“That’s me,” Brecken said. She tried to focus. She was still dressed in the clothes she’d had on the night before. Early morning sunlight filtered in through the blinds, splashed across the table, a broken glass, dark stains on the carpet. Sho lay curled half around her, far over on the dreaming-side. Something tremendous and terrible had happened, Brecken knew, but the memory would not come.
“This is Officer Castro of the Partridgeville police department,” the voice said. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
That jolted her the rest of the way awake. “No, not at all,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“Did you see Jay Olmsted at any point last night?”
The memories came crashing back in. “Yes,” she managed to say. “Yes, he came by my apartment—” It took her a moment to remember the time. “—around eight o’clock and left around eight-twenty or eight-thirty.”
“Did he seem agitated or anything like that?”
“Well, kind of.” She fumbled for an explanation the officer would understand: “We broke up in December. He wasn’t too happy about that, and I’m leaving for another state in June and so—well, things got kind of emotional.”
“But he didn’t appear to be frightened or worried?”
“No,” she lied. Then, when the officer didn’t go on: “Is he okay?”
“No, he’s not.” The voice paused. “We’re dealing with a homicide investigation.”
“Oh dear God,” said Brecken. “Oh dear God.” She could see all of it, every detail falling into place. She’d reversed his spell and made him drink the wine he’d meant for her, thinking that all it contained was a date-rape drug, but if he’d dosed it with the Liao drug...
Oh dear God, she repeated silently. What have I done?
Suddenly she realized that the officer had said something else. “I’m sorry, what was that?” she said, apologetic.
“What time did he leave your apartment, again?”
“Somewhere between eight-twenty and eight-thirty,” said Brecken. “I wasn’t looking at the clock right then but I’m sure it wasn’t close to nine yet.”
“Okay,” said the officer. “Can I ask you to come down to the station sometime in the next couple of days and make a statement? Just come in—the station’s open seven days a week. Tell the receptionist who you are, and someone’ll ask you some questions and then write up what you witnessed.” She agreed, they talked briefly about the station’s hours and its address, he gave her the case number, and then the phone went silent and Brecken set it down on the end table.
Five of Sho’s eyes regarded her. ♪He is dead.♪
♪Yes.♪
♪Was it the Hounds?♪
♪I think so,♪ said Brecken.
♪I am sorry,♪ Sho replied. ♪I did not like him but I did not wish him to die thus.♪
♪He wanted to do the same thing to me.♪
♪I know. If he had succeeded—♪ Sho trembled violently, and the acrid scent of her dread filled the air. ♪If I lived and he also lived I would have found him and torn him into small pieces. And then—and then—♪
Brecken reached for the shoggoth, held her. ♪Broodsister, broodsister,♪ she whistled. Sho wrapped around her and clung to her, shaking, for a long while.
♪Must you go anywhere today?♪ Sho piped finally.
♪No. Nowhere at all.♪ Her bladder contradicted her then, but they got that sorted out, and then she saw the bottle of tainted wine and Jay’s glass, and took a moment to empty all the wine down the kitchen sink and gather up the shards of the broken glass. When Brecken came back from that task she pulled the futon out flat, shed her clothes, and slipped under the quilts without bothering with a nightgown. Sho flowed against her, pressed up close.
♪My name today is Still Beside You,♪ the shoggoth said after a while, in a whistle so soft Brecken could scarcely hear it.
♪Mine—♪ A phrase of Nyogtha’s surfaced in Brecken’s mind. ♪Mine is Fosterling’s Broodsister. The Thing That Should Not Be called me that.♪
♪That is bold, to accept a name from him,♪ said Sho. ♪But I understand.♪
A pseudopod flowed up against Brecken’s face from below. She turned slightly and kissed it, settled her head on Sho’s cool shapelessness, and let her eyes drift shut.
When she blinked awake again, the sun shone down bright through the shades at a steep angle, telling her that she’d slept most of the way to noon. Sho lay nestled up against her, on the dreaming-side but not by much, surrounded by the Brie-scent of calm; when Brecken slipped an arm around the shoggoth, a pale eye blinked open near her face, and then a speech-orifice opened and piped her name, ♪Fosterling’s Broodsister,♪ in a gentle lilting cascade of notes.
♪Still Beside You,♪ Brecken replied, and moved her hand gently down the shoggoth’s side, which fluttered in response. The whistled notes of Sho’s name intertwined as she and Sho did, making an elegant melodic pattern, and though her attention was elsewhere for a time—on the slow wet kiss she gave to Sho, the moisture Sho shared in response, the acts and delights that followed, the simple dazzling reality that they had both come alive through the night—she knew, knew for certain, that she’d found the theme she needed for the last movement of her concerto.
THE NEXT DAY WAS a Sunday, and though leaving the apartment was very nearly the last thing she wanted to do, she kissed Sho and headed for church while the morning was cool and crisp, and wisps of fog hung over Partridge Bay beneath a pale blue sky. The familiar route down Danforth Street into the heart of old Partridgeville and then back up Angell Hill to the First Baptist Church seemed new and bright, like something she’d just discovered in her own mind.
As she walked, Nyogtha’s not-words repeated themselves in memory. It is a long and difficult road I have ordained for her, he’d said, to dwell in the human world and raise her broodlings there. Ever since he’d told her that, the idea of taking care of Sho when her time of budding came and helping her to raise her broodlings had circled in Brecken’s thoughts, now near, now far, but never absent. It took only the briefest effort for her to picture the broodlings: little shapes of iridescent black, separated parts of Sho’s own flesh, tumbling awkwardly over one another as they grew and learned to imitate their mother’s grace and strength. Brecken shook her head, laughed at herself as she passed the university buildings. They don’t even exist yet, she thought, and I already want to scoop them up in my arms and kiss them. It was true, though: the thought of helping to care for Sho’s brood called up a warm shudder from her depths. She smiled at nothing in particular, headed up the hill to the church.
Carl Knecht met her as usual by the door, asked politely about her week, and walked with her to the organ before heading for whatever other tasks his job as music director imposed on him. Lacking anything better to do, she went into the enclosure, flipped the switch that powered up the blowers, perched on the bench, considered the stops before her. The organ had countless possibilities of sound she hadn’t yet explored, she knew, and it hurt to think that she’d be leaving it behind so soon. The thought that there might be an organ in Arkham she could play, at least now and again, hovered before her in the uncertain air; she pushed the thought aside, set the stops on each of the three keyboards to the registration she wanted. Then she began to play the prelude to the second act of The Magic Flute with the swell pedal pushed down low, so that the music made itself a background to the conversations winding up in the cavernous church.
She had time for that, a Bach fugue for organ, and one of her own sarabandes before the service got started and Reverend Meryl’s silver helmet of hair appeared above the pulpit. The hymns gave her no trouble, and though she’d brought her orchestration textbook to study, she spent the sermon watching the congregation. Thaddeus Waldzell sat within sight of her, facing the pulpit in what looked like an attitude of respectful listening if you didn’t look too closely; pay a little more attention, and it was impossible not to notice that all his mind was turned to
something far from the moral platitudes the Reverend Meryl dispensed so freely. Half a dozen others scattered among the pews had the same double appearance, the placid surface and the intensity beneath. What common work guided them Brecken didn’t know, and knew that she would probably never know; she thought of the Yellow Sign, and wondered how many other secret things moved, silent and intense, under Partridgeville’s placid surface.
When the service was over and she’d finished playing another round of quiet music until the worship hall was mostly clear, she shut down the organ, got up, remembered her tote bag just before she left the enclosure, and headed downstairs to the social hall for coffee. Reverend Meryl thanked her effusively on the way down the stair, Carl gave her a nod and a smile as she headed toward the coffee, and then she turned with a cup in her hand and spotted an unexpected face at one of the tables. She headed that way at once. “Mrs. Johansen?”
Ida Johansen glanced up, startled, and then beamed. “Brecken! It’s so good to see you again. I enjoyed your playing, of course.” Brecken thanked her, and she went on: “But you haven’t met Nora yet.” She turned toward the haggard but smiling woman beside her. “Nora, this is Brecken Kendall, the student of mine I’ve told you about. Brecken, this is my sister Nora.”
Hands got shaken and Brecken sat across the table from the two of them, asked the inevitable questions. “Oh, I’m feeling much better,” Nora said. “And I’ve decided to do the sensible thing and move in with Ida.”
“We should have done it years ago, honestly, to make our pensions go farther,” said Ida. “Ve grow too soon old, und too late schmart.” She and Nora both laughed.
BY THE TIME BRECKEN left the church it was later than usual, and they’d agreed that Brecken would play the organ one more Sunday while Nora settled in and Ida picked up the threads of her disarranged life. The last of the fog had burnt off as she headed for downtown, and sun blazed warm overhead. She was most of the way to Danforth Street when she remembered that she was supposed to stop at the police station and make a statement about Jay.
She’d never been inside the big brown building on the corner of Meeker and Gadsden, and it took an effort to make herself go through the glass doors into the reception area. Fortunately the receptionist at the desk inside was pleasant and businesslike, took her name and the case number, and had her sit down and wait. Five minutes later, maybe, a brisk and equally businesslike detective came into the reception area, shook her hand, and led her to an office further inside the building, where he took her statement. She’d already decided to tell the truth about everything except the Liao drug and the reason for Jay’s sudden departure, but the detective was mostly interested in whether Jay was a member of some sort of cult, and when Brecken could tell him nothing about that, he seemed to lose interest in the entire subject.
She found her way back to the reception area, and was about to head for the door when the receptionist said, “Ms. Kendall, did you report some property of yours as stolen?”
Brecken blinked, and was about to deny it when she remembered the chaos in her apartment she’d found on her return from Massachusetts. “Yes, a book.”
The receptionist nodded. “It’s been recovered. If you’ll have a seat I can have someone go get it for you.”
Ten minutes later she had it in her hands: the copy of The Silent Watcher she’d gotten from Buzzy’s. “Is it okay if I ask where they found this?” she asked the receptionist.
He typed something on the keyboard in front of him, paused a moment, and then said, “Sure. It’s the same case you were here for—it was in the victim’s apartment. I’m not sure who spotted it there.”
Brecken managed to thank him, said something polite by way of farewell, and headed for the door. The human with light-colored hair Sho had seen in the apartment at the time of the robbery hadn’t been Barbara Cormyn after all, she knew now. It had been Jay, and that was where he’d gotten the knowledge he needed to compound the Liao drug and use it as a weapon. Thinking about that, she felt cold despite the warmth of the day. It didn’t help that she passed a newspaper vending machine on the sidewalk not far from the police station, and Jay was the lead story on the front page of the Sunday Partridgeville Gazette:
SECOND GRISLY DEATH DOWNTOWN
College Student, 20, Found Decapitated On Stair
Police: Link to Cormyn Killing “Very Likely”
She hurried the rest of the way home, clung to Sho for a long while once she was safely indoors. Later, after dinner, she booted up her laptop and went to the Partridgeville Gazette website. The story there gave too many details for Brecken’s peace of mind. Jay had been seen running down Danforth Street by two witnesses, running for all he was worth, and a third witness had claimed she’d seen him pounding on the door of a business on Central Square, though she didn’t remember which one. The next morning, one of the other tenants in his building noticed a bad smell coming from the stair, went to look, and found Jay lying there stark naked, sprawled across the steps, with his head torn off, his face and arms mangled, and a stinking blue liquid splashed all over him.
If he’d reached his apartment before the Hounds got to him, Brecken wondered, would one of his old books have given him some way to drive them off? Or was it one of the books for sale at Buzzy’s that he needed, and that was why he was pounding on the door? No sorcery will keep them at bay for long, the marginal note in The Secret Watcher claimed, but was that true? She did not know. She turned off the laptop and nestled close to her broodsister, and after a time the circling thoughts left her in peace.
Later, though, she remembered Nyogtha’s words, and picked up her copy of The Secret Watcher. Biting her lip, she opened it to the beginning of the chapter titled “The Secret of the Sorcerers,” and read again through the paragraph where Chalmers talked about love as a glandular accident. This time, though, she read the paragraph that followed:
The ancient writings say this, and they are right to do so, but there is another side to these things. The perspective of the universe is not the only one that must be taken into account. The mere fact that love is a function of the glands does not change the way human beings experience love, or keep it from being an immensely powerful motive for action — including the actions of sorcerers. Our deeds do not matter to the universe, but you and I are not the universe. The condition of fire is not the only reality; there is also the terrestrial, the everyday, the human; and the sorcerer must gaze upon both realities and say, “I am the reconciler between them.”
She nodded slowly, understanding what Sho had been trying to say all those months ago when she’d said that the world had no eyes. Sho was well over onto the dreaming-side just then, so Brecken didn’t try to discuss the matter with her. There would be time for that later.
That evening, just before they went to bed, Brecken opened The Secret Watcher again, copied out the Vach-Viraj incantation into a notebook, and then performed it. She was sufficently caught up in trying to do it correctly that she didn’t notice whether it had much of an effect, but Nyogtha’s words hovered in her mind: you will know what you must do.
THE PARTRIDGEVILLE GAZETTE OBITUARY page the next day said little: Jay’s name, his age, the date of his death, and the details of his services. It was enough, and she put the date and time in her smartphone before heading down to campus in the morning. Rosalie was at the usual table, and they managed a pleasant conversation before going up to Composition II and taking in five more student projects. Julian Pinchbeck was absent again, and his friends mentioned that they hadn’t seen him or heard from him in most of a week. Brecken and Rosalie talked about that over coffee, and speculated about why he was skipping class, more because it gave them something to talk about than for any other reason.
The next evening Brecken put on a dark blue dress, showed up at the Ashbrook Funeral Home on Meeker Street with ten minutes to spare, and slipped into a seat in back. Flower arrangements competed loudly with one another at the front of the room. The casket was clos
ed, for which she was grateful, and a large color photo of Jay’s face, framed and propped on top of the casket, let her remember him as he’d been back when he’d led the Rose and Thorn Ensemble, not as he’d been the last times she’d seen him, and not as the Hounds of Tindalos had left him.
She’d hoped no one would notice her, and for a few minutes her luck held out. Memories of the few times Jay showed her photos on his phone helped her pick out family members: his father and stepmother up from Philadelphia, his mother and stepfather down from Newark, younger half-brothers and half-sisters looking scared and bored, hard silences separating one family from another. Then a woman in her twenties sat next to her and asked how she knew Jay. Brecken, blushing, explained that she and Jay had been in a relationship for a while, and though they’d broken up months before, she still wanted to say goodbye. She kept her voice low, but half a dozen people in the row just in front turned to look at her before she was done.
The service would have been vulgar if it hadn’t been so bland. The minister mouthed a long string of clichés about faith and hope and life everlasting without giving Brecken the least sense that he believed a word of it. The music, a CD of badly played hymn tunes that slithered with fake sentiment, would have insulted the memory of a musician far more mediocre than Jay had been. She sat with hands folded and gaze lowered, remembering how she’d met him, how their relationship had started and proceeded, how it had ended. It was painful to recall Rose and Thorn’s last practice session, and even more so to call to mind the glimpses she’d had of him afterward and that last ghastly encounter at her apartment. On the far side of those efforts, though, was a stillness that felt just a little like peace.
I loved you, she said silently to the photo, in the few moments of quiet that followed a version of “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere” so oily and insincere it took her an effort not to wince. I loved you, and that’s always going to be part of me, part of what I’ve done and who I am. Then, as the minister lumbered gamely back to the podium to finish the service: And I wish it didn’t have to end the way it did. I wish—
The Shoggoth Concerto Page 30