For now, though, he knew he better find a whore or another card game. He couldn’t take any more thoughts of Jobe and Sammy.
Louis hurried onto one of the streets, heading lower on the mountainside from the main thoroughfare. After a several twists and turns, he found himself on Wang Street in Chinatown.
The Chinese had built their quarter to suit themselves. Their streets, too narrow to admit carriages or wagons, were lined with dingy huts that smelled of strange foods and burning Josh lights. In one, he found three Chinamen lying on mattresses arranged around a hooka. They smoked opium through long tubes and stared at him.
“What do you say, partners? Ain’t this better’n whiskey?”
They didn’t answer. Their faces remained blank but serene. Their gazes didn’t follow him as he sat down beside them.
Louis waited for someone to offer him a tube. When no one moved, he pried one from the nearest man’s grasp. The man didn’t even glance at him, although after a moment, he picked up his long, braided ponytail and stuffed it into his own mouth.
Louis ignored him and began to smoke.
A pleasant warmth suffused him. He felt like he was floating. At one point, he was sure he had a conversation with Jobe, but that wasn’t possible because Jobe was dead. Louis forgot their words as soon as they were spoken, but the conversation left him with a deep sadness.
He may have fallen asleep–he wasn’t sure. Presently, he became aware it was full night out. He was in the hut alone.
He got up and stumbled outside. Wang Street was empty and dark. A cool wind blew against his cheek.
A voice said, “Got a chaw, mister?”
The speaker’s closeness startled him, but Louis recovered quickly. He wheeled on his questioner. “No, I ain’t got a chaw, you vagrant. Now go off and–”
He screamed and fell backward, landing on his butt.
It was Jobe.
Jobe’s eyes and mouth glowed with silver light. Louis looked down and saw that the gunshot wounds he’d inflicted that morning were plugged with silver.
The head of a giant snake thrust up out of the ground and reared behind Jobe. Pointed, silver teeth lined its mouth. The opening was fully ten feet across. From the top of its head jutted a human face Louis recognized all too well. Sammy.
It dove over Jobe and swallowed Louis whole.
Afterward, it retracted back into the ground like an arm withdrawing into a coat sleeve.
Jobe smiled wide. The glowing light in his eyes and mouth faded away.
He turned and walked into the desert, headed east.
Matthew Warner had a close encounter with Ec’h-pi-el himself twelve years ago when he coordinated the republication of Lovecraft at Last by Willis Conover & H.P. Lovecraft. At the time, Warner was the assistant to former Nixon White House counsel Leonard Garment, executor of Conover’s estate. When Cooper Square Press contacted them about reissuing Conover’s 1976 World Fantasy Award-nominated memoir of Lovecraft letters, Warner embarked on an exciting (for lawyers) journey into the non-Euclidean catacombs of Lovecraft copyrights. Warner has also authored several horror novels, screenplays, and short stories.
Story illustration by Nikos Alteri.
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CREDITS
Publisher & Editor: Mike Davis
Graphic Design: Leslie Harker
Kindle & Nook versions: Kenneth W. Cain
Issue cover: Lee Copeland
Story illustrations: Nick Gucker, Leslie Harker, Mike Dominic, Jihane Mossalim, Peter Szmer, Dave Felton, Anthony Pearce, Nikos Alteri, Dominic Black, Dave Felton, Greg Chapman, Jason Wren, Jerry Boucher, Lee Copeland, Steve Santiago, Adam Baker, Raven Daegmorgan
Line editor: David Binks and Adrian Chamberlin
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NOTE: Images contained in Lovecraft eZine are copyright © Lovecraft eZine and by the respective artists. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.
Lovecraft Ezine Mega-Issue 4 Rev1 Page 64