Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20

by Tanzer, Molly

  When I awoke, the smell had become a stench overpowering enough to leave me gagging. I cannot properly describe it, even now, after having spent all these days with it. Have you ever been down into an old root cellar, or some damp, dark place in the earth? Perhaps a house that has recently flooded, or suffered from a long leaking roof- that damp, musty, clinging smell of mildew and mold? There was something of both of those to it. Added to that were traces of rot and putrefaction. There was also a cloying, almost sickly sweet quality to it that was somehow worse than the stink of decay. Something acidic, almost chemical as well. It was a dozen terrible smells all wrapped up into one repugnant, awful stench. Finally, I could hold it back no longer, and I leaned over the side of the bed and heaved onto the floor.

  Once I had finished I called out to Katy, but received no response. I felt weak and bewildered as I tried to climb out of the bed, and I practically fell into my own vomit more than once. I called out to her again, more urgently now- still nothing. I began to cry for her, frantically. I made my way down the ladder to the floor of the cabin, and in my haste and current state, I nearly tripped and fell. I might have broken my neck, if I had fallen from that high, and part of me wishes I had. I wandered the cabin, coughing and choking from the smell, occasionally stopping to wretch and heave, until I realized that she was not in here with me. I turned to the door, stumbling towards it, feeling my panic grow with every passing second. I knew I had to find her. I had to find her and get her in the car and get us as far away from this place as possible no matter how silly it might have seemed. As I drew closer to the door, the smell became stronger, and I realized that whatever it was coming from must have also moved closer.

  As I reached out for the door, I was overcome by a sense of dread. I suddenly knew I could no more bring myself to reach out and twist that knob than I could pluck the moon from the sky or sprout wings and fly away from this place. No, some part of me, some animal instinct residing quietly until now in the back of my brain knew I must not open that door, and held me back from doing so.

  For reasons equally beyond my understanding, I instead dropped down and pulled away at the rubber stopper that we had installed upon the bottom of the door. You see, as the cabin had settled and subtly shifted over the years, a small gap had formed beneath the bottom of the door. It was no more than a couple of inches, but still enough to let in a draft or a bit of rain if the wind blew the right way, and so we had installed a bit of rubber along its bottom to properly seal it up. I pulled that away now, and despite how strong the smell was as it poured in through the new gap. I leaned down and looked outside.

  Darkness. Or, at least, what I at first took to be darkness. All across the bottom of the door, all that I could see was pure, unbroken black. I was momentarily confused- it had been fairly early in the morning when we had arrived and I had laid down. Surely I hadn’t slept that long? I looked at my watch only to discover that it was barely past three in the afternoon, meaning I had only slept a couple hours.

  I sat there in confusion for a moment, trying to piece it all together, and looked beneath the door once again. The longer I looked out, the more and more I came to realize that I was not looking into some lightless distance, but rather at an object lying before the door. From what I could tell, it seemed to be incredibly smooth and, though I could not be certain, the way that it caught the light from inside made it seem as though its surface might be of either a damp or slimy texture. The first thing to spring to mind was of some colossal black slug laid out before the doorway, and I nearly vomited.

  As I lay there staring at it, I noticed that a spot on its surface was becoming gradually lighter than the rest. I fixed my eye upon it and watched, with mixed horror and curiosity, as a white object about the size of a quarter seemed to arise from within the substance to sit upon the surface. The only way in which I can describe it is to say that it looked somewhat like a peeled grape, except that it was entirely white. As I watched, more began to steadily surface, ranging in size from a dime to what I would estimate as closer to my fist, all of them looking like peeled albino grapes. I laid for some time, watching these things, trying to figure out what I was seeing, when it began to dawn on me. I slowly slid myself across the floor to the other side of the doorway…and they twitched, following me in my movement. They were eyes. I screamed, and launched myself back away from the door, moving as far away as possible. Eventually I fought down my revulsion to come close enough to push the rubber stopper back against the space beneath the door, unable to bear the idea of that thing watching me.

  That night, the screaming began.

  April 6

  Nothing new to write, I’m afraid. It shrieks all night long, and squats there in front of the door during the day. Yesterday, in the afternoon, I finally managed to work up enough courage to move the piece of rubber to the side and look out through the gap. It was still there, but thank God, I managed to move the rubber back into place before it had time to conjure any of those damned eyes.

  I’m beginning to worry that it’s not just going to lose interest and leave. So long as I am in here it’s going to go on sitting there, waiting. I’ve got to hope Katy got away, hope she’s made it down out of the mountains and is bringing someone, is bringing help. Unless she is…then I feel as if I might as well be stranded on the moon.

  I’m running out of aspirin. I have been suffering from constant headaches since that first day, which make the waking hours almost intolerable. It’s at its worst at night, with that thing at the door screaming away hour after hour, my head pounding and feeling as though it’s about to split in two, my heart racing away in my chest. Sometimes it becomes too much to stand, and I pass out. Whenever I awaken from one of these faints, I feel a mixture of relief and terror. Relieved, of course, because I managed to escape at least a few hours of that thing’s harassment and the pain in my head, and terrified by the prospect of what could have happened if I had been in such a state when it finally managed to force the door open. At least if I’m awake, I might have a chance to escape, to get away. Or maybe it would be better if I was unconscious when it got in here. Maybe being awake is the last thing I should want.

  I’m also beginning to suffer from nausea. I don’t know if it’s from the headaches, the smell, or just living in this state of constant tension, but it seems as though I can hardly keep anything down anymore. Even just looking at the cans of food is enough to make me ill. I know that I need to eat, that I have to keep up my strength until help arrives, but all I want to do is lie down in the darkness and try to sleep and escape from all of this. But that is becoming less and less of an escape due to the nightmares I’ve been having.

  April 11

  Katy is dead. I know that now.

  I have begun to worry more and more about the door- it’s holding up fine for now, but how many more nights before it starts to let go? It’s fine now, yes, but about a week from now, or two? Because of this fact, I have been forcing myself to listen more closely at night- trying to listen for the sounds of wood beginning to crack, or the groan of nails slowly pushing loose, anything at all that might warn me about the door coming apart. By doing that, however, I’ve also found myself listening more closely to him…to it. The more I listen to it, the more a feeling of familiarity has been growing, and now I know I must have heard it somewhere.

  But where? The only thing I can relate it to is perhaps when you hear the Wilhelmscream in a movie- you might not immediately know where you recognize it from, but you know you’ve heard it before.

  I had been lying there in the bed, listening to the door for a few hours, when I looked up and noticed a small black spider crawling across one of the beams. I lied there, watching as it made its way across, enjoying the simple distraction from the noise going on outside and the pain in my head, until at last he climbed up into the shadows and out of my sight. Spiders of all sorts are hardly an uncommon sight up here in the cabin, and more than once I had thought it was strange that I hadn’t seen
any around the cabin since all of this began. Normally I would have seen a dozen by now. And silly as it might sound, merely being able to see another living thing, even a little spider, came as something of a relief. I had never been bothered by the spiders we would find up here, even though Katy had always been terrified of them- more often than not, if she saw one, she would…she would scream.

  The realization hit me like a brick, and suddenly I understood. It was her scream, and that… that… thing had been mimicking the sounds that it had heard her make this entire time.

  I don’t even remember how I got down from the loft, especially without breaking my neck, but I suddenly found myself standing before the door, knocking and shoving the furniture out of the way, pounding at the wood with clenched fists. I screamed every curse and obscenity I could think of at the thing, yelled every threat I could imagine.

  For a moment I had even considered finding something I might be able to use against it, maybe some oil and fire from the lamps. I would throw the bolts from the door and throw the burning oil at the thing in hopes that maybe it could be burned to death. It was an insane, stupid idea, and I didn’t care…I just wanted to find a way to hurt this thing, to make it suffer, even if it cost me my life.

  As I stood at the door, my body shaking with rage and grief, clenching my bloodied fists, I realized the thing had grown silent. The only sound to be heard was my panting and the blood pounding in my ears. Had I actually startled the thing? Had it been confused by this sudden change to our nightly routine? Was it simply too intent on listening to me to bother continue making noises of its own?

  The silence was broken by a small giggle. It was that small, innocent sort of laughter which is unique to small children, the one they seem to reserve for the discovery of something new and curious.

  If you have ever spent much time around children, then you will know the sound I mean. And this…this damned THING squatting on the other side of the door made the same noise, and it was in its own way even more terrible and obscene than its caricature of Katy’s last moments.

  When I understood what this must mean…that a child…oh God please no. It had been too much for my mind to bear, and I had reeled back from the door, collapsing onto the floor and blacking out. The only good to come from the whole ordeal was that my unconsciousness went unbothered by the nightmares that now seem to plague me whenever I attempt to sleep.

  So I now know that I am on my own, that Katy is not going to bring help. She is gone, and I am alone up here. Utterly alone with it. My only hope is to last long enough for people to realize something must have happened, long enough for them to send people to check on us. I have enough supplies to last that long, especially with how little I have been able to bring myself to eat lately. All that matters now is that the door continues to hold.

  Katy, I will always love you.

  April 15

  It is making me ill, somehow. I don’t know how, but it is.

  I have no appetite to speak of, and when I do try to eat, it seems as though I can barely keep anything down but a bit of water. Even more troubling, however, is the fact that even though I haven’t eaten anything solid in the past two days I don’t seem to be losing any weight. How is that possible? How can a man not eat for days and somehow not lose any weight? Honestly, I doubt I would like any of the answers I might find, and so I try to avoid thinking about it.

  My migraines are constant and agonizing, especially since I ran out of aspirin days ago and have nothing else to help ease the pain. Anything but the dimmest light is unbearable to me now, and when it screams during the night, it is torture. I sit here while it shrieks and howls and sputters, pulling at my hair and grinding my teeth, thrashing around in the bed, feeling as though someone is driving white hot needles into my brain. The fact that I now know whose scream it really is only intensifies my suffering.

  Sometimes, now, when I cough I have begun to notice small black specks, like dried blood- yet another thing which I prefer not to think about. My skin has begun to itch incessantly, and I’m beginning to develop a rash on several different parts of my body, somewhat similar to the one I got from poison ivy when I was a boy. My days have become a parade of misery, and sometimes I have to wonder if it’s really worth it to keep going.

  When I try to escape this hell by falling asleep, all I seen to find is a different one. My sleep is filled with nightmares, each seemingly worse than the last, to the point that even the pain in my head is at times preferable to sleep. Last night I dreamt Katy was standing on a barren, black plane that stretched off as far as the eye could see, her arms outstretched, beckoning me closer. As I approached, I could…see things moving beneath the skin of her face and arms. Like worms, writhing and twisting away.

  I tried to turn from her, to run, but discovered I could not- my body kept walking towards this thing that looked like my Katy but wasn’t, and I could not even force a scream from my throat. At one point, as I drew near, her eyes turned black and seemed to melt, oozing slowly down her cheeks. When I was nearly within arm’s reach, her mouth began to slowly open, stretching impossibly wide, and inside was…it was full of those writhing things. She began to lean towards, and thankfully, I woke up. Some of them are like that. Others are stranger still, more surreal- bizarre landscapes populated by freakish creatures, things I almost doubt you could imagine, things which I don’t even begin to know how to describe. I usually awaken from these dreams in a cold sweat, my heart racing and my head pounding, feeling the need to vomit even though I know there is nothing in my stomach to vomit up. The worst of them are when I am in one of these bizarre places, looking at some of these things…and I can tell they are somehow looking back at me. Those are the worst, and they seem to haunt me even when I am awake.

  All I can do is hope that help arrives before things get any worse, that I can last until someone comes up here to check on us. I don’t want to die up here on this mountain, alone with that thing.

  I don’t want to die.

  April 19

  It called to me last night, pleading with me to open the door, to come out and join her.

  Dear God, it called out to me in her voice.

  April 26

  There is no God, but there are many gods.

  There is no heaven, but there are endless hells.

  I have heard the flutes in the darkness.

  I have heard the thousand whispered names.

  April 29

  This will be my last entry.

  I now realize that, even if help did come, even if they somehow managed to get me out of here, it would now be too late for me. You see, more and more lately I’ve been scratching at my rashes, unable to stop myself. As I scratched and dug at them last night I accidentally tore open one of the larger blisters, and when I moved away the torn skin, I saw that inside of it there was an eye, like the ones on that thing outside. A tiny, white grape…staring up at me from my own skin. I cut it out, but I know it doesn’t matter at this point. I know that for whatever reason, it’s turning me into something else, trying to make me into something inhuman. I am not going to let it.

  I’ve used the rope I found to tie myself a noose and I’ve hung it from the rafters up in the loft. It should be more than strong enough to hold me, or at least for as long as I should need it to. With any luck, it will be long enough to break my neck when I jump. I think I deserve that much. I am going to die, and I am going to die as a man, as a human being. It has taken so much away from me, so very much, but I will not let it have this.

  If you find this journal, if you are reading this, then get out. Leave now, before it knows you are here, before it traps you like it did me. I can only hope that my jump from here will be into oblivion, that there is nothing waiting for me on the other side.

  Katy, I love you.

  A lifelong passion for strange fiction and the works of Lovecraft has led Brad Shelby to write one of his first stories, and the first to be published. Having grown up in small town Oklahoma, he
has always been drawn to the themes found in Lovecraft’s work such as the isolation found in the countryside and the notion that some small towns and country homes are not what they might seem to be, and this shows prominently in his work. While this is his first published piece, he plans to continue writing and exploring the worlds of strange fiction, and it will hopefully not be his last.

  Story illustration by Steve Santiago.

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  In the Tank

  by Scott Nicolay

  Roger was supposed to be job hunting when he found the pet store. At least that’s what he promised Amy he’d be doing, but really he’d done little more so far than drive aimlessly around the city, turning at random down unfamiliar streets until he was nearly lost. In a rundown part of the city he never visited before he noticed a low blue cinderblock building. The paint was faded and peeling, but the building still stood out from its drab surroundings, a vacant lot on one side and a boarded-up auto parts store on the other. The vacant lot side bore large hand painted letters in a balloonish style that had gone out a generation ago: “HOUSE of PETS” and “TROPICAL FISH”. Painted fish swam around the letters and half a dozen clumps of pale green kelp rose up the side of the wall as if growing from the dirt and refuse of the lot. Near the front of the store, other words, apparently more recent, had been added in black stencil: