Goat Mother and Others: The Collected Mythos Fiction of Pierre Comtois

by Pierre V. Comtois

  “That’s why he needed such a big mailbox outside,” concluded Darlene…she’d always wondered about that.

  “Its size did come in handy for the bulkier items,” confirmed Whitney. “It was before my time of course, and it wasn’t as if he confided in me, you understand, but it was my impression that it was Dunwich’s reputation that first drew him here from Dean’s Corners. I’m told before he became infirm, he often went up into the hills to look over the stone circles and was seen sometimes over at what’s left of the old Whateley place. But all that was a long time ago, before his wife died…hmm, now that I think of it, I think I heard tell that she was distantly related to the Whateleys. Anyway, he hadn’t been out of the house much in recent years, that’s why he spent so much of his time doing business through the mail.”

  “Well, I was planning on going through Uncle Silas’ papers, but I guess that’ll have to be put off for a while,” Darlene said. “Right now, I have a guest to entertain.”

  Darlene crossed the foyer into the living room and as she did so, her guest rose from where he was sitting in an old wing-back before the empty fireplace. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she was surprised to find that the man before her barely came to her waist in height. At the moment, he was swathed in a cloak of some kind with a hood fallen behind his head. His features seemed vaguely Asian but because his skin was slightly disfigured from what Darlene guessed was burn damage, she couldn’t be sure.

  “I’m Darlene Cobb, Silas’ niece,” said Darlene, extending a hand.

  The little man nodded his head slightly but didn’t offer his own hand in return.

  “I am pleased to meets you,” he said in heavily accented English…or was there something wrong with his voice? “My name is Shuri.”

  “Welcome to my uncle’s home, Mr. Shuri,” replied Darlene, motioning for her guest to retake his chair. “You have already been informed of my uncle’s death?”

  Shuri nodded. “Yes, very tragic. Very untimely. I have traveled a very long way to do business with your uncles.”

  “Where do you come from, if I may ask?”

  “Very far,” Shuri said again. “Far to the East, near the land you knows as Burma.”

  “That is far away. But, if I may ask, what is the nature of the business you were to have with my uncle? Perhaps it’s something that can yet be completed?”

  “Perhaps. You are his niece? The daughter of his brother, Joshua?”

  It was an odd way of putting it, and certainly strange to hear this stranger from the other side of the world speak of her in such familiar tones. What exactly had her uncle told Shuri about her and why the need for such detail? “Yes, I am she. Does that make any difference?”

  Shuri visibly relaxed and leaned back in his chair.

  “Very much so,” said Shuri. “Your uncles spoke very highly of you, and was eager that I should meet you.”

  “Why was that?”

  Shuri didn’t answer, instead, he leaned over and took a suitcase that had stood behind his chair out of Darlene’s line of sight. Placing it on his lap, he clicked open the lid and reached inside. A moment later, the suitcase was back on the floor and in his hands he held a plain loose-leaf binder filled to its capacity with sheaves of paper.

  “This binder contains the full history of my peoples, called the Tcho Tcho.”

  Darlene had never heard of them.

  “We are a very old peoples and growing fewer with each year that passes,” continued Shuri. “Your uncles, as you no doubt know, was a seeker of knowledge. Objects, whether books, idols, or even stones and plants that furthered that knowledge were precious to him. He was very eager to acquire them.” Shuri looked around the room. “And I can see that he had much success at it. There, for instance, is a carving of Chaugnar Faugn, very rare. And there, a porcelain figurine of Tsathoggua. Most delightful to behold however is this she-goat, a fetish hand-woven by the Tcho Tcho.”

  Here, Shuri took down the goat from the mantelpiece.

  “It is a figure very holy to my people, the fleshly appearance of Shub-Niggurath, she who has guarded our fields and blessed us with many offspring for countless centuries.” Suddenly, Shuri became more somber. “Unfortunately, due to transgressions we do not understands, the goat of a thousand young has abandoned us. The Black Lotus lies withered in our fields and the sounds of young ones do not ring amid the barren hills of my homelands.”

  “That’s…too bad,” was all Darlene could say, not really able to identify with what was clearly some uncivilized tribe in the back country of…Burma, was it? Where exactly was that, anyway?

  Shuri replaced the stuffed goat and extended the binder to Darlene.

  “Take this, as your uncle’s heir, it is yours now.”

  “Oh…well, okay. But what was it that my uncle was to give to you in return? One of these statues or a book….I can tell you he left very little money in his accounts.”

  Shuri smiled. “All in good times.”

  Now Darlene was worried. It didn’t sound as if Shuri intended to leave any time soon, and the last thing she wanted was to have to entertain him indefinitely.

  “Well, as much as I understand the unexpected circumstances of your arrival and the problems they might make to your travel plans, Mr. Shuri, I feel it is my obligation to tell you that I have no plan to remain in Dunwich. As a matter of fact, I had intended to leave for New York as soon as possible.”

  “And I have no desire to hinder your departure,” Shuri soothed. “As a matter of fact, it is my intention to leave soon also. Tomorrow, I hope. Will that be suitables?”

  “That would be fine,” said Darlene, relieved.

  “Well, then, if I may be shown to my room?” Shuri said, getting up.

  Later in the evening, Darlene found herself in her uncle’s study, a small room at the back of the house that had once been what folks used to call a mud room. Windows all around allowed-in plenty of sunlight during the day and cool breezes on hot nights. She had already gone through the desk, and found little to explain where her uncle’s money had gone to, or why he’d decided to pay her way through college when it seemed he may have had so little. There were, however, lots of odds and ends: correspondence to antiquarians and scientists around the country, bills of sale for books and art objects, even a notebook that her uncle obviously used to record what he learned about Dunwich history. But nothing about her, or the family they both had shared.

  Suddenly, the telephone resting on the desk buzzed and she picked it up.

  “Cobb residence.”

  “Darlene?”

  “Bill!”

  “You don’t sound happy to hear from me.”

  “I’m neither happy nor unhappy. How’d you get this number?”

  “That doesn’t matter, I’m calling to find out if you’ve had a change of heart.”

  Darlene sighed. “I…no, I haven’t had time to even think about it.”

  “Well, I’ve decided not give up on you yet. I can be a pretty persistent guy when I want to.”

  “That’s fine, Bill, but if you’re going to be obnoxious about it, then forget it.”

  “I’ll take that response as a positive one, then.”

  “Take it any way you want to but right now I have to say good night.”

  Darlene returned the receiver to its cradle…The nerve of Bill calling me here…then noticed that the message indicator light on the telephone was blinking. Pressing the replay button, she waited a few seconds before the first message came on. There were a number of them, most inconsequential, and one even featured the voice of her uncle talking to a travel agent. Listening, she learned that her uncle had made all the arrangements for Shuri’s visit as well as paying for his trip. No wonder he had no money left in his accounts!

  But the real surprise followed with the final recording. It happened when her uncle apparently waited too long to answer the telephone and the following conversation was automatically recorded by the answering machine.
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  “…are much eager to make transaction,” said a voice whose accent was similar to Shuri’s.

  “No less than I am,” replied her uncle. “Is the book complete?”

  “Yes,” said the person on the other end of the line. “Many of my peoples work on different parts of book according to different knowledges. Then a translation must be made from Elder Tongue to Inglaise…English…but be warned…much knowledges secret, untold, until puts in book. Must be kept secrets lest the High Lama of Leng learn of it. Many years has my peoples kept work secrets. Must not be careless now.”

  “I realize that and agree with you completely regarding the need for secrecy,” replied her uncle. “I have been preparing for this trade for almost ten years, and now that the time draws close, I have no intention of letting anything ruin it.”

  “Many years, yes, many years have the Tcho Tcho endured without the blessings of our mother, Shub-Niggurath. There are no more younglings to continue our traditions, and those of us who yet live grow older. A new Goat-Mother we needs to restore the blessings of fertility that flow from the goat of a thousand young…”

  “Yes, yes; you will soon have yourselves a new goat-mother. All has been prepared. As I promised, the candidate will be here when the time comes. Just make sure your man brings the essence of the Black Lotus with him…and the book as well.”

  “He will have both.”

  “Good, then I’ll look forward to your emissary’s arrival.”

  Darlene stood transfixed, lost in thought as her mind tried to make sense of what she’d heard. It was only with the click of the answering machine as it completed its rewind cycle that she was jolted back to an awareness of her present surroundings.

  What had her uncle been up to? A trade of some kind for sure, obviously involving the packed ring binder presented to her by Shuri earlier in the evening. But the trade her uncle had had in mind, it sounded as if it had to do with a person rather than a thing like one of the statuettes stored around the house. But who? By the way he had spoken, it sounded as if whoever it was that he had in mind would be here in time for Shuri’s arrival. Whitney? He hardly fit a female-oriented role evoked by such phrases as “goat-mother,” fertility, and the restoration of “younglings.” Then a cold realization swept over her, as she stood in the room where perhaps her uncle had first devised and then executed what occurred to her as a cold-blooded and calculated plot that could only have been aimed at herself.

  But that was impossible, ridiculous! she thought. Her common-sense, asserting itself, refused to accept the conclusion the facts as she knew them seemed to indicate. Her uncle, sensitive to her desperation to escape the stultifying, small-town world of Dean’s Corners, and perhaps sympathetic to her desires to widen her knowledge, had generously paid for a full four years of college. He had left her his house and all his possessions upon his death. He’d invited her to visit this time because he knew he was ill and wanted to see her once more before he died. That was all there was to it.

  But then, there was the telephone conversation she’d just heard. It was her uncle’s voice, clearly involved with an arrangement with someone that involved trading a “candidate” for “goat-mother” for some secret knowledge contained in a book especially compiled for him. He had assured the speaker on the other end of the line that the “candidate” would be at the house when the delivery of the book was made. Since Shuri’s arrival, that included only Whitney and herself. What did it all mean? Reluctantly, her mind began offering an alternate explanation for her uncle’s past generosity: what if he’d planned on putting her into his debt. Not asking for anything in return, but expecting to some day play on her sense of obligation to lure her to his home when the time came to make the transaction?

  It was crazy, but it was the only explanation that made sense. But with her uncle dead, the deal would be off, right? There was no way Shuri and his people could collect on the deal. Yes, that was it. In the morning, she’d give Shuri’s book back to him and tell him that whatever arrangement there was with her uncle was canceled.

  Determined to go through with her plan first thing in the morning, Darlene was headed to her bedroom when she remembered she’d left the binder in the living room. For safe keeping, she decided to take it with her for the night.

  A noise woke her up. Raising herself onto an elbow Darlene listened, but heard only the familiar sounds an old house makes at night and outside, the lonely calls of solitary birds unable to sleep. Leaving her bed, she went to the open window and pressed her face close to the screen. Outside, all was quiet except for the soft susurration of the evening breeze among the forest trees. A few clouds, shining in the moonlight, scudded across a sky filled with stars and atop Sabbat Hill, there was once again the glow of light. Was it sounds from the kids partying on the hill that she heard? Glancing at the alarm clock she saw that was almost 3 a.m. — pretty late for teenagers to be out in the woods, guzzling beer.

  Turning back to the bed, her eyes fell on the binder she had left on her bedroom dresser. Suddenly curious, she picked it up and began thumbing through the pages. She was a little surprised to find that it was all handwritten, not printed from a machine, and each “chapter” had obviously been written by different hands. Unwilling to go so far as to turn on her bedroom lamp she brought the book to the window to read by moonlight, but soon realized the subject was incomprehensible: filled with such wild tales and conflicting facts as to be expected from primitive folklore. Who was this Nyarlathotep for instance? In some places it seemed to be a place and others a living being and in one place, it was actually identified as some kind of traveling showman! Then, like the better-known Atlantis, there were places of a frankly fabulous nature such as “the Plateaus of Leng and Sung,” “Sarkomand,” “Yuggoth” and “Kadath.” Why her uncle thought such a collection of fairy tales important enough to go to the lengths he did to get them, she couldn’t understand. If, of course, her suspicions had any validity. Well, it wouldn’t do any harm to cancel her uncle’s deal with Shuri’s people just in case. Certainly, she had no use for the book. Crawling back under the covers, she was soon asleep again. The glow in the hills subsided, soon to be replaced by the glow of morning.

  Darlene unlocked her bedroom door, which she had taken the precaution of latching the night before, and headed for the bathroom located on the ground floor of the house. She noticed Shuri’s room was empty, the bed neatly made, almost as if he hadn’t slept in it. A half-hour later, after returning to her room to complete her toilet, she descended the narrow stairwell at the back of the house to the kitchen. Shuri was there ahead of her, sipping tea at the table.

  “Good mornings, Miss,” he said, his face seeming puffier than it did the day before.

  “Good morning, Mr. Shuri,” Darlene replied, stepping off the final stair. “You’re up early.”

  “Was up before suns. Have taken walks in hills. Very beautiful countryside heres,” he gestured with his cup. “The tea Mr. Whitney left on stove is very good, will you joins me?”

  “Oh, Mr. Whitney is here already?” asked Darlene, taking a cup down from the cupboard.

  “Oh, yes. Was here early. Fix tea for Shuri. Said he had to go to markets to buy things for lunch.”

  Darlene poured the still-steaming tea into her cup and sat at the table across from her guest.

  “Mr. Shuri, there’s something I want to talk to you about,” she began, sipping at her tea. It had a peculiar aroma that smelled familiar and she wondered idly what kind of blend it was?

  “No needs for more talk,” said Shuri, looking all the more diminutive in slacks and shirt. His feet, unable to reach the floor from the chair he was sitting on, were shod incongruously in a pair of Addidas running shoes. “I brings book as promised, now receive what uncles traded for.”

  “Well, that’s just it,” said Darlene, with a sudden flash of what she could only describe as displacement; as if for a moment, time had stopped for her as the rest of the world continued to rush by.
“My uncle has died and left me with all he owned, including the responsibility for whatever debts and obligations he made while living. Although I may be legally bound to pay some of them from his estate, I’m not liable for other, less-formal agreements.”

  “Ah, buts you see, Miss Cobb,” said Shuri, setting down his tea and slipping from his chair, “I am similarly bounds by the law of my owns people, the Tcho Tcho People.”

  “That may be true…but…” said Darlene, setting her own cup down with a feeling of increasing lethargy. Again, it seemed to her as if everything around her was hurtling into the future even as she stood like a rock in a rushing stream, forcing water around her but never yielding. Outside, she thought she could see the sun climbing toward noontime and the clouds racing past the summit of Sabbat Hill…then it came to her as if from long ago…the familiar smell of the tea…it was on Sabbat Hill that she’d encountered it before…the fire that had been put out…the blackened remains… “The laws in Burma don’t necessarily…apply in the…United…”

  “That is quite all right, Miss,” said Shuri, helping her to get up. “The law of Leng is much older. Much, much older and for those who transgress, the punishments is not a thing pleasant to contemplate. Much more frightfuls than the laws of humans. And so, you sees, to avoid punishments, the law of Leng must be observed and the agreements your uncles made with the Tcho Tcho must be fulfilled. You will come with me and you will see. You will be glorifieds and be a mother to our peoples. You will give birth to new younglings who will continue to serve our masters Nyarlathotep, may his name be praised.”

  Darlene allowed herself to be led from the kitchen.

  “Now, you will packs yourself a bag for travel,” continued Shuri. “We have long journeys ahead of us.”

  From that point, Darlene could remember little but the occasional impression or snatch of conversation. To all outward appearances, she seemed normal and in possession of all her faculties, perfectly cognizant of what she was doing when she called Whitney to verify his commitment to oversee the property until the house could be sold, when she told Humberton to send all mail to her residence in New York and to transfer the proceeds from the sale of the house to her personal account, when she called the travel agent to arrange a flight schedule for Shuri and herself to Burma.