Best New Horror 27

by Stephen Jones

  James saw them at the far edge of the room—his British acquaintance Clarence and the short young man with the shockingly black hair, still sporting that crimson red patch in front. Could that be his Henry? They were talking to each other using abrupt, animated gestures. James couldn’t tell if they were arguing or simply displaying their enthusiasm for the subject matter. But at the end of the conversation Clarence put his arm around the young man’s back, either in affection or as part of an attempt to force him out of the room. Within seconds they had exited through the far twin doors.

  James pushed forward as vigorously as he could, trying to be forceful but hoping not to alarm anyone and cause a panic in this so-crowded room. This proved to be difficult due to both the size of the crowd and the eagerness with which they swarmed the exhibits, chattering away in a number of languages. Ahead of him a group of short figures in green uniforms completely jammed the aisle in front of a case displaying the two oldest editions of the Necronomicon. At first James thought it was some sort of scout outing, but then noticed the baldness, the array of wrinkles and weathered faces. And they would not be budged. Finally he pushed himself around the back of the crowd against a squall of protests, then through the other door, hoping to catch up with Clarence and that heart-stoppingly familiar young man.

  James found himself in the largest chamber yet, as an enormous array of artistic interpretations of Cthulhu, in all sizes and styles, filled the great space beyond. On the domed ceiling the phrase Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn writhed in huge dirty yellow letters, moving and distorting under a slowly swirling mist of dark-grey smoke.

  He gazed tensely past the bewildering assortment of styles and techniques, seeking the moving forms of Clarence and that important young man. The predominance of sculptures, legs and arms and appendages unidentifiable, confused him, requiring time he didn’t think he had to sort through and eliminate stone and metal in search of flesh. He was relieved to be among the paintings, drawings, etchings, block prints, and assemblages, but there were more visitors in this section, pointing, gesturing, gabbing. Where the devil were they? Why had such famous artists as Van Gogh, Picasso, Dali, and Whistler attempted their own interpretations of Lovecraft’s themes? That was impossible, wasn’t it? Certainly Van Gogh hadn’t been alive when Lovecraft had created them.

  No doubt there were signs that explained all these puzzles, but James didn’t have time to read them. His son—was it possible?—might be in this room, and that was the only question that mattered.

  Yet, how amazing was it that there were representations of Cthulhu from every artistic movement, from Romanticism to Cubism to Neo-expressionism? And in one well-lit case crude markings on a piece of stone, said to be taken out of a cave in France, showed a fantastic blend of octopus, dragon, and human caricature. Paleolithic Cthulhu.

  He pushed through clots and masses of humanity in a blur of facial inventory, looking for his son among aquatic-body Cthulhus, head Cthulhus mounted on humanoid bodies, rudimentary winged figures, scales shaped or scattered with artistic illogic.

  He attempted to block it all out so that he might focus on his pursuit, but it proved impossible to keep these bizarre, so compelling impressions away. Despite himself, he was being seduced by this wonderful display of Lovecraftian horror.

  Cthulhu’s name pronounced in different accents sang from countless tiny speakers. But James was listening for his son’s voice, aged, transformed and doubtless impossible to recognise.

  The largest, mountain-sized Cthulhus were arranged along the back of the hall. The scaled and rounded walls almost undulated as James searched curve to curve. He was positive he had seen Clarence standing here among the joints and plated hide, doing some terrible thing to a figure much smaller and less determined. Then above one of the taller cases that great eye rose, and James understood that the wall itself was another imagining of Cthulhu, made all the more realistic by whatever mechanicals and special effects engines were being used to supply the puppetry. He pushed ahead, sorting through more faces and moving profiles, and the pair once again came into view ahead of him, always one step beyond, fleeing through the grey irising doors at the other end of the chamber.

  The corridor outside was packed with eager tourists. The attraction was a small stand with two clerks behind, the sign overhead: CTHULHU JELLY SWEETS. People were walking off with bags full. James quickly became disoriented. He watched in some alarm as an elderly man latched his teeth into a couple of multicoloured Cthulhu feelers, pulling until they had stretched almost a foot, his false teeth beginning to edge out past his trembling lips.

  But again he saw Clarence and Henry several yards ahead, almost racing. Clarence looked around briefly, still pushing aggressively on the young man’s back. James felt a burn of anger and sorrow in his throat. Had Clarence seen him? He paused—their backs were turned again, headed for another large door off the corridor. James charged ahead, afraid he might lose them. The crowds seemed much larger now, so he assumed more buses full of tourists had arrived, from London or perhaps other cities in the British Isles. Such popularity for the man from Providence seemed so unlikely, so impossible. This would never happen in America. He knew that he didn’t understand commerce and had no feel for degrees of popularity, but still, this hardly seemed possible anywhere in the world. And yet here it was in all its grand, unsettling magnificence. He reached the door but seconds after they’d gone through.

  On a series of well-illuminated, glass-enclosed platforms in the dark room, different figures stood, dramatically posed. Like the kind of action figures little boys and girls liked to play with, only much larger, life-size and bigger-than-life-size. The crowd was sparser here, and he could hear no sounds of running. If anything, the hall was preternaturally quiet. He slowed down, trying to look inconspicuous. Now that they knew he was on to them they must have been hiding among the exhibits. He proceeded cautiously, gliding his head side to side, looking.

  Arranged in half a dozen rows, the platforms were filled with figures of Cthugha, Dagon, Glaaki, Hastur, Ithaqua, Nyogtha, Shudde M’ell, Tsathoggua, Yig, Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Shub-Niggurath, and Yog-Sothoth. Some of these figures had not been created by Lovecraft himself, James knew, but originated with Campbell, Lumley, Derleth, Smith, and others under Lovecraft’s influence. They were minutely detailed, and obviously had required enormous time and money to produce.

  Dagon was an immense eel whose face had that long-fanged, deep-sea fish aspect. Suckered tentacles and sharp talons covered his body. Hastur changed appearance depending on the angle. From some viewpoints he appeared almost man-like, but his face was wrapped in a tangle of opaque shadow which defied interpretation. From other points he was clearly octopoid, with nothing remotely human about him.

  Nyarlathotep was quite pharaoh-like from the front, but when James went around to the back of the figure he saw that both bat wings and tentacles were erupting from the spine, preparing to take over and transform the rest of the body. Shudde M’ell appeared as a burrower, a consumer of earth and rock, whose frightening maw dripped acid. The base the figure was standing on was partially eaten away by the character’s drool.

  He could hear them, talking in the shadows, Clarence’s voice louder than anyone else’s, proclaiming—what? James couldn’t quite make out the words. He never saw Clarence in this exhibit, or his son, but he certainly heard them. Suddenly off in a dark corner they were moving. They must have seen him approaching. Their clashing voices rising and falling indicated some sort of argument. Again he wasn’t sure of the words, something like “you must” and “now” and “no future opportunity”. But try as he might he could not connect these vocal bits. When he heard the door open at the back he ran in that direction, tightly focussed on the swiftly narrowing vertical rectangle of door.

  Once through, he saw them on the other side of a queue of tourists, running inside a larger crowd, bumping into people, knocking one of the small bandaged types to the floor without s
topping to help (and no one else did, either—they all stood around watching, as if afraid to touch). He was sure they had seen him now—why else would they be running? And he felt surer still as they dashed into some sort of sprawling gift shop—ELDER THINGS scrawled in thin, barely legible script over the double glass doors. No doubt they wanted to lose themselves within the mass of shoppers. James was not very far behind, but the entrance was so crowded he had to squeeze through. The number of people jamming the interior, already crowded with tables and other merchandise displays, seemed more than uncomfortable—it felt dangerous.

  There were more children here than he’d seen elsewhere in the museum. Many were crowded around the tables, trying out remote-control models of various Yig, Ithaqua, unidentified fish-like people, and of course both simple and complex versions of Cthulhu, the more elaborate having individually moving tentacles. Other children dragged one or more parents from display to display wheedling and threatening.

  There were teenagers and adults too, examining the role-playing games based on Lovecraft, the clothing based on Lovecraft, the Lovecraft-influenced music, the calendars, the T-shirts, the action-figures modelled on their larger selves in the great hall, the luggage, the dishware, the toiletries.

  There were plastic models of Innsmouth and R’lyeh and Kingsport (with the Strange High House in the Mist hanging above) those so inclined might put together, or you could purchase them pre-assembled if you didn’t mind paying the hefty premium. There were expensive chest sets based on the Byakhee, the Great Old Ones, and the Yithian. And a solid gold set based on a range of characters, with Cthulhu as king, glorious in its own expansive case by the nine cash registers, with a price tag stating ENQUIRIES TAKEN.

  And of course there were the books, for those who still cared to read Lovecraft in his original words: the standard paperbacks, the still inexpensive cheaply bound hardcovers, and limited editions in leather and materials James did not recognise, with signed, limited-edition prints tipped in, hand-painted interiors, special endpapers, wooden-boxed or slipcased, some in their own special lacquered puzzle boxes guaranteeing you’d spend weeks just trying to figure out how to open them and get to the treasured volumes inside. The prices for these items went up astronomically, accommodating anyone with any amount to pay.

  James saw them, standing quietly together among all those colourful stacks of books, Henry looking dwarfed and small again beside the leaning towers of board and paper as he gazed at James with something like sadness, something like defiance, because his son was plainly staring at him now, with all pretence that he might just be some random lookalike stranger completely gone. Clarence moved closer to Henry, but James didn’t think he realised they’d been found yet. Now he looked strangely—shy, perhaps? Cowed? How were these two people related?

  Then the pair walked away from the books and out of the shop, but James couldn’t budge—there were far too many customers, far too many spoiled, crying children in his way. He could only follow them with his eyes, watching through the shop’s windows as they passed down another corridor into the crowd spilling from another great hall.

  In the hours that followed, James wandered in frantic, painful exhaustion from exhibit to exhibit, peeking into rooms in which both real and imagined arcane technologies were displayed, into long aisles arranged like closets with all manner of clothing both showcased and stored, into areas where artists worked live creating fanciful yet tortured imagery, into great open spaces with incompressible sculpture and fountains and benches where he would not sit because of the strange people already sitting there, down elevators and up ramps, through tunnels so narrow the visitors had to trickle through in singles and pairs, into sections half-constructed and vast wings being torn down.

  It was not immediately apparent what most of these sights had to do with Lovecraft, although he thought the signage and audio commentary attempted to convince visitors of the connections. But he did not have the will or the heart to hear or read any of that. Apparently he had been led here across the ocean under false pretences, and he had lost his son, his only child, once again. He had only the most general sense of the details, and he had no idea as to the hows and whys. Hows and whys apparently belonged to another reality, to privileged folk who saw the likes of him as props and tools for designs he could not possibly understand.

  James spent the balance of the afternoon in a large room labelled THE DEEP ONES. An enormous aquarium filled most of the space at its centre. Observers entered from any of the four doors and were compelled to walk its perimeter while gazing at the tank, most unhurriedly, quiet and fully absorbed by the contents of this tank until they exited the door where they had come in. So he wasn’t the only one who spent a great deal of time in this room. Apparently it was expected that everyone would. Long benches had been installed for sitting. There were even doorways to toilets for those whose physical requirements made the occasional break necessary, so they could return to their observations of the tank almost immediately.

  Inside the murky green waves, the vague shapes of undersea dwellers drifted in and out of visibility, the smaller ones looking human at times, and at times more fish-like. The bigger ones, at certain angles, were like hallucinations of giant humanoid frogs, the kind of creature in anguish whether in water or air, and so at home nowhere. Some which seemed more human at first appeared to mutate as they moved through the shadowed depths.

  Further back in the deep green darkness, larger shapes moved—the ones that these smaller ones no doubt were meant to serve. James could arrive at no clear sense of form—movement in the water might have been caused by some sort of appendage. Occasional stirrings might be due to respiration or a filtration for food. There were broader movements perhaps of a large bulk shifting, and when the smaller companions neared, a vague indication of stillness and focus. And despite seeing very little within that murk, James came away with a conviction of sight, or at least of vision. However busy that presence might be with its own cosmic concerns, it had noticed him. It had seen James and was now watching. He had no doubts of it.

  This was the fantastic interpretation of what he was seeing, of course. But when he tried to think about it realistically—because certainly a much more mundane explanation must apply—he could not make good sense of it. He tried to view this tank as just another elaborate illusion within this overly imagined circus that used Lovecraft’s name, but it was difficult to figure out what they were doing here. It made the most sense that automated figures would be in the tank, but some of the figures had such individuated and non-repeating movements they certainly had to be actors in costume. But how did they stay underwater for so long?

  Inevitably the day wandered on toward dinnertime, and James became quite hungry. In any case he longed for a place where he could simply sit down and collect his thoughts. He took an elevator down to the lower level, where an immense restaurant named Shoggoths took up the entire visible floor space. It had a rustic, Polynesian sort of ambience with rough wooden tables sheltered by thatched roofs, and tiki-style masks, idols, and totems, except the carvings were of Lovecraftian characters and designs. The servers, both male and female, had Joan of Arc-style haircuts and all wore solid black kaftans. They looked somewhat religious, even down to the stylised ways in which they moved about the tables, took orders, and delivered food. He thought of androgynous nuns in cutting-edge designer outfits. What they served at every table was basically the same, the Shoggoth sandwich—a long, sloppy, submarine sandwich sort of food with the diner’s choice of meats, mixed with an overabundance of vegetables and unidentifiable sprouts spilling out in all directions. This was topped by the special grey Shoggoth sauce, a pickled saline, brine-smelling goop that inevitably got all over the diners as they attempted to eat it. Even as starved as he was, James wasn’t sure he could consume such an unattractive disaster.

  His eyes were drawn to the back of the restaurant, where a tall male figure moved swiftly toward a door. A much shorter figure moved with the ma
n, being dragged, or perhaps pushing—at least some sort of struggle was taking place. James moved around trying to see more clearly, and couldn’t quite manage it. But he was convinced it was Henry and Clarence.

  James made his way through the maze of staggered tables, apologising as he ran into legs, moved chairs, jostled the elbows of people trying to eat. There was an outcry, and several servers were approaching, but he had no time to explain—if that was Clarence and Henry, he probably wouldn’t get another chance. He finally reached the door a long time after they’d passed through. He ran in, onto a stairwell platform, steps leading down. Although the steps were well lit, the walls were not, and he could not touch them by stretching out his arms. Given the nature of the echoing footfalls—he could hear them far below—the walls were some distance away. He felt a moment of panic, then forced himself to descend as quickly as physically possible, focussing only on the steps and the pounding sounds below.

  After a few minutes without slowing, he became aware of a rising stench. He thought perhaps they were approaching an area where the museum disposed of its wastes, but there was a sharpness to the stench that did not signify garbage to him. A few more flights down and the smell began to burn his eyes. He realised it had a vague resemblance to the smell of that pickled, briny sauce, although magnified a few thousand times.

  At the bottom, the stair became the hub to a wheel of corridor openings. He moved from opening to opening, listening. From several, he heard a lapping as of ocean waves, but no steps. From another there came a regular, distant shush-shushing sound, and a terrible stink, but not the same as what he had smelled before. Several others appeared dead—dark and unlit and with air that tasted deeply of dirt. He was ready to give up when he heard the faint click click click inside one of the corridors, like hard soles hitting metal. The briny stench here was terrible, and a breeze from the opening seemed to indicate some passage to outside air. And a low-level, phosphorescent sort of light outlining floor, ceiling, walls. He had no choice, so he raced into it headlong, glancing down just enough to avoid tripping over obstacles: piles of vegetation, loose unravelling of clothing, and other materials—stubby, moving things.