“We live in our little bubbles of time.” For a moment the gleam of an old enthusiasm showed through the weariness. “Our personal memories go back a matter of decades. The collective memories of our institutions, a few centuries. Our recorded history, maybe five thousand years, barely an eyeblink in the vast cycles of the cosmos—and that’s enough all by itself to challenge the notion that our lives are important in the overall scheme of things.
“If our own history challenges that notion, though, the elder world tramples it into the dust. That’s why our authors borrowed that concept from the books they used as sources. They wanted us to feel the shock and horror of thinking that there are things on this planet that were here before our ancestors first crawled on land. They wanted us to feel the vertigo of time, to fear that what’s past isn’t really past and what’s dead might not stay dead.” He looked up from his notes. “Even though we know it’s not true. Even though we know the past is over and done with and none of the things they wrote about are real.”
Brecken kept her reaction off her face, but she wanted to huddle down the way Sho did when she was upset. What if that’s not what I feel? she thought. What if knowing Sho’s people were around before mine just makes me curious about what it was like back then?
And what if something that matters to me a lot is supposed to be past and dead?
The professor folded up his notes and packed them into a briefcase. Jay rolled his eyes, typed a note on his tablet. Past him, Julian still looked bored.
SIX
The Thing That Should Not Be
BRECKEN WENT PELTING OUT into the gray morning, climbed into the back seat of Rosalie’s bright red Nissan, said the usual things to Rosalie and Donna as she buckled her seatbelt. The Nissan started moving again and whipped through a dubiously legal U-turn. A few minutes later it rattled down Dwight Street through Sunday traffic past strip malls and fast-food outlets, went straight where the entrance onto the highway turned right. Beyond that, a concrete bridge leapt the brown torrent of Belknap Creek, and beyond that the bland angular masses of the Belknap Creek Mall rose up against a sky dotted with clouds. It took a little searching, but Rosalie found the right entrance eventually, and they piled out of the car, got their instruments and other gear, and headed inside.
A third of the storefronts in the mall were closed, and old people walking for exercise outnumbered shoppers by two or three to one: no surprises there, Brecken thought, not with the economy as bad as it was. Still, the management company that ran the mall had a portable stage and a sound system set up in the central food court, between two square pools with fountains bubbling feebly in them. Nearby a stand held a placard announcing THE ROSE AND THORN ENSEMBLE in the kind of florid faux-antique typeface Rosalie liked to call “oldey worldey.”
Loudspeakers in the ceiling spat out a number by some popular vocalist whose name Brecken didn’t know, moaning about her feelings over a single unchanging chord and a drum track, as they set up their music stands and got their instruments ready. “That had better go away,” Donna said with an irritable glance at the nearest loudspeaker, and Rosalie and Brecken gave each other wry looks; they’d had to play over the top of sky syrup more than once the year before. Jamal showed up a few minutes on, and then finally Jay and Walt arrived, along with a woman from the management company in a bright red jacket and skirt, who greeted them all with a forced cheerfulness that made her smile look like a grimace of pain. She hurried off to see to the recorded music, and a few minutes later it shut off in mid-moan.
“Ready?” Jay asked.
“Whenever you want, boss man,” said Jamal. The others nodded, instruments at the ready, and Jay turned to Rosalie and gestured: you’re on. A moment later the first notes of Pachelbel’s Canon shimmered out through the atrium and spread through the mall.
As she began playing her part, Brecken watched the walkers and shoppers passing the food court. Most of them glanced toward the stage, some of them slowed or stopped, and a few changed course, found empty seats at the little two- and four-person tables around the food court, and settled down to listen. She could see the hunger in their faces, the longing for music that found the middle ground between the mindless and the incomprehensible, and let that longing flow into the breath she sent dancing over the mouthpiece of Mrs. Macallan’s flute and the notes she shaped with her fingers. She half-turned to face Jamal, let herself enjoy the intensity of his concentration and drew that, too, into her playing.
The Canon wound down to its final chord, and then to silence. Applause rattled through the unquiet air. Jay, beaming, glanced at each of the others, made sure he had their attention, and nodded one, two, three. On the fourth nod, they began the Bach minuet. From then on it was one piece after another, one burst of applause after another, until the last bars of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” rang out across the food court, and one last round of clapping, pleasantly loud, followed it.
All the while Brecken watched the small crowd that gathered around the little stage and the faces turned up toward hers, watching the ensemble, listening to the music. Once, to her great amusement, she spotted a gaggle of twelve-year-olds wearing t-shirts splashed with pop-band logos; they stood on the far side of one of the fountains, watching the performance with disgusted looks, and then left the food court. A little later, she spotted a familiar face—Mike Schau from the composition class—as he stopped briefly on the far side of the other pool, gave the ensemble a look of disbelief, turned and stalked away.
Toward the end, though, another familiar face appeared in the food court: Barbara Cormyn’s. She came out of a nearby department store, listened to the music for a little while, then walked over and found an empty seat. Her face still had its look of perpetual surprise, but she sat there watching and listening for the rest of the performance. Only when the “Ode to Joy” wound up did she get up and walk away from the food court.
Brecken barely noticed her leave. As the music gave way to applause and then to silence around her, a few notes in “Ode to Joy” called up from memory similar notes in the sentence of shoggoth language that worked out to we live beneath the ground. Maybe it was the music she’d just played, maybe it was the rush she always got from seeing her own delight in music echoed in the faces of her listeners, but the notes had an intensity and color she hadn’t heard in them before. She let them circle through her mind as she took her flute apart, cleaned it, and stowed it in its case. Only as she took down her music stand did she notice that she was quietly humming a second part that descended in quick soft steps as the shoggoth-sentence soared upwards, and rose back up again as it dropped again, dancing around the B flat where the two parts met. The effect delighted her, and she paused long enough to sketch out melody and harmony on the back of a scrap of paper before she finished packing her tote bag.
She went with the others to the exit, stopped just inside the doors so that Jay could thank them all and deal out cash: not much of it, not with a small fee divided six ways, but every dollar helped. A few minutes later she was out in the parking lot under a sky gone gray, with drops of rain splashing down on cars and asphalt alike; a few minutes after that she was curled up in Rosalie’s back seat as the car dodged traffic along Dwight Street and rain drummed on the roof. All the while, melody and harmony contended in Brecken’s mind, struggling toward something she could not yet grasp, tinged with the luminous state she’d come to think of, after the Yeats quote, as the condition of fire.
She blinked, then, realizing that the car had been stopped in front of Mrs. Dalzell’s house for some moments. “Earth to Brecken?” Rosalie said, half turning to look back at her.
Brecken blushed. “Sorry,” she said. “Working on a piece of music.”
That got a sudden tense look from Rosalie that worried Brecken, and a little dubious sniff from Donna that annoyed her. She quelled the reactions, thanked them both, made the appropriate noises about seeing them the next day, and climbed out of the car.
The rain had started i
n earnest, pounding down with enough force to send spray rising from the sidewalk and rivulets of water streaming off the ends of the gutters. Brecken bent forward, clutched her tote bag against her chest, and ran for the door. Though she dashed through the gap between houses and got the door open as quickly as she could, she was good and wet by the time she got safely inside. While she greeted Sho, stripped to the skin, toweled off, shrugged on a flannel nightgown and a baggy sweater, got a can of chicken noodle soup heating on the stove, and hung her wet clothes on the shower rail to dry, the music waited.
Finally, though, the two of them were settled on the futon with a quilt spread impartially over Brecken’s lap and roughly two-thirds of Sho, and all the words that needed saying had been said. As they sipped from mugs of hot soup, Brecken got her composing notebook out of a heap on the nearby endtable, found a blank page, and started writing down the music she’d held in her mind all that time.
At first she thought it might be another piece for piano, but the two parts called for two different voices, and the melody line wanted a quick bright flavor that only a flute could give it. Flute and piano? That felt right: a concerto for flute and piano, and what had come to her was the theme of the first movement, a lively allegretto piece. Note by note, she got the first half dozen measures of the flute score and a very rough outline of the piano accompaniment sketched out before she finally sat back and rubbed eyes that ached with the effort of concentration.
♪It is well with you?♪ Sho asked her.
♪More or less.♪ The phrase in the shoggoth language didn’t mean that literally—it referred to a state of partial fluidity no human body could even attempt—but it was close enough. ♪I am making a song.♪
♪I understand. I will be silent while you do it.♪
Brecken gave her a startled look, then whistled, ♪I thank you.♪ Three pale eyes glanced up at her, and then drifted shut as Sho slid over onto the dreaming-side.
“BRECKEN,” SAID MRS. DALZELL, “do you have a moment? The most fascinating person just came by and I don’t have the least idea what she’s talking about.”
Brecken stifled a laugh. “Sure,” she said. “Can I put this in my apartment first?” She indicated her tote bag, crammed as usual with books, music, and her flute case. When Mrs. Dalzell agreed, she ducked between the houses, went into her apartment, whistled a quick greeting and an explanation to Sho, and then trotted back out, locking the door behind her.
It had not been a good day. She’d fielded two rude comments about dead music on the way through The Cave to meet Brecken in the morning, and a third on the way out after her music education class. Rosalie had been her usual self, talking with even more enthusiasm than usual about her dream of making it as a professional musician, but Donna had been waspish, and when she’d met Jay he’d been distracted and curt, the way he so often was when his mind was on the strange books he studied. She pushed those thoughts aside, went to Mrs. Dalzell’s kitchen door and let herself in.
“Oh, hi, Brecken,” said Mrs. Dalzell, who was bustling around the kitchen. “Tea? Oh, good. This is—” She stopped in confusion, having evidently forgotten the name of her guest.
“Dr. Catherine Lehmann,” said the woman who sat at the kitchen table. She wore bland professional clothing and had a bland professional face framed in bottle-blonde hair done in a bland professional style, with round rimless glasses tinted slightly blue providing an unexpected hint of character. “I’m with the Rutgers folklore program.”
Brecken introduced herself and shook her hand. “I’m collecting accounts of local folklore associated with Hob’s Hill,” Dr. Lehmann went on. “It used to have quite the colorful reputation back in Colonial times, and I’m hoping to find out whether any of the old stories have survived. Maybe you know of something.”
Brecken settled into another chair at the table in response to Mrs. Dalzell’s gesture, shook her head. “I wish I did. What kind of stories, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Not at all.” Lehmann put on a bland professional smile. “‘Hob’ is an old word for ‘devil,’ and the stories said that there were devils inside the hill—shapeless black devils.”
A chill went down Brecken’s spine as she realized what the folklorist was talking about. Mrs. Dalzell, coming over with a cup of tea, was a welcome distraction. Once she’d taken the cup and thanked her landlady for it, she decided to make sure. “That sounds like shoggoths.”
The response came just a little too quickly. “I suppose it does. That’s an odd bit of folklore, though. Where did you hear about shoggoths?”
“I’m taking a class on fantasy in literature this semester,” Brecken said. “Professor Boley gave an entire lecture on them last month.”
Lehmann nodded. Watching her, Brecken felt increasingly uneasy. There was something that didn’t quite ring true about the folklorist—
If she was a folklorist at all. It suddenly occurred to Brecken that Lehmann, like the man who claimed to come from the state animal control office, might be with the people who’d brought fire and death into Hob’s Hill. To cover the moment of shock that the recognition brought with it, she said, “You know what’s really interesting? Boley said Lovecraft and the others got the idea from some local writer, I forget his name.” She hadn’t forgotten Halpin Chalmers’ name for a moment, but she didn’t want to let Lehmann know that. “I wonder if he could have heard about the old stories, and used them in his book.” She forced a grin. “Thank you, Dr. Lehmann. You’ve just given me a topic for my paper for that class.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” said Lehmann, with a smile that looked as insincere as Brecken’s felt. “But you haven’t heard of any stories yourself?”
“No, unfortunately,” Brecken said. “That would make an even better paper.”
“I suppose it would.” They exchanged a few other pointless sentences while the folklorist finished her tea, and then she got to her feet, gave them both business cards, asking them to contact her if they heard any stories about Hob’s Hill. A few moments later she was on her way to the sidewalk. Brecken, finishing her own tea, watched through the window as Lehmann went to the next house and knocked on the door. Parked on the street in front of Mrs. Dalzell’s house, she noted, sat a gray SUV with tinted windows.
Maybe, Brecken thought. Maybe Dr. Lehmann was telling the truth—but that wasn’t a risk that seemed worth taking. She left Mrs. Dalzell’s kitchen as soon as she could, went back to the apartment, and warned Sho in a low whistle about what had happened.
♪I understand,♪ the shoggoth said, ♪and I thank you for telling me this. I will hide even more carefully.♪ Before dinner, Sho searched the closet and found a way to slide up into the space between roof and ceiling, where no one would be likely to find her without tearing the old garage apart. Brecken hoped that would be enough, but cold fear settled into her bones in the days that followed. It seemed all too likely to her that the people who’d killed the shoggoths under Hob’s Hill were still looking for Sho.
“OUR WRITERS,” SAID PROFESSOR Boley, “spent quite a bit of time talking about the essence of the fantastic—what it is that makes a weird story weird, what it is that puts the wonder in a tale of wonder. Let’s talk about that a little.”
Another day brought another round of classes, starting with a session of Intro to Music Education I that was mostly a briefing on the volunteer hours she’d be expected to put in soon at a school music program in the Partridgeville area. Professor Rohrbach prattled on for most of an hour about how the students would finally get to see how goal-oriented instruction worked in practice. Listening to him, Brecken found herself torn between curiosity and uneasiness.
After that she spent an hour in Hancock Library, and then went to Boley’s class. There she sat next to Jay as usual and, as usual, wondered what he was thinking as he brooded over Boley’s words or typed notes into his tablet. Finding no answers, she glanced at the other people in the class, and spotted Julian Pinchbeck again, still looking
bored.
“Let’s start with what Arthur Machen had to say about it,” Boley went on. “The passage I have in mind is from ‘The White People,’ which Lovecraft considered Machen’s best work. The two characters are using theological language—this is Machen, remember, theology’s his default setting—and the subject is the nature of evil. Here’s what he says.”
Boley’s voice took on, however briefly, the ringing tones of the storyteller as he quoted Machen. “‘And what is sin?’ said Cotgrave.” The question hung in the still air of the classroom. “‘I think I must reply to your question by another. What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song, you would go mad. And suppose the stones in the road began to swell and grow before your eyes, and the pebble you noticed at night had shot out stony blossoms in the morning? Well, these examples may give you some notion of what sin really is.’”
As Boley turned the page of his classroom notes and cleared his throat, Brecken pondered the reading, and found her feelings contradicting everything it said. No, she thought. That’s wrong, just as wrong as the thing he said about the elder world. If a cat or a dog talked to me I’d be delighted, and a rosebush that sang would be my favorite rosebush in the whole world.
All at once she had to stifle a laugh, thinking of the raw absurdity of her situation. A shoggoth talked to me, she thought. A real live shoggoth, not just a cat or a rosebush, and now we’re friends, so Machen’s just plain wrong. Then she remembered the people who’d killed the shoggoths of Hob’s Hill, and realized that Machen’s character wasn’t unique. There really were people for whom something as wonderful as a talking cat or a singing rose was a horror that had to be destroyed. The thought sent a chill down her spine.
The Shoggoth Concerto Page 10