Gothic Lovecraft

by Lynne Jamneck

  He sounded so reasonable, and I realized I’d had a tinge of hysteria in my voice. I tried to calm my tone. “You have hundreds of résumés. You’ll find someone else, I’m sure.” Why was I trying to reassure him?

  As if on cue, thunder rumbled overhead and the sky darkened quickly. “I think we’d best retreat to the house,” he said, firmly grasping my upper arm and leading me back quickly.

  We had to run the last hundred yards when a cloudburst soaked us.

  “Here,” he said when the door closed, “let’s get that wet coat off.” As he did this, I felt his body behind mine, too close, his cool breath on my damp neck, and I shivered with an unknown fear.

  Suddenly he moved a step back. “I’ll bring a towel.” When I turned, he handed me the rose, saying,

  “Between the thorns should prove less painful.”

  Like a child, I took the rose and stood inside the entrance with hair dripping and shoes squishing water, staring at the white petals tainted with small dots of my very red blood. Suddenly a deeper chill swept over me. This house was dangerous! I don’t know how I knew this, and I refused to analyze the thought: I want out!

  Instead of waiting for Martin to return, I placed the rose on the hallway table and, shivering, ran up the stairs to my room. My bags were still packed and I picked them up, moving out the door and into the hall toward the stairs.

  And stopped dead at the sight before me. Out of the gloom from the opposite end of the corridor a diminutive form, pale as a ghost, swaddled in white like a mummy, floated quickly toward me. Bringing with it the noxious odor!

  I took two steps back and instinctively my eyes squeezed tightly closed to block out this rank apparition.

  You’re imagining this! I told myself. I opened my eyes slowly to find inches from my chin a long, goat-like face with hairs sticking out here and there, the features twisted in fury, the skin puckered and pale as a corpse, the glassy black eyes staring malevolently at me. The odor was beyond impossible and I gagged and jerked back, banging the heaviest suitcase into my shin.

  The downturned lips parted, and it was as if an impossibly black, fetid cavity opened, one that would go on forever. The odor was the same as I’d smelled in her room, something from the other side of death, and the word Evil! popped into my head. Horrified and frozen to the spot, because she was so close, I was forced to breathe in that odor, and sensed I was inhaling poison.

  I stared, nearly mesmerized as her lips formed the words: “I will come below tonight and you will join me. Below.” Her voice was as deep as before, and suddenly I wasn’t sure if this was a woman or a man.

  Stunned, I could only nod, half paralyzed by terror.

  “Prepare yourself!” she snapped, the tone beyond harsh and demanding.

  Too frightened to speak, I backed up several steps, then turned and ran into my room, slamming and locking the door behind me. I leaned against the door gasping for air, shaking with fear, confused, doubting what had just happened.

  This is ridiculous! I told myself. What did you see? An old woman with the voice of a man, eccentric, smelly, that’s all. She acts like a queen, this matriarch, clearly used to being obeyed.

  But I had no intention of obeying. I decided to wait for a few minutes, crack the door to make sure the coast was clear, then get away from this house. Even if I had to walk back to the station in the downpour, I was leaving Whaterley Hall with its repulsive smells and creepy people. Let them hire applicant 665!

  Suddenly, a rush of heat filled my body from my toes to my head and sweat gushed from every pore. My head felt light and empty, and I had to sit down. I dropped the one suitcase I was still holding and staggered to the bed, stepping on the little stool to sit. The dizziness increased, and with it I went from hot to cold as a chill stabbed my body. I shivered, at first mildly, then uncontrollably, and crawled under the covers, wishing I had more blankets, wishing there was a fire in the fireplace, shaking so much my teeth chattered.

  I’m sick, I thought. How can I be sick? And then I lost awareness, slipping in and out of sleep, of dreams and hallucinations. Between freezing and burning, I drifted through time. Someone must have entered the room and built a fire in the fireplace: yellow-orange-red flames licked the black screen as if trying to reach me, wood crackled, too loud, a tree felled by lightning. Heat raged, scorching the room, making the air wavy to my vision, barely touching my icy, trembling flesh. Then, suddenly, I was engulfed, kicking off the blankets, my body on the verge of igniting.

  The flocked wallpaper’s raised velvet became blood-red figures, alive, squiggling like maggots, swarming all around me! I felt so depleted I couldn’t move to escape. All I seemed capable of doing was emitting low, wretched sounds, cries of dread. My world had turned into a nightmare. But the worst was yet to come.

  At my weakest, most vulnerable point, Mrs. Whaterley appeared. This… creature stared down at me, crinkly animal-face severe, black-hole eyes glinting, downturned lips shifting into something like a wicked smile that parted into a black expanding abyss. I trembled and sobbed, wishing I could sleep to ward off the sight of this abomination. I did close my eyes. That was a mistake. When I opened them she was still there, but the shroud no longer encased her. The naked body was a shock, forcing a gasp and then a scream from me, one that reverberated inside my head. What loomed above me reached out for me, not an old woman, or even an old man. This was no human being! The bony torso protruding against death-white flesh, skin wrinkled and layered like centuries of erosion, this … thing … I can only call it a thing … had a dozen arms! But they weren’t arms, they were appendages without hands, extending from her back, weaving and swaying like the maggots in the wallpaper. And now all those arms came at me!

  The shock of this abhorrent touch left me screaming, vomiting, choking, gasping for air, suffocating, incoherent.

  Suddenly Martin was there, behind her, then in front of her, and then she was gone. He lifted me up, pounding my back so I could breathe, holding me upright, telling me to relax, and I realized I was naked. “Where … is it?” I stuttered. “The arms …”

  “There, there,” Martin said, in an attempt to be comforting in his distant way. “Drink this,” he said, and turned to reach for a cup of tea. In that moment I glanced down at my naked body and saw blood between my legs. And screamed, “Help me! Help me escape!”

  “You’re not a prisoner, Dana. You can leave, if you’re strong enough. Right now you’re weak. You’ll need to rebuild your strength for the coming months.”

  “What do you mean? What are you talking about?” I shrieked. I sounded incoherent and had no idea if he understood me, because he didn’t answer. I only knew that as much as I longed to leave Whaterley House, I could not move.

  My fever lasted days, weeks. I don’t know, I lost track of time. When it was most intense, the thing called Mrs. Whaterley visited me. While I struggled to stay conscious, all I could remember was the tentacle-arms, reaching for me, touching my bare skin with an otherworldly iciness. And the blood afterwards. Always the blood.

  When the fever finally broke and I came back to myself, I wrapped up in the comforter stinking of sweat and other things and managed to get out of bed, dizzy as I stood, my head empty, but I was determined. I needed to get out of here!

  I staggered to the window and saw fields covered with snow. How much time had passed? My legs were weak and I had to sit. On the small table beside the chair sat a plate of fruit, some bread and butter, a teapot, cup, and saucer. Also on the table was the white rose flecked with my blood, now withered, dried, in a vase with no water, the thorns in death still sharp.

  A soft knock at my door made me cringe and pull the cover tighter around me. Without my answering, Martin came in.

  “I’m delighted to see you’re feeling better,” he said, his tone even, his face showing no signs of delight. “I’ll help you dress and you can come down for sustenance.”

  “I don’t want to go downstairs and I don’t want dinner,” I sai
d. “I want to leave.”

  Martin ignored me. He went to the armoire and selected one of my flower-print dresses—apparently someone had unpacked my bags.

  He walked to me and said, “Stand, please.”

  “No! Leave me alone.”

  “You’re very weak, Dana. Please don’t struggle. You need to come down.”

  But I did struggle, pointlessly. Despite his slim frame, he was incredibly strong and quickly had me unwrapped from the comforter and the dress over my naked body.

  Rebelliously I whined, “I need underwear!”

  “You don’t,” he said, like a parent to a child.

  He pushed my feet into the shoes I’d worn on my arrival and then lifted me from the chair, half carrying me out the door, along the hallway and down the steps of the main staircase. Instantly, I was keenly aware of the foul smell—it was gone!

  As if reading my thoughts, Martin said, “My aunt has had a turn for the better. Things have normalized.”

  “Normalized?!” I muttered as we reached the ground floor.

  Instead of turning toward the dining room, we entered the great hall with the paintings of the severe ancestors. The room was so vast that at first I didn’t notice Mrs. Whaterley, or who or whatever she was, seated in the middle of the red-velvet three-person indiscret settee.

  Now she looked almost normal to my eyes, an old lady, her thin, pointed face resembling that of her progenitors. She was wrapped in a large velvet cloak of a robe, her diminutive figure nearly swallowed by the settee on which she sat.

  “Sit there,” Martin said, and, exhausted, I dropped onto the seat on her right. Martin took the one to her left. The snake-like settee meant we could all look at one another easily, and around the room. Despite the pretense of dinner, we sat silently, me dozing now and then, all through the dark hours until dawn, at which point Martin stood and helped his aunt up and they left the room.

  This is your chance! I told myself. You might only get one! I moved as quickly as my depleted frame could to the front door, flung it open, and stared at the snow blowing wildly across the walks and garden. The wind sweeping through the skeletons of shrubs, trees, and hedges howled. How could I escape? The station was an hour away by car, half a day by foot. I was trapped here!

  From behind me came the cold, even voice I’d grown to loathe. “Only trapped for nine months,” Martin said.

  What was he talking about? A sudden awareness descended and I realized that inside me life was growing. How had that happened? Martin must have raped me when I was unconscious with fever. I hated him in that moment and spun to face him.

  His face seemed to shift, taking on the features of his ancestors, and in an instant I knew what had really happened to me. To preserve my sanity, I quickly blocked it out, the reality too horrifying to comprehend fully. All I let myself know was this: I was pregnant. I was not ready to face the rest of the horror.

  Martin said I would be trapped for nine months, but he also said nothing ever leaves here, nothing is taken away, the roses die but the bush brings forth new life in the spring. Nine months from now it would be spring. At that moment, I realized that the moment I had set foot in Whaterley House, my fate was sealed.

  Knowing that Martin could read me too well, I turned away and blocked thoughts of revenge. But this… creature … within me, if I could help it, would never be born. I would not add to this dynasty of grotesques!

  My days are spent alone in the Hell-Fire Room. I sleep, write this journal which I hide under the mattress, sleep more, stare out the window at the endless winter. Martin brings meals to me before sunset and after sunrise. Each night I am forced to join the Whaterley’s on the indiscrete.

  I bide my time, planning two things: my escape, and the murder of these alien creatures. I must escape soon— the longer I wait, the harder it will be. My body is growing large and heavy, and the storms outside rage. I must escape because I know once the thing draws breath, they will bury me in the rose garden with the other dead roses who came before me, the human women used to evolve the line of this hideous “family” of non-humans so that they appear human. But they are not. These are cold, alien beings, without sympathy, without empathy, without human kindness. Their cold kills.

  There are monsters in our world, and I have come to understand my higher calling. I have amassed a small arsenal of tools, spending my hours alone sharpening pieces of wood, honing dinner knives, collecting shards of pottery I shatter until the edges are as sharp as scalpels.

  I may or may not succeed in killing all three of them. I may or may not escape. If you’re reading this, know that I will try.

  One thing I have learned and what humanity needs to understand: there is an ancient, savage line, one not from earth. I’ve figured out that they’ve existed all over the world, throughout time, even before the first Homo sapiens evolved. These … things … are bent on propagating, populating the planet with their kind in the guise of our kind. I don’t know their final goal, but what I’m absolutely certain of is this: their end will lead to our end!

  As Red as Red

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  1

  “So, you believe in vampires?” she asks, then takes another sip of her coffee and looks out at the rain pelting Thames Street beyond the café window. It’s been pissing rain for almost an hour, a cold, stinging shower on an overcast afternoon near the end of March, a bitter Newport afternoon that would have been equally at home in January or February. But at least it’s not pissing snow.

  I put my own cup down—tea, not coffee—and stare across the booth at her for a moment or two before answering. “No,” I tell Abby Gladding. “But, quite clearly, those people in Exeter who saw to it that Mercy Brown’s body was exhumed, the ones who cut out her heart and burned it, clearly they believed in vampires. And that’s what I’m studying, the psychology behind that hysteria, behind the superstitions.”

  “It was so long ago,” she replies and smiles. There’s no foreshadowing in that smile, not even in hindsight. It surely isn’t a predatory smile. There’s nothing malevolent, or hungry, or feral in the expression. She just watches the rain and smiles, as though something I’ve said amuses her.

  “Not really,” I say, glancing down at my steaming cup. “Not so long ago as people might like to think. The Mercy Brown incident, that was in 1892, and the most recent case of purported vampirism in the northeast I’ve been able to pin down dates from sometime in 1898, a mere hundred and eleven years ago.”

  Her smile lingers, and she traces a circle in the condensation on the plate-glass window, then traces another circle inside it.

  “We’re not so far removed from the villagers with their torches and pitchforks, from old Cotton Mather and his bunch. That’s what you’re saying.”

  “Well, not exactly, but …” and when I trail off, she turns her head towards me, and her blue-grey eyes seem as cold as the low-slung sky above Newport. You could almost freeze to death in eyes like those, I think, and I take another sip of my lukewarm Earl Grey with lemon. Her eyes seem somehow brighter than they should in the dim light of the coffeehouse, so there’s your foreshadowing, I suppose, if you’re the sort who needs it.

  “You’re pretty far from Exeter, Ms. Howard,” she says, and takes another sip of her coffee. And me, I’m sitting here wishing we were talking about almost anything but Rhode Island vampires and the madness of crowds, tuberculosis and the master’s thesis I’d be defending at the end of May. It had been months since I’d had anything even resembling a date, and I didn’t want to squander the next half hour or so talking shop.

  “I think I’ve turned up something interesting,” I tell her, because I can’t think of any subtle way to steer the conversation in another direction. A case no one’s documented before, right here in Newport.”

  She smiles that smile again.

  “I got a tip from a folklorist up at Brown,” I say. “Seems like maybe there was an incident here in 1785 or thereabouts. If it checks out, I migh
t be onto the oldest case of suspected vampirism resulting in an exhumation anywhere in New England. So, now I’m trying to verify the rumors. But there’s precious little to go on. Chasing vampires, it’s not like studying the Salem witch trials, where you have all those court records, the indictments and depositions and what have you. Instead, it’s necessary to spend a lot of time sifting and sorting fact from fiction, and, usually, there’s not much of either to work with.”

  She nods, then glances back towards the big window and the rain. “Be a feather in your cap, though. If it’s not just a rumor, I mean.”

  “Yes,” I reply. “Yes, it certainly would.”

  And here, there’s an unsettling wave of not-quite déjà vu, something closer to dissociation, perhaps, and for a few dizzying seconds I feel as if I’m watching this conversation, a voyeur listening in, or I’m only remembering it, but in no way actually, presently, taking part in it. And, too, the coffeehouse and our talk and the rain outside seem no more concrete—no more here and now—than does the morning before. One day that might as well be the next, and it’s raining, either way.

  I’m standing alone on Bowen’s Warf, staring out past the masts crowded into the marina at sleek white sailboats skimming over the glittering water, and there’s the silhouette of Goat Island, half hidden in the fog. I’m about to turn and walk back up the hill to Washington Square and the library, about to leave the gaudy Disney World concessions catering to the tastes of tourists and return to the comforting maze of ancient gabled houses lining winding, narrow streets. And that’s when I see her for the first time. She’s standing alone near the “seal safari” kiosk, staring at a faded sign, at black-and-white photographs of harbor seals with eyes like the puppies and little girls from those hideous Margaret Keane paintings. She’s wearing an old pea coat and shiny green galoshes that look new, but there’s nothing on her head, and she doesn’t have an umbrella. Her long black hair hangs wet and limp, and when she looks at me, it frames her pale face.

  Then it passes, the blip or glitch in my psyche, and I’ve snapped back, into myself, into this present. I’m sitting across the booth from her once more, and the air smells almost oppressively of freshly roasted and freshly ground coffee beans.