“Of course, the real Howard Phillips Lovecraft passed away decades ago: 1937 to be exact. Born in 1890, H. P. Lovecraft was long thought to be a talented fiction writer – erratic, but brilliantly imaginative, and writing in a genre that took decades to be fully appreciated. He only wrote for cheap pulp magazines – if he had lived a decade or two longer he could have seen his name on books, but he never did during his lifetime.”
“Isn’t that kinda sad, for a writer?”
Lovecraft shrugged. “He lived to see his name in print, time and time again, which is satisfying in itself. And he was an avid correspondent, who kept in touch with his friends, and with enthusiasts of his work, through thousands of letters. So he had a full life in many ways. Many of his correspondents went on to become well-known writers themselves, so Lovecraft’s influence is undeniable. But still, he was seen as the master of a cheap and sensational genre.
“It wasn’t until after World War II that people began to see more in Lovecraft’s stories. In 1946, a manned rocket crashed in the Pacific Northwest – up the west coast, on your side of the border – and although there were survivors, apparently they suffered hideous fates. There were also casualties among their rescuers. It’s been largely hushed up, but in documents of the crash, researchers noticed the name Nyarlathotep. This was evidently some form of life that they had encountered in space – a form of life that had returned with them, that had escaped when the ship crashed.”
“But everybody knows the first manned space flight didn’t happen until way after that ...” I interrupted.
Lovecraft sighed. “A lot goes on, that doesn’t get into the official history.”
I searched my memory for the facts. “Yuri Gagarin, 1961. And how could they return with a form of alien life?”
“Please, Nate, for now just trust me on this and listen.”
“Where would they find alien life? We can’t even find alien life. The Martian probes ...”
“Son,” Dad interjected, “let the man talk.”
I agreed to keep my mouth shut. This was exciting. Scary, but exciting.
“Over the years,” Lovecraft continued, “the evidence mounted that, in fact, the world described by Lovecraft was, if not identical to our world, then more closely related than anyone had surmised. Certain facts emerged that corresponded alarmingly to what had been regarded as fiction. When the Lovecraft Underground was formed, one of its areas of research was the correlation of events in the real world with certain events that had been presented as fiction.
“I was a fan of Lovecraft’s fictional work. A huge amount of correspondence had also been published. Somehow, in the course of my reading I began to closely identify with this complex and struggling artist. It was a godsend for me to stumble upon the Underground. Every two years they elect an expert who takes on the role of Lovecraft proxy – I’ve just started my contract as investigator and troubleshooter – and who intercedes in situations where the Great Old Ones may be trying to break into our world. Situations such as this one.”
“How are you going to stop them?” I asked.
“By gathering a vigilante force of good and like-minded people to rise up against these fanatics and disrupt the next ceremony, and if necessary the one after that, and the one after that, until they give up and this incarnation of the Church dissolves through sheer attrition.”
“Just a minute here,” Dad said. “You’re not going to enlist my son in some kind of religious fanatic gang war.”
I rolled my eyes, both at Lovecraft’s mention of a vigilante force, of which I could see no evidence, and at Dad’s reaction. Here he goes again, I thought. At the same time, it wouldn’t pay to be too skeptical. If the bags Lovecraft had brought with him were full of high-tech extraterrestrial monster-fighting weaponry, I wanted to get my hands on some. I expected Lovecraft to say something to mollify my dad’s fears, but he surprised me.
“Mr. Silva, until this morning I would have said that under no circumstances would I ask someone your son’s age to join a battle this dangerous. But I’m afraid that after hearing what he has to say, I’ve reversed that position.”
“Great.” My dad’s voice rose. “Who would start a war, and then put a kid like Nate on the front lines?”
Lovecraft took a deep breath. “I will do my best – I am doing my best – to protect your son. But I didn’t put him on the front lines. He was already there, of his own volition.” He turned to me. “Nate, when we were in the van today ... I’m sorry, but things moved very fast, and I’d taken a few nasty blows when they pulled us inside ... but I need to ask you ...”
“What’s this about a van?” Dad asked. “You told me you went to Homegrown.”
Lovecraft ignored him. “I know that you gave the Proprietor the book. But then he handed something back to you. That’s what concerns me. What did he hand to you?”
“Well of course, that wasn’t the real book,” I said.
“What book?” Dad was getting flustered. “What proprietor? The proprietor of what?” Now Lovecraft and I were both ignoring him.
“My point is ...” Lovecraft was choosing his words carefully. “...please, Nate, just confirm with me exactly what he handed to you.”
“That’s simple. He gave me back the shopping bag.”
“And there wasn’t anything else?”
“No.”
“Not a slip of paper, with strange characters on it?”
“You mean, like the one that Dana was handed after the midnight game the other night?”
He sighed. “Exactly.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” I said, “but I’ll check, if you really ...”
“Please.”
My pockets were still empty from when I’d changed earlier so I headed upstairs and went through the stuff that I’d emptied out. A little pocket knife, my phone, keys, the plastic shopping bag I’d used to carry the dummy Necronomicon ... I grabbed the bag and took it back downstairs.
“This is all he handed me,” I said. I unfolded it, and sure enough something fluttered to the floor: a slip of paper, probably a receipt from the original purchase. I pulled it out. “Look what I found.”
It wasn’t a receipt, it was a slip of parchment, the same as Dana had been given the night of the games, three nights ago: it seemed about a hundred years. Now that I could get a good look at the figures on it, I could see that they were some kind of funky old symbols, or code.
And again, within their rough handwritten curves I could see angles, sharp points and holes and interstices, that shimmered like sparks in smoke, and the smoke waved and gusted into words – In memoriam Nathan Silva allowed thirty-five hours – and then faded away.
“What the ...?” I held the paper up to the light. The in memoriam message had disappeared, leaving only the strange stick-figure code.
“Isn’t that the weirdest thing?” I said. “I saw my name on it, but now ...”
Lovecraft was staring at me in horror. He was getting red in the face.
“Those ... animals,” he sputtered. “Worse than the monsters they serve ...”
Dad was also looking anxious. “These are, like, runic symbols, aren’t they?”
“Of course they are,” answered Lovecraft. “The branch of the Church that has sprung up in Hamilton is unspeakably cruel. There is no need for this savagery.”
The two of them were making me nervous. I was glad when Dad changed the subject.
“So, Howard,” Dad said. “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea ...”
“Passing a parchment, and to a mere boy. Mr. Silva, I think, at this time, we should concentrate on the magnitude of this ...”
“Call me Gordon, please. Some ice cream?”
“Oh.” There was a long pause. Lovecraft pursed his lips. “Well, if you insist.”
“I’ll get some bowls,” Dad said, leaping from his chair before I could get up. Ice cream had been on sale last week and we had stocked up. Tonight, maple walnut.
“It’s n
ot the greatest ...” I said as we started.
“Oh, this is good.” Indeed Lovecraft was making sincere little yummy sounds as he finished off his bowl. “This is just fine.” The mood in our dining room had momentarily brightened. At the very least, we had steered Lovecraft away from another panic attack. I gestured at the parchment, which lay on the table in front of us.
“Runes are what the Vikings wrote with, right?”
Lovecraft nodded. “But many runic elements predate the Vikings. In this case, we’re talking about the relationships between runes and dimensional interfaces – the infinite micro-locations where worlds may intersect, even though they enjoy their own discrete existences in different dimensions. Expert practitioners in continuum science have ways, not always predictable, of creating the conditions that enable a number of phenomena that create mini-portals, called interstices, where worlds can intersect not via three-dimensional space, but interdimensionally.” He paused and looked at me. “Are you still with me?”
“Sure. Uh, whatever.”
“Wait a second,” Dad said. “So, this is a curse?” He waved his hand dismissively. “We’re supposed to be scared?”
Lovecraft said, “Throughout the universe there are forms of life, such as life on earth, that evolved in curved space, but there are other forms of life that are very different ... that evolved in what we might think of as angled space. This form of life has evolved in a space so different from ours that their world can coexist simultaneously in time and space with ours, without either world infringing upon the other – except in rare instances where circumstances create dimensional overlaps.
“For example, when you find yourself surrounded by sharp angles – especially right angles, although what you have to watch out for are perfect right angles, which are very rare – it is not at all uncommon to feel uneasy. These are potential interstices, through which anything might slip from another dimension. Although usually different factors need to be added in order to both (a) establish a micro-threshold and (b) induce or summon any actual traveller, or entity, to cross the threshold.
“So don’t wonder why, at certain places at certain times – outdoor settings with unusual congruencies of earth, wind and water; indoor settings that include a lot of right angles – you feel nervous. Such places admit conjunctions of instability – continuum breakdowns, rather than full-fledged thresholds. Especially,” he sighed, “in the case of crossing runes, such as these.”
“Come off of it,” I said. “They’re handwritten ... there’s not going to be any so-called perfect right angles in them. You’d need a machine.”
“I wonder if for now you could stow the theoretical stuff,” Dad said, “and let me know if there’s any way this might impact my son’s safety, or life.”
“Dad, don’t worry.”
“I’m afraid we have to worry,” Lovecraft said. “Even a machine adjusted to the finest tolerance can’t guarantee the kind of right angle, perfect to the nearest molecule, that they’re looking for. However, since the earliest days of the written word, humans have known that buried within certain mingled shapes, such as runes and the most powerful of charms, are sequences of spatial relationships that can replicate the perfectly angled effect.
“Nate, according to your description, your friend Dana received a piece of paper exactly like this one on the night of the last midnight game.”
“Yes, it had those same runes. Dana insisted that it had other writing on it; that at the top, it read ‘In memoriam Dana Laschelles ... uh, something... forty-two hours.’ But when he went to show it to me, it was gone, so I thought... Well I guess I thought he’d imagined it or made it up. Dana could be moody sometimes. But now the same thing’s happened to me.”
“Yes,” said Lovecraft. “‘Allowed forty-two hours.’ And when was Dana killed?”
“Hmm ... he received that paper, or parchment, a while after midnight as we were leaving the game. And it was last night, two nights later, that I went to see him. I was hoping to crash at his squat there, just for the night. And in fact ...” I shuddered. “... I heard things moving in the darkness just before I found Dana. I must have got there just after...” My voice seemed to be petering out. I cleared my throat and just sat and thought.
Lovecraft nodded. “The Hounds. The Hounds of Tindalos ... well wait a second. You told me you had a copy of the book.”
“I’ll go get it.”
“While you do that, son,” Dad said. “Can I just take a look at that parchment?”
“Sure, Dad. It’s right there.” But my father made no move to pick it up.
“Nate, I had a heck of a shift today. I’m beat. Would you mind handing it to me?”
“Now, Gordon ...” Lovecraft began to speak, then seemed to think better of it.
I shrugged, but handed him the parchment and headed down to the basement.
I went behind the furnace, reached up to the ceiling, pried back a sheet of particleboard that covered the floor joists and pulled out the Hamilton Public Library’s copy of the Necronomicon. I leafed through it as I came up from the basement until I found the page. “Here it is.” I handed it to Lovecraft, who, at Dad’s invitation, had dug our teapot out of the cupboard. While the kettle came to a boil he read it aloud:
They are thirsty for blood and humours and they are angry. The Hounds of Tindalos are aware. The winds between the stars carry to them the scent of this dimension, the world of the human, yet they cannot reach it, save if they are allowed to do so leashed by a sorcerer’s corrupt physik and debased configuring. They live in a world of angles. It is only through the conjunction of perfect angles and spells they may reach us. These Hounds are driven by hate, and above all they hate, they hate those who become their masters.
“It works this way,” said Lovecraft. “The cult has gathered enough energy from its followers to empower the specific runes that connect to the irradiated, toxic dimension of the Hounds of Tindalos. There is not much we understand about the Hounds except that they are perpetually angry, perpetually predatory, perpetually famished.
“Writing on parchment, skilled practitioners can configure the runes to target specific individuals. When the parchment is passed to that person, at the appointed time the Hounds will appear and – appease their hunger.
“This group must be gathering considerable power,” he continued. “If its Proprietor can summon the Hounds, it’s possible that his church’s efforts to establish a viable continuum threshold are much farther ahead than I had assumed.”
“How can I stop this?” I asked. “From what you tell me, at eleven p.m. tomorrow these things, these Hounds are going to appear, and do to me what they did to Dana.”
“Son, you no longer have that problem.”
“I don’t get it.” I looked from Dad to Lovecraft. Lovecraft explained.
“You’re right, Nate, it’s a genuine curse. But your father did something very brave. He asked you to pass the parchment to him, and you did. He couldn’t just reach over and take it – there are protocols. That’s why he insisted.” He turned to Dad.
“Now, Gordon, are you prepared to hand that parchment back to your son?”
“No way.”
Lovecraft sighed. “You see, Nate, he asked you for the parchment, and you gave it to him. And now the curse is transferred. At eleven p.m. tomorrow the Hounds will come not for you, but for your father.”
CHAPTER 18
THE DISANGLED SANCTUARY
I shivered as I stepped out of the house. It was long after midnight, and I could feel winter creeping in through the silences of the empty street. At the end of the block a dark figure, trailing a squeaking two-wheeled shopping cart, looked back at the sound of the door opening and then vanished around the corner. I closed the front door as quietly as I could, tugging until I heard the latch click, and headed east through side streets toward the railway track.
Lovecraft, Dad and I had sat up late scheming to elude the Hounds of Tindalos. It had been done before, L
ovecraft said, or there were those who said it had been done. “Or at least,” he finally conceded, “there are those who say that it theoretically can be done in this way.
“The favoured method to stave off an attack by the Hounds is to line a room with putty, plaster or concrete. It has to be done carefully, rounding it off to the smallest detail to eliminate all sharp angles from the enclosing space. Without angles, the Hounds can’t gain access to their victim.”
“So, what do they do then?” I asked.
“Well, Nate, you would have some very angry Hounds – something I would not want to be around for. But they can do nothing but return, hissing and fuming, to the unspeakable dimension that birthed them. A dimension known only to the ancient sorcerers of R’lyhnygoth, who devised these arcane mathematics that seem, to us, to be so much like magic.”
“Hey.” That word had triggered a memory. “There is someone they call a sorcerer, who’s involved with all of this somehow. The cult – outside the stadium the other night, the Interlocutor warned that ‘the sorcerer’ might show up, and the Proprietor totally dissed her.”
Lovecraft rolled his eyes. “I don’t think we need to worry about the sorcerer. I’ll explain some other time.”
“But ...”
“Nate, let’s focus on the business at hand, which is saving your father’s life.”
“If you don’t mind,” Dad said.
“First thing in the morning we have to go to the hardware store and purchase some kind of putty or filler that can be sculpted ... plaster of Paris, or concrete perhaps.
“Gordon, I’ll need your help with this. We need to choose a room in this house that can be completed disangled – all the sharp angles must be taken out of it, to eliminate any chance of access by the Hounds of Tindalos. They can access our world only through right angles. We need to completely round off all its inside corners by filling them in with ...”
Dad thought for a moment. “Drywall compound ought to do it.”
I made some tea as we sat around the dining-room table and made plans, and backup plans, to save Dad from the Hounds. The next midnight game, which might very well admit Yog-Sothoth to our world; the enlistment of thousands of hopeful, clueless people to the cause of the Resurrection Church; mass psychic takeover by an entity that wanted to remake our world into its image – all this was forgotten as we schemed to save my father from the Hounds.
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