The Shoggoth Concerto

by John Michael Greer

  It proved to be a disk-shaped pendant about the size of a quarter: a circle of some polished black stone, bright as a mirror, with a circle of delicate mosaic work of blue, green, and purple set in silver around the outer edge, and a silver chain to fit around her neck. It took her only a moment to recognize the pattern, to know who had given it to the proprietor of Buzrael Books, and to guess what it might mean if she wore it. It took her only another moment to fasten the chain around her neck and tuck the pendant out of sight down the front of her blouse.

  Dweller in Darkness, she thought. I know you’ve given me this for your reasons, not mine. I know you might even be planning to let me die someday, the way you let Sho’s people die. You know what? I’m going to take that chance.

  She turned, started back toward Danforth Street.

  “THAT’S EVERYTHING?” SAID JANET Kitagawa.

  “Just one more duffel,” Brecken said over her shoulder. “I’ll get it.”

  Back through the gap between houses, into the cramped and ramshackle little apartment: the journey was so familiar to Brecken that she had a hard time getting herself to believe that she’d never come that way again. Inside, familiar furnishings warred with unfamiliar gaps; the piano was gone, sold to another Partridgeville State music major, and so were all the little touches that had made the place Brecken’s for a while. All that remained of hers was a big black duffel with a rigid bottom and wheels on one end.

  She knelt by the duffel and whistled softly: ♪Is it well with you, Saying Farewells?♪

  ♪It is well,♪ Sho replied from within. ♪I am frightened but it will pass.♪ A hint of the acrid scent of dread hung in the air.

  Brecken rested a hand atop the duffel, hoped that some comfort might slip through the cheap nylon fabric. ♪It’s time.♪ She stood up, stooped to take hold of the handle, lifted it with an effort and got the duffel out the door. Her keys and a farewell note to Mrs. Dalzell were already on the kitchenette counter. She pulled the door shut, made sure it latched, and hauled the duffel behind her out to the sidewalk and Janet’s green minivan.

  Brecken had put up a card on the board in the Student Union Building where people offered and asked for rides, letting anyone interested know that she was looking for a ride to Arkham, Massachusetts with somebody who had plenty of luggage room, and that she would happily chip in gas money. Even so, it it was a friend of a friend of Molly’s who put her in touch with Janet Kitagawa, a history major who’d just graduated magna cum laude and was heading to Miskatonic for her master’s program. They’d talked on the phone twice and exchanged a handful of texts, and then at nine o’clock sharp that morning Janet parked her half-loaded minivan on the street right in front of Mrs. Dalzell’s house.

  “You need a hand with that?” Janet asked.

  “No, I’ve got it.” Brecken got the front end of the duffel onto the floor of the passenger compartment, stooped and heaved. The duffel slid across the floor and settled right behind the front passenger seat. “And we’re good.”

  “Shiny,” Janet said. Doors closed, opened, closed; Brecken settled into her seat, got the seatbelt fastened as Janet climbed in behind the wheel. As the engine coughed to life, she craned her neck to try to see the little apartment, but the angle was wrong.

  Then the minivan rolled ahead, made a tight U-turn, started down Danforth Street toward campus, but turned away onto Dwight Street after a block and headed for the highway out of town. “Kind of scary,” Janet said as she drove. “I’ve lived in this part of New Jersey my whole life—my family’s in Mount Pleasant.” She turned onto the highway. The dark pines of Mulligan Wood loomed ahead to either side of the road, huddling around the feet of Hob’s Hill. “And it’s a pretty big gamble, going to grad school at all these days.”

  “The job market?”

  “Bingo. If I’m lucky and work really hard, I might get a job teaching history somewhere. If not—” She shrugged, then changed lanes to slip past a semi hauling hay bales. “I don’t know what I’ll do. All I know is I’ve got to go with my heart.”

  “Me too,” said Brecken.

  The highway plunged through Mulligan Wood, curved northwards. “You’re a music major, right?” Janet asked.

  “Music composition,” Brecken said. “Guess what kind of job market there is for Baroque composers these days.”

  “Planning on a day job?”

  “Pretty much.” She glanced at the driver. “But I’m going with my heart, too.”

  The highway wrapped around the far side of Hob’s Hill, climbing all the while, and then cut across the high ground north of it. As the car cleared the trees, Partridgeville lay spread out below Brecken’s window, filling the ground from Mulligan Wood to Partridge Bay. She could see the bleak gray buildings of the campus, the tall white shape of the First Baptist Church up on Angell Hill, the bland angular masses of the Belknap Creek Mall and Partridgeville High School, a green roof alongside Central Square that she guessed was the Smithwich and Isaacs building. Then, just before trees blocked her view again, she caught sight of a dingy brick building just above the harbor, the place where Jay had lived and died.

  Then the highway plunged in among pines, and Partridgeville vanished behind them. Brecken let out a long shuddering breath, releasing everything that belonged to Partridgeville: everything but memories, and one thing besides. My heart, she thought, with a little unsteady smile. My heart is shapeless and iridescent black, and sings to me.

  Unobtrusively, she let her right hand drop, slid it back between the seat and the door until it rested against the duffel. A stirring beneath it told her of a zipper being opened from within. A moment later a pseudopod slid out and curled around her hand.

  IT TOOK THEM MOST of an hour to get to I-85. From there, New Jersey gave way in due time to the vast sprawling mass of New York City; that yielded in turn to the green hills and harbor towns of Connecticut and Rhode Island, then to the forests and failing industrial belts of southeast Massachusetts and the suburbs ringing Boston. On the way out of Boston, Janet turned onto state highway 1, but as Brecken checked their route on her cell phone she found detour warnings near Danvers: an ugly accident, the media said, all northbound lanes blocked.

  “Not a problem,” said Janet, and took the Salem exit. “We’ll go the other way.” Before long they were in Salem, and then crossed the bridge to Beverly and veered east just behind the shoreline, following the same route Brecken had taken on the bus. Kingsport came into sight before long, crouched at the foot of the soaring gray mass of Kingsport Head. Another right and the minivan headed up into the hills, wove through dark woodlands where everything human seemed miles or millennia away, and finally came out into late afternoon sunlight and headed down the long slope toward the gambrel roofs and hulking university buildings of Arkham.

  Half an hour later the minivan eased to a stop in front of the house on Hyde Street. “Sweet,” Janet said, considering it. “You’ve got a whole floor?”

  “Most of one,” Brecken admitted. “You?”

  “One room in a student household over on Halsey Street. It’s cheap.” She unfastened her seatbelt. “Let’s get your stuff unloaded.”

  It didn’t take long to get all Brecken’s things out of the minivan: half a dozen lumpy duffels, only one of which contained a shoggoth, and as many cardboard boxes of books, sheet music, and household goods. A few more minutes saw those ferried into the entry, and then Brecken stood on the porch and waved as Janet drove away.

  “You can surely rest before you take all that upstairs,” Professor Satterlee said. Then, with an amused glance at Brecken: “Besides, I’m eager to meet a certain someone.”

  Brecken beamed, went to the big black duffel, and whistled, ♪Saying Farewells, we’re here, and the broodmother-of-broodmothers wishes to meet you.♪

  The zipper slid open as though pulled by an invisible hand. Blackness welled up from within, produced an eye, considered the professor with what looked like trepidation. ♪Please tell her she honors m
e by that wish,♪ Sho piped.

  Before Brecken could translate, Professor Satterlee said, “You’re Brecken’s friend Sho, of course. Welcome to Arkham.”

  Sho tensed, produced a speech orifice, twisted it, and said, “Thank you.” The words were a little oddly pronounced but clear, and the voice sounded uncannily like Brecken’s.

  “You’re welcome,” said the old woman, visibly startled. “That’s a very uncommon skill among your people, Sho.”

  ♪I do not know all those words,♪ Sho said to Brecken, who translated them into the shoggoth language and then reached out a hand to encourage her to leave the duffel.

  A few minutes later they were all comfortably settled on the sofa, Professor Satterlee on one end, Brecken and Sho curled up together on the other end. “I am learning English,” Sho said slowly; the words still took all her concentration. “Because I wish to live with humans now.”

  “You’re certainly welcome to live here,” Satterlee told her.

  “You are kind.”

  “Thank you.” The professor smiled the serene smile Brecken remembered. “But there’s more to it than that. There’s a saying humans have—‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ The people who hunt shoggoths are no friends of mine, and this isn’t the first time I’ve helped someone stay out of their clutches.”

  Sho needed that translated, pondered it for a time, and then said, “Do they hunt you too, though you are not human?”

  The professor gave the shoggoth an astonished look, then glanced at Brecken, who shook her head and said, “I didn’t tell her.”

  ♪Were my words hurtful?♪ Sho asked Brecken in a worried whistle.

  ♪No, not at all,♪ Brecken reassured her. ♪You saw something humans don’t see.♪

  “That’s extremely perceptive of you,” said Professor Satterlee. “But you’re quite right, of course—or half right. My mother was human.” Then, recovering her poise: “I’m sure they’d hunt me if they had the least idea who my father is. In the meantime, I make life a little more difficult for them.” She smiled. “And a little easier for shoggoths, among others.”

  “I am grateful,” said Sho, once Brecken had translated for her.

  Later, Brecken’s things got hauled upstairs, and Brecken and Sho spent a while filling bookshelves, cupboards, the big walk-in closet and the massive oak dresser with the contents of boxes and duffels. Once that was done, Brecken did the Vach-Viraj incantation in the parlor, a daily discipline now, tracing the circle around Sho as well as herself.

  Then it was back downstairs for dinner—Professor Satterlee called in an order to an Asian restaurant that had just opened in downtown Arkham, had it delivered, and waved away Brecken’s offer to help pay for it, saying, “For heaven’s sake, don’t worry about it. That casserole you and Sarah made up kept me fed for three days.” Finally, Brecken and Sho climbed the stairs to the apartment while the professor sat down at the piano. The meditative notes of an Erik Satie Gymnopédie came murmuring up through the fabric of the house as Brecken shut the door, turned a look on Sho as tired as it was affectionate. ♪Bed, I think.♪

  Four eyes blinked open, considering her. ♪Yes. I will spend a long time on the dreaming-side, but I do not regret this day.♪

  ♪Nor I.♪ She laughed, headed for the bedroom. ♪Nor I.♪

  Later still, they lay together in the big four-poster bed under familiar quilts. Night wrapped Arkham in sheltering darkness. The faint glow of a streetlight a block away trickled through the window, lost its way in the hieroglyphic patterns of ancient wallpaper. Brecken gave Sho a sleepy kiss, felt a pseudopod brush her face.

  ♪I chose the right name today,♪ Sho said then. ♪But I have seen enough endings and farewells for now. When the light comes back, and for days after, it will be time for beginnings.♪

  Brecken wanted to say something in response, agreeing with Sho, but the words unraveled into a spray of musical notes and then fell away into silence. Instead, she nestled her face into the nearest of the shoggoth’s curves and let herself fall asleep.

  THERE WERE PLENTY OF beginnings for them both in the days that followed. The beginning that mattered most to Brecken, though, came three weeks later: three weeks of introductions and uncertainties, of walks through unfamiliar neighborhoods, of evenings learning the quirks of the upright piano in her apartment and the grand piano down in Professor Satterlee’s parlor, and of two visits to the house, always at night, by the pale-haired man who wore the Yellow Sign, and who wished to talk to Sho with Brecken as interpreter. The first time he came, she suddenly thought—or was it her thought at all?—of the pendant she’d been given at Buzrael Books, and had worn every day thereafter. A quick gesture settled it atop her blouse, and the visitor gave her a startled look, then a sudden smile and a nod. He knew her loyalties, she knew his, and that was what mattered.

  Toward the end of the three weeks, as the summer session drew closer, a single project took up more and more of her time: final frantic corrections, clatter of her laptop keyboard, hum-chunk hum-chunk of a printer spitting out pages of sheet music with an improbable heading:

  CONCERTO IN Bb

  Brecken Kendall

  The three movements of the concerto had names, too. Brecken had considered putting those on the sheet music, titling the first We Live Beneath the Ground, the second Hear and Remember, and the third Still Beside You, but decided against it at the last moment. Maybe later, she told herself. Maybe when I’ve met more people who can handle knowing why.

  Once the music was printed, she spent half a dozen sessions down in Professor Satterlee’s parlor rehearsing with one of the professor’s students, a gifted pianist with a good knowledge of the Baroque and classical repertoire, before the day itself. The day itself was warm and sultry, with a scattering of clouds. Brecken spent a long slow morning with Sho and cooked cheese polenta for breakfast, and the two of them teased each other about apricot jam, as quite a bit of that went atop one of the two bowls. Two hours of flute practice followed; after that, she went to the grocery across the river in the old part of town, came back with two full bags, got red beans cooking in her slow cooker, and spent another hour with Sho, curled up together on the couch talking—anything to keep her mind away from the evening’s events. It was a familiar habit, though Sho made a more effective distraction than most.

  Finally, though, it was time to don her dark red dress with the golden sunburst in seed beads, brush her hair into submission, put on makeup and perfume, pick up her flute and head downstairs. The pianist was already there, warming up in a storm of Bach and Telemann. Professor Satterlee looked on smiling from the couch, having already set out wine, crackers, and cheese for the guests. While Brecken was putting Mrs. Macallan’s flute together, the first knock sounded on the front door.

  There would not be many people present that first time. Satterlee had advised her on that, and suggested names. All three of the professors on Brecken’s audition committee were on the final list, of course, along with two other professors from the composition program. So was the chair of the music department, though she had other commitments and had to beg off. So was Martin Chaudronnier, a Miskatonic alumnus and local real estate magnate who’d made several large donations to the music department. Finally, so was a professor from Miskatonic’s history of ideas department named Miriam Akeley, who was a friend of Professor Satterlee and also, from hints Brecken had picked up, a friend—or more than a friend—of Martin Chaudronnier. Politics, Brecken wondered, or romance? She had no way of telling. There would be someone else listening, too, from a hidden corner on the second floor landing, and Brecken wished she could introduce Sho to the others, but the gap between the worlds still remained.

  Voices and footsteps brought Anne Ricci and Michael Silva into the parlor. They greeted Brecken pleasantly, asked about her move to Arkham, settled on the couch. A knock at the kitchen door, which was level with the alley and thus suited to wheelchairs, brought Paul Czanek. His greetings were brief, and Brecke
n got little more than a nod, but the fire in his pale blue eyes was less hidden than Brecken had seen it before.

  The other professors showed in the minutes that followed. Finally, Martin Chaudronnier and Miriam Akeley arrived together, the one stocky and graying, dressed in the understated elegance of old money, the other silver-haired and lean as a heron, wearing a black dress and a white sweater, moving awkwardly as though she’d been injured and had only begun to recover. Romance, Brecken thought, watching the two of them glance at each other. Maybe politics, too, but definitely romance.

  Professor Satterlee spoke next, but by then Brecken was sufficiently keyed up that she couldn’t process what the old woman said. Random phrases murmured themselves in the still air—“promising young composer,” “first substantial work,” “official premier with other works later on”—and then Brecken herself had to fumble through a few words of thanks and welcome, which she did without too much embarrassment.

  Silence, then. She picked up her flute and glanced at the pianist, who paused, and began the quick flowing arpeggios that introduced the first movement of her concerto. We live beneath the ground, the theme said, and Brecken wondered briefly if anyone else would ever notice the bridge that she’d made, half by accident, between two disparate worlds.

  Halpin Chalmers was right, she thought. There are always two realities, though they’re not always the same two, not even for me. But whether it’s Sho’s world and mine, the baroque and the modern, the human and the eldritch, the terrestrial and the condition of fire—

  I am the reconciler between them.

  She raised the flute to her lips, began to play.