacLeod had taught classes in chemistry at the University of Texas. His wife had taught painting classes for adults at the community college here in Doublesign. They had been great neighbors since before the Rising. They were Mormons so they had over a year’s supply of food saved up. They loved Mama, even when Nat and Jesús and Juan were sowing wild oats, they took her applesauce bread, and had had her over for “Mormon Beans” back when ground meat was available. Dr. MacLeod had been so helpful when the Rising happened. He knew all about the Masons and the Illuminati. He spoke at one of the last town meetings and everyone agreed to crucify the old men in the Masonic Lodge. It was easy to catch them; not one was under eighty—besides they died quickly, which everyone says is a Good Thing these days. Dr. MacLeod explained how the One World Government was really about Cthulhu. After the Moon opened its Eye, it was clear what the “All Seeing Eye” on the dollar bill had been about.
Mama didn’t have electricity, of course. But Nat had driven to Barton Creek Mall the day after one of the Shining Waves had passed through Austin. It had paused at the Mall, breaking it into three big pieces. Nat and Juan had loaded up their trucks two times each with the stock of a Wicks and Sticks. At first (before Victoria had walked into the sky) Nat had kept all the candles at his place. But when his wife was Called by the Thing Behind the Winds, he had moved everything (including Stephanie) to Mama’s. They lit candles everywhere, and only once had the house caught fire by one burning too low.
Dr. MacLeod was explaining the world, as usual. “What we didn’t understand is that it is all personal. I never understood that the many nights I researched stuff on the Web. All the scholars said it was impersonal.”
Mama just smiled. It was not that she lacked intelligence, but like so many, something had shut down in her. She never left the house except to get water at el rito. By day she read o
ld fotonovelas and copies of the Reader’s Digest. At night she prayed in her sala. She would not go with Nat to Church. Safety was here, in her home. She was happy when she could serve food to other people and when people brought her things.
“What do you mean, Dr. MacLeod?” asked Nat.
“It isn’t about what happened in the Pacific or the Arctic,” he said, “It’s your brother. It’s my son. Some Thing out there interfaced with us.”
Mrs. MacLeod said, “Is it because we were bad? Because the world was bad?”
“No, honey. We weren’t bad. We were just good food.”
“We weren’t the ones that were eaten or,” she said looking at Nat, “called.”
“Our suffering feeds them. When they take poor Stephanie there,” he began.
The child looked up, frightened.
Nat yelled, “They are not taking Stephanie!”
Mama began to cry. Stephanie looked down at her knees, afraid to move.
“Come on, Nat, face facts; everything we’ve heard tells us it runs in bloodlines,” said Dr. MacLeod.
“Shut up, honey. This isn’t the place,” said Mrs. MacLeod.
“They just need to face facts. The Others have a fix on their family, just like they got our Billy for meditation. Something was wrong with Theresa. She belonged to Them, and They Called her.”
Stephanie had put her hands over her ears. She sobbed.
“You go away, you bastard. We know what you are. Maybe they got your Billy because you had us nail up those old men. You go away and don’t come back.”
“Nat, you’re being emotional. You know they won’t let her in the Church building now. We just have to face facts.”
Mrs. MacLeod got up and was pulling her husband by the short ecru sleeve of his shirt. “Shut up, Bob. Nobody needs to face anything. We’ve all faced enough. Don’t ruin another night.”
He pulled his arm away from him. He drew back his arm as thought he might hit her, and then just started sobbing.
“Come home, hon.” She said very gently, “I am so sorry. So so sorry.”
Nat put Stephanie to bed. She was ten and would be in fourth grade if there was any school left. For a while Miss Farmer and Mrs. Martinez tried to do classes, but as it sank into people’s minds that man’s time as Earth’s master was over, classes ended. Nat and the people on the block raided Bowie Elementary School for books and globes and scissors and glue and colored paper. He had raided Terra Toys in Austin. There were still people or things like people in Austin. Then that was before the Shining Waves passed through. The empty houses across the way were filled with stuffed animals. He thought it would make the world less scary for Stephanie if she saw windows full of white bears and blue horses.
He usually slept in the hall between Stephanie’s and Mama’s rooms. There had only been one incident. One night a little crack opened in the air about six inches below the ceiling and a black slime had dripped down into another crack about six inches above the age-dulled hardwood floor. He had set up for hours watching it, hoping it would go away, praying that neither of the females would wake up and see it. It faded away before dawn. Some people thought the whole process was driven by dreams. Others thought dreams were driven by the process.
He couldn’t sleep tonight. Dr. MacLeod’s words had slipped under his skin. He thought about his little girl all the time. He played with her every day, not for the joy of play but to keep her focused on human things. Other parents wouldn’t let their kids play with her, not after her mother . . .
She liked the swing sets in Robert E. Lee Park. That was only two blocks away. He carried her on his shoulders, like she was a much younger girl. They would swing, and he would spin her around on the roundelay. Then one morning he found that something had taken a bite out of it in the night. After that he kept her at Mama’s. Nat wanted beyond all things to be able to take her to the Church, which he figured for the only sanctuary. Father Murphy had said no. He didn’t think the girl was Marked, but you know how everyone is these days.
Dawn came and he made breakfast for himself and Stephanie. Grits with a little molasses. She looked cute rubbing the sleep out of her black eyes. She wore her pale blue shorts and her little yellow top. She was growing out of the top, beginning to have the buds of breasts. Nat doubted that she would grow up to become a woman. There was no future for humans any more. He wondered for an instant if she would “marry” one of the gray-skinned ghouls in Austin, and the thought turned his stomach. Fortunately he did not lose his breakfast—food was rare.
“Hey, I need to go to work now.”
“You don’t need to work. Abuela dreamed we won the lottery.”
“There is no more lottery, my little bluebonnet.”
“Sometimes grandma says strange things.”
“She is just playing, my little orchid.”
“What’s an orchid?”
“It’s a pretty flower like you.”
“I’m not a flower. I’m a girl.”
“Then I will call you ‘flower-girl’ because you smell so sweet.”
“The next time you go to ATX, can you bring back some perfume so I really can smell sweet?”
“I will, Flower-Girl. Chanel Number Five.”
Today he was going to work in his cousin Tony’s field. Tony was bringing in a crop of corn, some tomatoes, and yerba de manso for sore throats. Even before the Rising weather was hot in Texas by April, and smart people didn’t work at midday. He woke up Mamacita. “I am going to Tony’s today. I will bring you some tomatoes and a little oregano, OK?”
“You are a good boy, Juan.”
“I’m Nat, not Juan.”
“Be careful, Juan, bring us some chicken from that place on Goliad Street.”
He kissed Mama’s brown forehead. The light went out a little each day. He remembered the line from that poem from Mrs. Phillips’s class, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Poetry made sense these days; history, not so much.
At the edge of the village stood walls made of galvanized iron and plywood. Two men were watching the road. Doublesign had been a tiny town, hence its name. “The sign that says Entering and the sign that says Leaving are on the same pole.” It was a couple of miles to the fields. He drove. As long as they could get gas out of the tanks, they wouldn’t walk. It made for too easy a target. The guards were Father Murphy, with a gray crewcut and a stained priest’s collar, and Nick Flores, a light brown man with a big gold tooth. Nick had a 512 tat and a People’s Nation star. They drank out of thermoses, rifles by their sides.
They got off their lawn chairs and began to swing the gate open. Father Murphy waved him over. Nat rolled down his window.
“Natividad Moreno—just the hombre I needed to see.” The father’s Irish accent had not died away after twenty years in Texas. Nor had his potbelly shrunk in the last three years. He was the only fat man left in Doublesign.
“What can I do for you, Father?” asked Nat.
“You can do something for our little town.” The father’s gray eyes were about to shoot out the guilt trip ray that only priests, nuns, and mothers can use. It could turn Nat into a teenager, into someone half his age.
“I do a lot for our little town. No one else makes the run into Austin since the flying things came.”
“You are a brave man, Nat. That’s why I thought of you. I need you to bring me something powerful. In Comesee there is a used bookstore. Eligio Mondragon told me that it has a curandero’s Bible. It has some of his charms and recipes written in it. As our supply of medicine runs out, we need to know about oshá and Alamo tea. Some of the charms may be helpful against things.”
“Why don’t you go get it?” asked Nat. He knew the answer: the priest was important and he was some peon, but he wondered how the priest would say it.
“Because I am afraid,” said Father Murphy.
“You think I am not?” asked Nat. “Fear and bravery are not enemies. But isn’t the book of a curandero taking from you used to
call the ‘other side’?”
“I am not making rash judgments these days. If I thought I could get the leprechauns to help us, I would be calling for them.”
“Why is Eligio remembering this now? Wouldn’t this have been a good thing last year or the year before?”
“Psychology is not my forté.”
“I am not going to risk my life for a book.”
“If you bring me the book, I will make your life much sweeter.”
“How?”
“Nat, I will allow Stephanie back into the church. I will let her stay there during the days, be in the storm shelter when needed. Your mother will not have to watch her during the day.”
This had been the first good news in so long that it almost puzzled Nat, as though he had lost his hearing and was suddenly greeted by the cry of a mourning dove.
He tried hard not to let his voice break, “You would do this for us?”
“The book is important.”
Jesús’ old Chevy Custom 10 dated from the Reagan Administration. It had belonged to Dr. Chainey, who ran the cancer clinic. Nat could’ve got a new pickup after the Dying in Austin, but he didn’t like to steal from the dead. Comesee lay twenty miles to the south. No one drove there because it lacked large grocery stores to loot—besides, as a small town, it might still have people.
The sun looked like the sun today, which Nat always felt was a good sign. He left on FM 1193. The first three miles held no surprises. About four miles on he saw one of the webbing cities. Roaches, the kind called palmetto bugs in Texas, had increased in size after the Rising. They were about as big as his fist and their shiny black carapaces were marked with bright green angular signs. They built cities. On the last day CNN had been on the air, there had been some remarks about them as the “Great Race.” Nat couldn’t see anything great about oversized bugs. People knew that they weren’t a thing of nature because their web cities were illuminated at night. The city took up the better part of what used to be a cotton field, so Nat knew it was at least forty acres in size.