by Edward Lee
As I put my frantic thoughts to words, they seemed to grind out of my throat. “The first cavern I found via the tunnelworks you told me of, it was full of rotting, dismembered corpses. Rotting, I tell you; it was pestiferous. The air was nearly toxic.”
“That cavern is for the Sires that die.”
“Sires?”
“The guys they dismember and hole up on the second floor. Every woman in the collective comes in there every night until they’re pregnant, but you’ve already figured that out. Well, they don’t live forever, you know, or sometimes a Sire becomes impotent. There’s no use for them so the town elders kill them and let their bodies rot with all the others.”
More and more things were making a revolting sense. “And the largest of the grottoes, full of so many more bodies, are the crossbred victims of the genocide in 1930?”
“That’s right. They don’t rot because their flesh is pretty much immortal. Even if you kill them by violence, they never decompose. Where do you think that weirdo Onderdonk and his kid get all that fresh meat?” and then he, ever-so-faintly, laughed. “Come on,” he whispered next. “Let’s get out of here.”
Why I suddenly felt allied to this man—this baby-killer—I had no clue. It was all circumstantial, I suppose. Through dapples of moonlight, I followed him well away from the back of the apartment row, until he came to a barely perceivable trail. I had no choice but to follow. It occurred to me that Zalen’s primitive interpretations reflected some of the most recent scientific breakthroughs all too chillingly. Certainly the last decade had trumpeted the works of the Darwinist Englander William Bateson, who’d founded and named this remarkable new science called genetics: the idea that microscopic cellular constituents pass on hereditary traits within a species, and other constituents known as mutagens, be they accidental or deliberate, can alter said traits. In addition, famed laureate microbiologist Hattie Alexander had just this month proven the viability of a miraculous anti-pneumonia serum through the manipulation of what she calls a genetic-code found within the viral cells themselves. If the fund of human knowledge was only now making such discoveries, how much superior might Zelan’s things be with regard to similar sciences?
I was too afraid to contemplate the notion further.
We appeared to be veering northwest now, and for the first time, the woods felt safe. But in Lovecraft’s story, there was no safe, and his own version of Sentinels could be hiding anywhere, ready to overhear forbidden talk—
And ready to report back…
“How many were killed all told?” morbidity forced me to ask.
“The crossbreeds? About a thousand, I think,” Zalen said. “Lots of them were fourth and fifth generation. They were living in the ruins along Innswich Point—the old waterfront. When the government did come, the whole town was squeaky clean. No riff-raff, ya know? That’s how we came to qualify for the federal rebuild.”
Something even more morbid spidered along my awareness. “Where,” I dared to ask, “are Mary’s children? She told me she’s had eight—and expectant of a ninth—but I only witnessed one child around her property.”
Zalen huffed as he proceeded. “No women in the collective are allowed to keep all their children. They’re only allowed to keep one—their first.”
“I already know what happens to the others,” I all but choked. “But I need to know specifically.”
“Oh, do you, now?”
“You called me dense for assuming the newborns are sacrificed in an occult rite. If that’s not the case then what exactly are these things doing with all those newborns?”
“How do I know, man?” he smirked back at me. “I’m not one of them, remember? I was never allowed into the town collective—I’m considered an outcast.”
But not so much an outcast to be excluded from serving these things, I reasoned. I loathed this man—for what he was and what I’d seen him do—but I knew I mustn’t rile him. His information was too valuable, and it may well serve to help assist my escape. An escape I was determined to make with Mary…
“The babies that don’t come out right,” he went on in grave monotone, “I guess they use for food. Candace’s kid, for instance. She had it today, and it was all messed up from the horse she was shooting—I warned the bitch—but she lucked out in the end. She died while she was having it.”
“Only in a manner of speaking,” I begged to differ. “That dead girl almost killed me on the waterfront tonight.”
“Oh, so that explains the shot I heard—”
“Indeed, it does. I killed her, but she was already dead. I also saw Mr. Nowry disposing of bodies in the first cavern. He was dead in the same ambulance with Candace only hours before.”
Zalen shrugged. “They don’t do it much, only when they need extra workers—”
“You’re talking about raising the dead!” I exclaimed.
“Keep your voice down!” he sneered back at me. “And I’m talking about a lot more than that. You better pray you never have to see one of the fullbloods, but don’t be fooled. They may look primitive but they’re superior to humans in every way. And, yeah, they have some sort of reagent that can restore life to people who’ve died under certain circumstances. They’ve always had it. It’s more of that cellular stuff…”
More genetic science, I realized but my thoughts kept deflecting. I simply couldn’t get her off my mind. “How long… has Mary been part of this town collective?”
“Five years, maybe, six years. Who cares? And speaking of your precious Mary…” Zalen slowed amid the woods, and urged me westerly. Suddenly my eyes bloomed in frosty moonlight; I was looking at something I’d already seen…
Where the modest lake had earlier gleamed in sunlight, now it shimmered in the light of the moon. I glimpsed figures along the lake’s shore.
Zalen held me back behind some trees before I had chance to blunder forth. “Not a sound,” Zalen warned.
Verbosity couldn’t have been further from my mind; instead, it was witness. Several dozen women stood in a semi-circle just at the water’s edge, and I must say, this first glimpse of them made me think singularly of occultism. The late hour, the moonlight, and the location only exacerbated a namelessly sinister provocation in my mind…
The women wore primal robes whose color was indistinguishable in the intense moonlight, but what could be distinguished were fringed panels of fabric segmented by lighter-colored stitch-work. Within these segments more elaborate embroidery could be seen: symbols quite glyph-like and the oddest designations of geometry that, when looked upon to stridently, caused my head to ache. Were the angles of the horrific geometrics actually moving? Each woman, too, held a candle before her—a candle whose flame burned green—and I thought I could hear the faintest chimes, the notes of which instilled in me, to the core of my very guts, a feeling of uncontemplatable dread via the idea of utter absence. Absence of light, absence of benevolence, absence of morality, absence of all things sane. Even more softly than the sourceless chimes there came to my ears a vocal diaphony that made me want to fall to my knees and be sick: a discordant and cacodaemonically unstructured sequence of words which sounded like:
“Ei…”
“Cf’ayak vulgtuum…”
“Ei…”
“Vugtlagln, sjulnu…”
“Ei, ph’nglui, hkcthtul’ei…”
“Wgah’nagl fhtagen—ei…”
“Ei, ei, ei…”
The perverse chants seemed to grow lighter rather than louder, but for some reason the more difficult this evil song was to hear, the more impact it had on my mind, a veritable pressure, a tactuality against my face. Yet as sick as I felt, I felt something else concurrently: a most powerful carnal arousal.
“Keep back,” Zalen whispered. He forced me to crouch lower. “This lake empties into the bay…”
The solemnity of that information didn’t at first occur to me. My vision, instead, remained hijacked to these macabre, robed women. The chorus was chanted again when al
l the women at once dropped their robes and stood nude.
Nude, I had no choice but to observe, and pregnant.
All the while, the chant seemed to compress my brain within the confines of my skull. It was sordid and erotic, seeing this in such a manner that I could not look away—indeed, it was evil. Most of the women appeared in their twenties, but I did make out Mrs. Nowry and some others more middle-aged. All of them, then, one by one, tossed their queerly green candles into the water, and I could take an oath that as each stick of wax sunk beneath the surface, the green flame was not extinguished, and at the same time my eyes seemed to acclimate more intensely to this tinseled night: the moonlight grew sharper, brighter, and with this, my vision grew more acute. Even from this considerable distance, I could make out refined details of each gravid woman. I could see the pores on their white skin, the minute line between each iris and the whites of their eyes, the papillae of each and every nipple, and the fine traceries of venousity within each milk-soused breast. Eventually all of them lowered to the muck of the lake shore, and what took place then I’ll only distinguish as an obscene bacchanal of the flesh, a libertine debauch intent on mutual satiation akin to the Isle of Lesbos. I shouldn’t have to specify, either, that one of these concupiscent attendants was Mary herself…
My eyes held rapt on the orgiastic scene, and for a time I thought that even a gun to my head couldn’t make me look away even in the self-knowledge averting my eyes was the only Godly thing to do. But it was Zalen, not God, who urged my surcease.
“It’s coming out now—”
“It?” I questioned in the slightest whisper.
“We’re not going to be here to see it. Believe me, Morley, you don’t want to see it…”
He hauled me back into the woods just at the same moment a figure began to rise from the lake.
My head thankfully cleared with proximity. “What—what was that, Zalen?”
“It was one of them—what did you think?” the long haired, greasy-coated man chided.
One of them, I thought. A fullblood…
“One of the hierarchs, but there could be others about too.”
I winced at the madness. “That was an occult rite we just witnessed, Zalen. After all I’ve learned, and everything you told me that happens to be true, there has to be more…”
“Of course there is,” the spindly vagabond retorted. “But all that shit out there by the lake?” He seemed amused. “It’s just tradition, Morley, it’s just ritual; it means nothing. All it proves is how much lower mankind’s mentality is; the only way we could ever really relate to the fullbloods—even back in Obed Larsh’s time—is through ignorant ritualism like this…”
“Just a veneer,” I speculated, for so much occultism in the Master’s work was just that. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“You hit it right on the head. What looks like devil-worship and simple paganism is just the icing on a very different kind of cake.”
The analogy, trite as it may have been, validated my assurances now. I followed Zalen unknowingly for a time, my mind too active with a plethora of conjectures. “But all societal systems ultimately have a defined purpose,” I insisted. “If this occultism is veneer—or ‘icing’ used to cover something else up… what is the something else?”
“You ask too many questions. I warned you about that,” he said. “We have to get out of here, that’s all. You’ve got money and a gun, and I’ve got the way out. If we’re lucky, we might make it.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got a motor-car,” I nearly exclaimed.
“Sure, I do—er, I should say, I know where we can get one,” he supplemented with a chuckle. “The Onderdonks have a truck. That’s where your gun comes in.”
For whatever reason, this decidedly promising news did not reduce the regard of more of my questions. “You could’ve stolen their truck anytime in the past. Why is escape on your mind now?”
“I told you,” he smirked back in spattered moonlight. “Because they’re onto us now. Someone overheard me talking to you earlier—”
“So that’s it, a breach of the secrecy everyone here must adhere to,” I surmised. “More, more of the story.”
“Because Lovecraft’s story wasn’t really a story. I told you that too. Most of it’s true. And now we’ve got to live with it—or die.”
I continued to follow his footsteps, still confounded and—why, I’m not sure—enraged more than terrified. The smell of slow-cooking meat waxed dominant; it sifted down the narrow trail to tell me that Onderdonk’s property drew near. I was appalled to admit that the aroma—even in knowing as I did the origin of the meat—was delectable. It also appalled me that Zalen, an inveterate thief, criminal, and, worse, one who was a willing party to infanticide, represented my greatest chance of escaping with Mary.
“Mary,” I said next. “She must go with us.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” he snapped.
“I insist. I have a great deal of money, Zalen. It would behoove you to accommodate my indulgence. Mary, her son, her brother, and her stepfather will be joining our escape.”
At this he actually laughed. “Her and the kid, maybe. But Paul’s deadweight; he’s a Sire who went impotent. Only reason he wasn’t killed and taken to the tunnels is ‘cos she begged the hierarch.” His next chuckle could’ve passed for a death-rattle. “And the stepfather? Haven’t you been listening?”
“I can’t fathom you, Zalen. Mary’s stepfather is aged and rife with infirmities. It would be un-Christian of us to abandoned the old man.”
“The stepfather is a crossbreed!”
I gawped at words as though they were fragments of shrapnel. “But-but, I thought—”
“Crossbreeding between the two species was made illegal by the new hierarchs, so—”
“So all the existing crossbreeds were exterminated in the concerted genocide,” I’d already gathered. “Which doesn’t explain why Mary’s stepfather is still alive.”
Zalen stopped to face me, with that nihilistic grin I was now all-too-accustomed to. “You’ll love this part, Morley… but are you sure you wanna hear it?”
“Don’t toy with me, Zalen. Your psychological parlor tricks are quite juvenile if you’d like to know the truth. So kindly tell me that—the truth.”
“We don’t know exactly how their political system works but we think it’s several of them in charge and there’s one who’s more powerful than the others.”
“It’s called an oligarchical monarchy, Zalen. The senior hierarch would suffice as the sovereign, akin to the Soviet Union of today, or this man in Germany, Hitler.”
“Yeah. The sovereign. The sovereign’s hot to trot for your wonderful little Mary. How do you like that? He’s got kind of a thing for her. That was probably him back there at the lake. Don’t worry, it won’t fuck her—it’s not allowed to… but it’ll probably do everything else.”
The information sickened me but also made me feel haunted. Thoughtlessly, I seized my handgun and turned to head back to the lake.
“You really are an idiot, Morley,” I was told amid more laughter. He’d grabbed my arm and thrust me back. “Even if you did get a clear shot at it, there’d be a hundred more after you in two minutes. They’d sniff us out. We wouldn’t stand a chance”
I leaned against a tree, gripped by a harrowing despair. “You’re telling me that Mary’s stepfather was spared from the genocide because—”
“—because Mary begged the hierarch not to kill him. She agreed to keep the old stick in hiding, at her house.” Zalen nodded. “Hate to think what she had to do to get that favor.”
I could’ve killed him on the spot for saying such a thing, but I knew there was truth behind it; desperation led to desperate acts. Instead, I collected my senses and continued to follow him. “What about those who aren’t in Olmstead’s town collective?”
“Rejects, like me, are left alone as long as we don’t tell outsiders what’s going on here, and as long as
we don’t leave.”
“Those things can’t possibly be everywhere,” I declared. “With a modicum of forethought, I’d suspect that escape would be easily achievable.”
“Sure, you’d think so,” he counted, “but why do you think nobody does? Why do you think Mary’s still here? It’s not because she wants to be, I can tell you that. None of us do.”
“Fear, then?”
“Uh-huh. In the past people—mostly women—have tried to escape. They just can’t handle giving up their babies. But every single one has been brought back”—now Zalen’s expression turned cold—“and made an example of. There are a whole lot more of those things than anyone can guess. If you leave, they’ll track you down the way a bloodhound catches a scent, Morley. They travel along any existing waterway, and they’re very fast.”
I had no choice but to postulate, “So even if we do manage to get out of here, you don’t deem our chances of success to be very high.”