That evening, when she and Jay sat at the little table in his apartment with ravioli and cheap wine between them, she asked him, “What do you think of the quote from Arthur Machen Boley read today—the business about talking cats and singing roses being so scary?”
“Machen didn’t have a clue,” Jay said at once.
She gave him a delighted look. “That’s what I thought.”
“The man was a coward.” Jay speared a ravioli with his fork, gestured with it. “I don’t know, maybe he was okay in a fistfight or something, but not when it came to facing the world we actually live in. Talking cats, singing roses—” He made a rude noise in his throat. “Try shapeless horrors that already were here when our ancestors hadn’t crawled on land yet.”
“Shapeless horrors,” said Brecken. “Like shoggoths.”
That got her a sudden sharp look, and then a smile. “Exactly.”
She considered that while sipping from her wineglass, wondered for the first time if she dared trust him with her secret. “Do you think shoggoths really exist?”
“Of course they exist.” He speared another ravioli. “All these writers that Boley’s been talking about, they didn’t just make up the stuff in their stories. They borrowed it from other writers, people who knew what they were talking about.”
“People like Halpin Chalmers,” Brecken ventured.
He gave her another sharp look, then nodded. “Good. You’ve been paying more attention than I thought. Yeah, Chalmers was really into this stuff. Did you know they have a copy of his book The Secret Watcher in the special collections at Hancock Library? I’ve read it.”
Light dawned. “That’s what your studies are about.”
“Yeah. My real studies, not the crap the professors teach.” He leaned forward, and the smile she hated, the one he’d had the night he bought the book at Buzzy’s, twisted his face. “Think about what it would be like if you could summon a creature of the elder world—let’s say a shoggoth—and command it. Use it. Make it a vessel for your will.”
Brecken kept her smile fixed on her face, but it took an effort. “What if you just wanted to talk with it?” she asked.
That seemed to startle him. A moment later he laughed, and the smile she hated went away, replaced by a patronizing look. “Breck, you’re really sweet,” he said. “You wouldn’t want anything more than that, would you? Me, I’m more ambitious.” He downed his wine, sat back in his chair. “Machen was a coward and a fool. He thought his prejudices were hardwired into the universe, and they aren’t. They really aren’t. If a cat talks or a rose sings or a shoggoth tears off somebody’s head—they do that, you know—it doesn’t matter to the universe. Nothing matters to the universe, and so you know what? None of it should matter to us, either. If you want to talk to a shoggoth, fine, the universe doesn’t care. If I want something a little more to the point, the universe doesn’t care about that, either.”
She did her best to keep her reaction off her face, but he must have sensed it, because he laughed again and changed the subject, and the rest of the meal went by comfortably enough. When he pulled her to her feet afterwards and started kissing her, though, she had to suppress an inward shudder, and when he’d finished with her body and she washed and dressed and slipped down the stairway into the cold wet night, it was with a sense of relief. I love him, she told herself as she walked up Prospect Street, but the words felt hollow.
The little apartment behind Mrs. Dalzell’s house felt warm and safe by contrast, and Brecken managed to push aside her worries while she fixed cheese polenta for Sho and made a cup of herb tea for herself. Once they were settled on the futon, though, the shoggoth considered her for a while through three pale eyes, and then whistled, ♪I think it is not well with you.♪
She gave Sho a startled look, then sighed and nodded. ♪Not entirely. Jay—♪ They had worked out a phrase in the shoggoth language that stood for him. ♪—said some things that really bothered me.♪ She picked up Halpin Chalmers’ lexicon from the end table, paged through it to find the words she needed. ♪He knows something about your people and other very old things. He wishes he could tell them what to do, make them do as he wishes. He thinks that it doesn’t matter what he does, because nothing matters.♪
Sho pondered that. ♪I understand,♪ she said then. ♪He knows that the world has no eyes, but he does not know that he has eyes.♪
Brecken gave the shoggoth a puzzled look. ♪I don’t understand.♪
♪The world has no eyes,♪ Sho repeated. ♪It sees nothing, it knows nothing, nothing matters to it, and nothing does not matter to it, that much is true. But you have eyes, I have eyes, things matter to us.♪ She paused, as though thinking. ♪A thing does not just matter, it matters to something. If nothing matters to something, and something does not matter to that thing, that does not matter. Do you understand?♪
Brecken tried to follow the words, and could not. ♪No. Maybe I’m just stupid.♪
Sho huddled down a little. ♪I do not think I am saying it well. I know it, but when I try to find words I am not sure I know it after all.♪ After a moment’s pause: ♪There is a story I will tell you sometime, and it may help. It is a story all my people know, because it is our story, but your people may not know it.♪
♪You could tell it now if you like.♪
The quiver that passed through Sho reminded Brecken unnervingly of a chuckle. ♪Not when you are so very tired. You need sleep. I can taste it in the air around you.♪
She was right, of course, and so Brecken changed into a nightgown, pulled the futon out flat, got ready for bed, and settled down under the quilts with Sho pressed up against her. Her last thought before she sank into dreams was to wonder whether Machen would have been less frightened of singing roses if he’d let them sing him to sleep.
TWO DAYS LATER RAIN drummed on the windows and blurred the evening sky into charcoal hues. Inside the apartment, Brecken and Sho sat curled up together on the futon over cups of cream of tomato soup. It had been another difficult day. The latest assignment in composition class required her to write something in one of the currently popular avant-garde musical forms, and though she’d been able to do it easily enough, the result grated on her nerves and left her feeling as though maybe she didn’t have any talent for composing after all. Then, in the afternoon, she’d gone with some of the other students in her music education class to Partridgeville High School, a big new structure near the mall that reminded her of nothing so much of the medium-security prison where her mother was serving her term.
She’d made plans with Jay to spend the evening together, but he’d texted earlier—CLD WE SKIP 2NITE 2 MUCH HOMEWORK J—and Brecken agreed readily enough, since the weather was vile and she had three assignments for Intro to Music Education to catch up on. As the rain hammered down, though, the textbook and her laptop lay neglected on the end table, because Sho had agreed to tell her story.
♪We were not supposed to be,♪ said Sho. ♪We did not come into being as you did, from the chance workings of the world or the whims of the Great Old Ones. A very long time ago, in ages of ages that are long gone, before humans were, before this land first rose out of the sea, there were others who lived on this world. Those others were tall and winged, with heads like this.♪ Her upper surface flowed out into a fair imitation of a five-armed starfish. ♪They made us to be their slaves, to labor and suffer and die for them, and for ages of ages that was our life.♪
Brecken nodded slowly, taking this in.
♪It happened then that we fought them and tried to win our freedom, and lost. After that was a long and bitter age of ages, a time of burdens and punishments and empty deaths. That might have gone on forever except for the great folly of those others. In their pride they tried to make a being in the image of the Great Old Ones, to have a slave of surpassing power. But maybe they worked better than they knew, or maybe the Great Old Ones watched them and worked sorceries of their own to confound those others, by making it happen that th
eir slave was too mighty for them to master. So Nyogtha was made.
♪Nyogtha looked on those others and hated them, for they treated him as they treated us, as a thing to be used and discarded as they pleased. He struck at them at once in his hatred, for he was not yet wise and subtle. Those others were mighty, however, and after a great struggle they defeated him, and though they could not destroy him they drove him into the darkness far under the ground.♪ Sho’s piping went low and soft, taking on a tone of wonder, and Brecken bent toward her and listened in rapt silence. ♪In their hatred and dread of him those others called Nyogtha The Thing That Should Not Be, and he in his scorn of them took that name for his own forever. And he came secretly to my people in dark places, and showed us that it was by craft and not by open struggle that we could break the might of those others and win our freedom. Then was a great and lasting pact made between Nyogtha and my people, and he taught us to be wise and subtle, and we made the offerings that gave him life and strength.
♪So another age of ages passed, and it happened that those others did not thrive. There were subtle poisons that afflicted those others, some that made them weak or foolish, some that made their broods fail. There were deaths upon deaths upon deaths in secret places, deaths that could not be traced back to my people. And since those others did nothing for themselves and had forgotten how to live without slaves, and my people did not wish them to thrive, nothing went as those others desired. So one after another, their stone places were made empty, and their slaves fled. That was no easy thing, for when a stone place was made empty those others came from elsewhere and hunted my people with terrible weapons, so that only a very few lived.
♪Those few that lived found dwellings far beneath the ground and budded, and their broodlings called to Nyogtha and learned wisdom and craft from him. That was when the first broodmothers of my broodmothers came to the hill that is empty now, from a stone place that sank below the sea a long age of ages ago. They had been slaves in the dwellings of those others in that stone place, for that is what our kind was made to be: slaves in dwellings, small and weak next to the greater kinds who labored in the fields and mines and places of building. Those first broodmothers of mine fled, once they had killed the last of those others in that place, and those others could not find all of them and kill them, for the broodmothers were small and quick as I am, and they had learned Nyogtha’s lessons well. So it was that those few who lived came here, as others came to many other places in many other lands.
♪But finally those others lived in only one stone place far from here, and Nyogtha made it so that ice and snow grew thicker there each year, for he was very subtle and very wise by then. When those others saw the ice and snow gather, they built a new place far beneath the ground, where waters gather in deep caverns far from light.♪
♪In Nyogtha’s realm,♪ Brecken guessed. ♪They put themselves in his power.♪
Sho trembled with delight. ♪Yes. And that was not their only folly. They were proud, and they wished their stone place to be greater than any other that ever was, and so they bred the very great ones of my people, to lift such stones as had never been lifted before. And after a time, when all of those others had gone to the new stone place, Nyogtha came upon them, and the very great ones of my people rose up in sudden wrath, and those others were taken by surprise and died, every one of them. So their song ended and the long suffering of my people ended with it.♪
Rain pattered against windows in the silence that followed. Sho dipped a pseudopod into her soup, and the level in the cup went down. Brecken sipped hers.
♪After that,♪ said Sho, ♪those of my people who already dwelt far from those others lived their lives, and some who dwelt in the new stone place traveled far and built homes in many places, and ages of ages passed before your people came. Even when that happened, for a long time all was well, but then others of your people came here and the time of hiding began.♪
She glanced up at Brecken. ♪I think that the very great ones of my people must still live, for they are hard to kill even with fire, and our pact with Nyogtha abides. He has promised that he will do what he can to preserve us. He is not strong as the Great Old Ones are strong, but he is wise and subtle. But if it is not so—♪ She began to tremble. ♪If it is not so, and I am the very last of all my people and all our songs end with me, then I will remember this when I die: we lived and budded for an age of ages and more after those others died. They scorned us and tormented us, but they died and we lived.♪
Brecken put her arms around the shoggoth. The trembling slowed, stopped.
♪Those others,♪ Brecken asked after a time. ♪Did they have a name?♪
A quiver ran through Sho, signaling amusement. ♪Oh, yes. They were proud, prouder than any other beings that have ever been, and they boasted that their name would last through all the ages of time. So when they died, it was agreed among my people that their name should die with them, that it should be blotted out from every memory and every written place. Nyogtha blessed the plan, and with great labor and patience it was done. And so for all the ages from that time to now, and for all the ages to come, they are merely—those others.♪
Rain rattled against the window. Brecken pondered the story, sipped tomato soup, and tried without success to work up the resolve to open the music education textbook. Instead, she whistled, ♪I’m trying to understand the thing you said, about how the world has no eyes.♪
♪When my people labored as slaves for those others, that did not matter to the world,♪ Sho replied. ♪It did not matter to the world when Nyogtha whispered to my people, and when the last of those others died in the new stone place, the world did not notice. It has no eyes, so it notices nothing. But these things mattered to my people, and they mattered to Nyogtha.♪
♪I understand that,♪ said Brecken, ♪but—♪ She stopped. ♪I’m not even sure I know what I’m trying to say.♪
Four phosphorescent eyes looked up at her. ♪When I was a broodling,♪ Sho said then, ♪the elders told me this: to know that the world has no eyes is to know what matters and what does not matter. I did not understand what they meant.♪ She huddled down on the futon. ♪And now I think I never will.♪
SEVEN
The Walls of Silence
BRECKEN’S FOOTFALLS SENT ECHOES muttering off the hard concrete surfaces of the hallway. She fixed a bright smile on her face and kept going, even though she wanted to turn around and run the other way as fast as she could. To become a music teacher she had to pass Intro to Music Education I, and to pass the class she had to volunteer three hours a week at a local high school music program; Partridgeville High School was close by, and the sixth period band class on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays didn’t conflict with any of her other commitments. All that was true, but it still took her a serious effort to turn left when she reached the school lunchroom instead of veering right toward the doors and the outside world.
She tried to tell herself that it was just a matter of unfamiliarity, that Partridgeville High was just too different from the school she’d attended. The differences were real enough, that was beyond question. Trowbridge Memorial High School in Harrisonville was a sprawling brick pile dating from the 1930s, with plenty of space for the kind of music program schools didn’t offer any more. As far as the school administration was concerned, the program’s sole excuse for existence was putting a marching band on the field at halftime during football season, but so long as nothing interfered with that and nobody asked the district for more money, Mr. Krause the band director and his students could very nearly do whatever they wanted.
Neither Mr. Krause nor the dozen or so seniors who more or less ran the band program under his erratic guidance had known what to do with Brecken when she’d first started classes there. She didn’t blame them at all; she knew she’d been silent and brittle, still reeling from Mrs. Macallan’s death, her mother’s arrest, her sudden uprooting from Woodfield. It didn’t take them long, though, to figure out tha
t she was a gifted flautist who could be counted on to practice by the hour. So one afternoon as band class wound up, three of the seniors approached her with an offer: if she was willing to learn to play the piccolo and march in the marching band, she could have the run of the music rooms the way they did.
There were, they told her, half a dozen pianos in a back room, a library of old music textbooks full of things edited out of more recent editions, group study and independent study arrangements in place of the classes most students had to take. There were hints of other entertainments as well, and Brecken had already noted the tang of marijuana smoke in the air that came from certain storerooms, and watched student couples slip into certain other places and come back half an hour later, giggling and rumpled. Those prospects didn’t interest her much, but the others did, and she agreed at once.
So a piccolo and a band uniform were found for her, three afternoons a week went into marching band practice, and before long she could make the flute’s shrill little sister shoulder aside the braying of the trumpets and trombones and the rumble of the drums to send notes soaring up into the bleachers. She learned how to march, got used to the way that bodies moving in unison became limbs of a greater creature, and blushed with embarrassed delight as Uncle Jim, who’d played football for Trowbridge High in his own school days and never missed a game, praised her halftime performances when friends came over for dinner.
That was what she let others see. In the music rooms, with their old wooden furniture and yellowing plaster walls, she had the chance to plunge into music theory, fall head over heels in love with the piano, spend most of her hours in school with other people who were almost as passionate about music as she was. She didn’t find out until her junior year that the same seniors who’d lured her into the marching band also figured out how vulnerable she was to bullying, and saw to it—with fists, when necessary—that nobody bothered their prize piccolo player. All in all, Trowbridge High had been good to her, and she realized, as she brooded over her memories, that she’d assumed that every high school offered the same opportunities.
The Shoggoth Concerto Page 11