by John Pelan
Hair-raising and nearly deadly.
The best adventure they'd ever had.
Now the couple hesitated and looked at each other. “What do you think?” Paul asked, squinting into the wedge of darkness. “I can't see it very clearly—I guess it could be a man.…”
“No,” Macy said softly. “I don't think it's human at all. Remember Burma?”
He nodded as they stared at the vague shape in the doorway, and it stared at them. “I found something in the book,” he told her in a low voice. “That I thought might connect Burma to the Cthulhu stuff. If I'm right, those things that chased us were called the Dark Young, the offspring of this female fertility god with some twisted, unpronounceable name.”
Macy's fingers automatically went to her neck, but of course the necklace wasn't there—funny, but until it was gone, she hadn't realized how used she was to fondling it. “Really,” was all she said, but it was nothing more than an automatic response. Her pulse was racing and with no warning at all, she suddenly felt warm, way overheated for their nearly Utopian surroundings. She started to say something else but forgot the words, nearly forgot how to breathe, when the thing in the doorway stepped out and into full view.
“What the hell is that thing?” Paul asked hoarsely.
She had no answer, just gaped, became more incredulous with each step forward it took. First it looked like a tall, anemone-shaped black plant that could, absurdly, walk like a man —one that stood at least seven feet high. Then the upper half of its body suddenly lifted upright, like a mass of hair rising on an updraft, except it wasn't hair at all. Instead, Macy realized they were seeing tentacles, a mass of them, waving and probing the air like some kind of mutated octopus out of a cheap undersea horror flick.
It cut the distance between them to less than twenty feet and stopped, and Macy felt Paul's hand tighten painfully around hers, his hold digging in until she couldn't separate the hammering pulse in his fingers from her own. And in her peripheral vision, she saw the best of all possible things on his face, that thing that made her know to her soul that she had chosen the perfect mate.
A dark and slightly crazed smile, the grin that more often than not meant he wanted, more than anything, to experience what would happen next.
An expression that matched her own.
And his smile only widened when another of the creatures stepped out from behind the first.
Twins.
Without asking her, Paul started to step toward it.
Stop.
He jerked back and looked at her. “What did you say?”
“Not me.” She tilted her head and studied the creatures a few yards away. “Them, I think. In our minds, somehow—I heard it, too.”
“Macy, is this real?” Beyond his excitement, Paul sounded on the edge of desperate. “Are we really here, awake —or are we sleeping in the desert somewhere? Maybe even dead?”
“I don't know,” she answered honestly. Everything he'd just suggested could be true—hell, any one of the natives at the roadside trading posts had a tale to tell about some bush you shouldn't burn in your campfire, or some water hole that you avoided at all costs. Maybe they'd burned just such a bush and gotten high or something, cracked their heads on the way down. Even now coyotes and night creatures might be scavenging food off their cooling bodies.
If is real.
Macy shuddered as the voices, two of them and simultaneous, rippled through her thoughts, knowing instinctively that what she heard, her husband did, too. She found her own voice and asked the first thing that came to mind, blurting out the words before she had time to consider whether or not the things in front of her might find them insulting. “What are you?”
The beasts swayed back and forth. The tentacles that comprised their upper bodies were long and graceful, weaving with nearly hypnotic regularity.
We are the twins Lloigor and Zhar. We are brothers.
In unison, the twins suddenly slid forward, cutting the distance between themselves and the couple nearly in half. Now they were close, too close; Macy had a way too personal view of those tentacles and the suckers running along the length of each one. She thought she saw tiny teeth embedded in each.
Paul must have noticed, too, because this time he took a step backward, dragging on her hand until she came with him. “Why are we here?” he demanded. “What—what do you want?”
For a long moment, their minds were silent. When the answer came, it had a longing, singsong quality that had been lacking in the creatures' previous words.
We need the woman, the twins whispered to them. She is… our destiny. And we are hers.
Paul scowled as this sank in. “That's it,” he said. “We're out of here.” Still holding firmly to Macy's hand, he started to turn and head back down the street, no doubt toward that copper-gated entryway. But he didn't get far—a foot was all—before Lloigor, or maybe it was Zhar, shot out an appendage and coiled it tightly around his neck.
It is not your choice. You are… disposable.
While the half-second that it took for Macy to register what was going on seemed to stretch in her mind like an eternity, Paul's face went instantly scarlet as the blood was compressed above his neck. The next instant, she was grabbing at the thing wrapped below her husband's jaw line, trying desperately to work her fingernails between it and Paul's skin, to find for him, somewhere, a little breathing room as he flailed at the attacking beast. When that didn't work, she outright clawed at it, gouging with her fingernails, punching and tearing. “No —let him go!”
No good. Paul's eyes were rolling up in his head now, his movements growing weaker as his body used up its oxygen reserve. The monster holding him seemed absurdly complacent, standing there and swaying gently next to its brother.
“I won't stay if you kill him!” Macy cried. “I'll leave—go back where I came from!”
For another two seconds nothing changed, then the tentacle released Paul and let him drop. Macy went down with him, barely managing to get an arm between his head and the ground before it hit. Her husband gasped for air and tried to sit up, finally found enough strength to do so. His neck was ringed with tiny, bloody circles. Enraged, Macy bared her teeth at the grotesque twins. “Damn the both of you,” she snarled. “Abominations!”
If she'd thought her insult would hurt them somehow, she was wrong. The creatures simply stood there, patient and implacable.
“I'm all right,” Paul rasped. He held onto her hand and made it to his knees, then staggered back to his feet. “I'm fine.”
The woman.
Macy scowled. “Why?” she demanded. She swept an arm around her. “What's the story on this place, and what do you want with me?”
A thousand years ago we were en route to Bethmoora, destined to mate with a woman chosen by the high priests of the city. Bethmoora is a city of cycles, and as it has been since the beginning of time, the offspring of our pairing would have enslaved the city and ruled in depravation for five centuries. Then our children would sleep, and Bethmoora would rebuild and flourish as it had countless times before.
But we were betrayed by a temple acolyte who desired the chosen woman, and our coming was revealed. The residents of Bethmoora panicked and pled, disrupting the cycle and leaving the city abandoned, frozen in time.
Forty generations later, you are the last descendant of that woman. You, therefore, are the chosen one, our mate, who must reestablish the cycle and break free the wheels of existence. This is why you have been drawn to this place, to Bethmoora.
If Macy hadn't been so horrified, she might have laughed. “Mate?” she asked incredulously. “You can't be serious. You're not even human.”
“Besides,” Paul put in, “if doing that will unleash five hundred years of destruction and misery, why the hell would she want to?”
“I'm not even from your world,” Macy added. “I… exist somewhere else.” She looked around a little helplessly, trying to orient herself back toward those elusive copper gates. “
Back… there.”
Species does not matter. Physical bodies can be altered to accommodate what is necessary. The thousand years of solitude has changed the fabric of the barriers between our dimensions, and they are ready to be broken down, the twins intoned. Now the two worlds will be merged as one.
For a few seconds, neither Paul nor Macy could speak. Then Macy found her voice. “So this would destroy not only Bethmoora, but everything … on the other side, as well? All life—people — would die?”
Not all. It will be a struggle, but the strong will survive.
“And me?” Macy asked softly. “Would I?”
Perhaps… if you are strong enough to survive the birthing of the twin gods, stronger still to endure the new world that will emerge.
Twins, Macy realized with a start. Of course. It was all coming together now—the history of multiple births on her mother's side; her own unquenchable taste, matched only by Paul's, for adventure and danger; even their irresistible urge to steal that keystone ruby from the temple in Burma. As the beasts in front of her claimed, it was, it had to be —
Destiny.
You will be changed, the voices echoed. Forever.
She glanced at her husband and found him looking at her. Was that a hint of the familiar hungry grin at the corner of his mouth?
Macy faced Lloigor and Zhar again. “And what about my husband?” she asked slowly. “What will you do to him?”
Nothing. Whether he survives the coming catastrophe depends solely on him.
“You would let him leave Bethmoora.”
The mating will take three days, the birthing another seven. If it is your wish, we will send him to the gates and beyond, back to that place in the desert where the two of you joined and entered the Dreamlands. He will have those ten days to prepare.
“More of a head start than the rest of the world,” Paul said dryly. “I guess I should be grateful.” He shot the beasts in front of them an ugly glare, then pulled her close. “Macy, you heard what they said—you might not survive. You don't have to do this.”
She laughed then, feeling the tropical breeze and, already, wondering what it would feel like to have a hundred or a thousand of their tentacles sliding over her skin, entering her, altering her in unspeakable ways to enable her to bear their young. The thought brought heat with it, deliciously decadent curiosity about what was to come, that craving, as always, for the dangerous and the unknown. What would she be like afterward? Would she still be… human? It didn't matter.
“I don't have a choice, Paul,” she said. She cupped his face in her hands. “I never have—you know that.”
“I love you,” he said, and kissed her deeply.
Macy savored his touch, taking it inside herself where she could treasure it during the hardships to come. Her times with him, she knew, would be the memories that would see her through. “You, too.”
“Sundad,” he said suddenly. His arms tightened around her. “Be strong—I know you can—and meet me there on the other side. I'll make ready, and then I'll come back for you.”
“You'll have a hard enough time staying alive,” she said.
But Paul just grinned. “What the hell,” he said with a shrug. “Life sucks without a challenge anyway.”
He let go of her reluctantly. As he stepped back, she tried to burn his image into her mind—his lean and muscled body, the dark hair and ocean-green eyes, the softer hair that sprinkled his chest, pelvis and legs, the well-known scars that pocked his skin here and there, reminders of their past escapades. The thought of saying good-bye made her hurt nearly as much as the nearly constant rushes of pleasurable fear that were firing through her limbs. What new scars would she see on her husband's body the next time they met? For that matter, what new marks would he find on hers?
Or would he find her at all?
Yes, she swore to herself. He will.
On the other side of a changed world, perhaps, and it would be a fight, but it would happen, dammit.
Macy reached out and their fingers brushed a final time, then she turned and watched Paul as he walked away, keeping her gaze focused on him until he was out of earshot.
“The gateway to the Dreamlands,” she said. “Do what you promised.”
As you wish.
She saw her husband glance upward in surprise, then a circle of red and purple light spun open above his head and suddenly dropped and engulfed him. Then he, like the rest of whatever semblance of a normal and human life she had once had, was just… gone.
While at her back, in form nearly unimaginable, awaited her future.
No, she thought firmly and balled her fists. Not her future-only another adventure, the most dangerous and challenging of all, a temporary destiny. But she would prevail, because no matter what Lloigor and Zhar claimed, she would never believe that she was meant to be with anyone or anything other than Paul.
“Meet me on the other side,” Macy whispered.
And turned slowly to face the waiting beasts.
THAT'S THE STORY OF MY LIFE
John Pelan and Benjamin Adams
I've heard it said that family is the only thing you can count on in a crisis. Now, I've known my own strange family long enough to know that's not particularly true.
The Jeffisons of Arkham are a strange batch and were as far back as we could trace our ancestry, with a family tree filled with madmen, revolutionaries, and dire occultists. There were still secrets to our background that my eldest brother, Collis, refused to tell me; since our parents had died when I was only three months old, he had raised me as his own.
I'd left Arkham —or rather been dragged away during my freshman year, a sudden romance followed by an even more sudden move to the West Coast. I was married to Gwen and enrolled at U Cal Berkeley before I realized fully the extent of the choices that I'd made. Everything seemed wonderful for a time.… They say that most marriages today end in the first seven years; we didn't make it that far. Four years and I was watching Gwen drive away, her car filled with things that we'd bought together but I somehow no longer had any connections to. My marriage had just foundered on the rocks of cuckoldry, and in San Francisco I was utterly alone. I'd made no friends during the few years Gwen and I had lived there; everyone I'd known had either been a coworker in the Public Health building or part of Gwen's coterie of neopagans.
The only people to whom I knew I could turn were my family. They'd made their own attempts to venture forth into the world, but no matter their personal successes—and some of the Jeffisons had quite phenomenal triumphs in their chosen careers—all had wound up moving back to the Arkham area. Collis had traveled extensively across Asia in his youth and was now an instructor in ancient history at Miskatonic University. My brother Morse, who always seemed to have a drink in his hand, had done quite well for himself in real estate around New England and had controlling interests in several businesses in Arkham. His twin sister, Duana, had studied at the Sorbonne and now made a living as an artist, drawing, etching, and painting disturbing images with the same black sense of humor as the two Edwards: Pickman and Gorey. She shared a joint interest with Morse in a downtown New Age and pagan bookshop, The Golden Gallimaufry.
All of my siblings had left Arkham but had found themselves drawn to return to its aged, gambrel-roofed neighborhoods.
Just as I now found myself returning.
My brother Collis, a huge wall of a man, waved his right hand before him in a manner mocking game show hostesses. “So what do you think, Keiran?”
I glanced around the apartment Collis had thoughtfully procured for me. Prefabricated and rather soulless, it was like another two hundred of its ilk in Miskatonic Heights: a twenty-year-old complex built to house students from the nearby university who were either too well-off to live in the dorms or simply too antisocial to endure close proximity with a roommate.
I glanced around the apartment and saw my exile from Gwen in its every corner.
Collis must have seen the cloud cross my f
ace. “Buck up, little brother. You're free now.”
“Free.” I snorted. “Yeah. It's great.”
“You'll get over her in time.”
In time. In time. I could imagine vast expanses of time, yawning dusty epochs of time, bloody great ages of time, and in all of it I could never envision forgetting Gwen. My heart, my soul still lay in bondage to her whims. I could physically separate myself from the cause of my pain, but I couldn't sever my ties to her.
“It's a fine apartment, Collis. Truly,” I said. “I'm very pleased with it. Now let's get my stuff brought in.”
Collis smiled, a sight that likely would make many bold men pale. “Good.”
But as we lugged in the boxes, I knew that before the week was out I would be calling Gwen on the telephone, trying desperately to make something—anything—work out between us. Damn me, I was weak. Weak in conviction and weak in will. The woman had cheated on me, breaking a sacred covenant of trust. But the anger and pain I felt at her betrayal were nothing compared to my anguish at my separation from her. At that moment all I wanted was to see Gwen's face once again.
Gwen. Guinevere.
I fell asleep with her name like honey on my hungry lips.
I phoned her not just once, but at least five times during the first ten days of my return to Arkham. Sometimes pleading, sometimes weeping, often cajoling; using every psychological trick in the book to get her to admit that our separation hurt her as much as it did me.
Was she lonely?
“Oh, I have my friends. I know it must be hard on you, leaving everything behind and trying to start over.”
Did she miss me?
“Of course I do. I wish you'd stayed here in town; we could both have had our distance and privacy and still hung out together.”