Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “It’s all right if you haven’t,” he said. “He’s a beautifully kept secret, preserved for only the select few. An ancient god, you see, from the faraway stars.”

  Prickles ran down my spine. “You’d better not be a Satanist.”

  “Oh, no! Absolutely not.” His smile was expansive and bright. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, I assure you. I refer to him as a ‘god’ only to refer to his power and scope compared to ours. Here, let me explain… ah… you are a Bible-fearing type, aren’t you?”

  I nodded—easier than telling the truth.

  “Then you’re aware of ‘principalities and powers,’ ‘princes of the air’?”

  “You mean demons?” I asked.

  “No, I mean things outside of your god.”

  “Yeah, demons.” I was a big book reader even then, big on apologetics in particular. No way was some lukewarm scholar going to trip me up with something as silly as semantics.

  “Well, dear, imagine, if you will, these demons. Not little demons, no, but rather, awesome interdimensional lords with shapes and voices that would blast a man sightless and raving, if the experience didn’t kill him outright. Creatures on par with Beelzebub and Apollyon and Azrael.”

  “Still demons,” I said.

  “But demons exist, do they not?” asked Dr. Peaslee, and lifted his chin.

  I went silent. I couldn’t bring myself to say yes.

  “Would you care to hear a story?” asked Dr. Peaslee. “A story about the Great Old Ones, who flung themselves down to Earth when the stars were right?”

  It took me too long to process the sentence. My loss. He kept talking.

  “Many millions of years ago, the Great Old Ones descended to our world in a curtain of fire and built their holy city,” he said. “R’lyeh, a city of extraterrestrial stone and alien geometry, peopled with beings of unspeakable shape and size. For many millions of years they ruled there, lords of the Earth… until the stars were closed to them and they fell into a vast darkness like death.”

  His voice quavered, but there was a richness in it, the kind of timbre born of passion. You know that dramatic way that a writer recites what they’ve written? I could tell he’d written about this, over and over and over again in a million different ways, and said it to himself like a mantra.

  “But one of their brothers was late,” he said. “Whether it was from arrogance or misreading the signs, no one can say. Sixty-five million years ago, he hurtled from the sky, and because he did not arrive when the path was open, he burned the whole way down.”

  “Lucifer,” I said. My words fell flat.

  But Dr. Peaslee’s eyes were closed, and he did not appear to hear me.

  “His smoldering remnant crawled with torturous slowness from the crater he had made, the god of a thousand faces and ten thousand hands. But the stars had not forgotten his insult; they say he burns still, and writhes as he burns. He calls and calls, casting his dreams out to his kin in R’lyeh and to the nameless, formless ones past the veil, but he is corrupted. They will not answer.”

  His eyes opened. There was a light there that I did not entirely like.

  “But there is a boon in this for mortal man,” said Dr. Peaslee. “For in becoming corrupted, Mnemeros became more like us. He can speak to us and we will not die. And what fortune! He contains more in one thimbleful of knowledge than twenty Libraries of Alexandria. Knowledge of hundreds of different cultures and times and locales, an intimate understanding of the natural world and realms unspeakable, all gleaned with his roving, dreaming mind. This, my dear, is as close to God as one can get!”

  “So you’re going to ask him questions?” I said. “For what?”

  “The expansion of history and the sciences,” he said, “for which mankind must only pay a small price, compared to what others might offer. You see, he is broken, almost past salvation; he was incinerated and shredded on his long fall, and was scattered all over the Earth. Some of his detached organs have grown conscious to help him, but they require constant access to water. That is where we come in: to find those pieces, and to find parts that can replace what he has lost, and finally, to provide the labor necessary to put him together again. His reward to us is knowledge unsurpassed.”

  “Oh my god,” I said. “You mean you’re going to put a demon back together? What if he goes on a rampage or something?”

  “This is not Godzilla,” said Dr. Peasley sharply. He paused and appraised me, as though looking at me for the first time. “Well, if he grows capable of it, he might move to more populated areas to harvest the organics he requires, but that requires the opening of the second gate—that is to say, the proper alignment of certain constellations. Besides, his ultimate goal lies elsewhere. He believes that, should he be returned to his glory, he will be accepted back into R’lyeh. I, on the other hand, have reason to believe he would be cast screaming into the abyss. Which means that we have a limited time if we wish to consult him before he is remade and crawls to his doom.”

  Now, if I had still been devout, I might’ve said Dr. Peaslee was a devil-worshipper and ridden off fast. But I had been harboring some doubts lately—like I said, I was into apologetics—so all I said was, “Who’s crazy enough to believe all that?”

  Dr. Peaslee raised his hand and ripped his glove off. Pistol and I recoiled. At a first glance, it looked like Dr. Peaslee was wearing another glove. But he wasn’t; his hand was as wet as if he had dipped it in tar.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of,” said Dr. Peaslee gently. “I know that for the uninitiated, it must seem terrible. And I will not lie: it does burn so! But it is a mark that I will be one of those to whom great things are revealed.”

  Now, I’ve always been poor as a church mouse, doubly so when I was a child, but it was without hesitation that I pulled the cash out of my pocket and threw it. I threw it fucking everywhere. I turned my boot over and dumped Benjamins in the mud. I noted in an offhand way that the bills were all that darker, more florid green of an older design—like Dr. Peaslee had been storing them under his bed for two decades. But Dr. Peaslee didn’t jump for the cash. He simply stared at me with that gentle old-man’s smile.

  I urged Pistol away from him and we sidled down the hog path. Dr. Peaslee followed behind, tucking his hand back into his glove.

  “Please don’t be afraid, Ms. Byrd,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. I was all choked up. Pistol was frantic and growing more so by the minute, but I didn’t dare let him go. I knew he’d take off, and I wasn’t sure I could control him. Dr. Peaslee walked after us—or did he herd us? It was hard to say. Suddenly I couldn’t think of the way back; as though by default, Pistol and I kept just ahead of Dr. Peaslee, taking the turns one by one. Perhaps we thought, in that simple bestial logic that panic grants us, that if we gave him what he wanted, he would leave us alone.

  The roar of the river grew louder and louder. Soon we started seeing the stones. Once, perhaps, they had been stacked and sorted; now they tumbled in wild disarray, and the hog paths wandered all around them. The photocopies hadn’t done them any justice—the sheer number, I mean. Stones, stones, stones, as far as the eye could see, of every composition you could imagine, and carved in a multitude of shapes and for a multitude of purposes. Here and there they bled black soup into the undergrowth.

  Dr. Peaslee stopped several times to take notes and pictures. I didn’t stop for him; Pistol and I jigged onward like a pair of idiots. It occurred to me that the doctor seemed rather quick for an old man. Whenever I looked over my shoulder, he was always standing somewhere behind us. I started harboring this fancy that he would appear suddenly in front of us and touch us with that horrible black hand of his.

  Finally, we broke through a heap of cactus and caught sight of the river. Normally the bank was visible, a pale sandy quagmire, but the waves had washed over their boundaries and foamed among the cottonwoods and mesquites. A combination of rain and current had crumbled part of the cliff, revealing a ga
ping cave mouth.

  Dr. Peaslee scurried past me, camera clutched in his hands.

  “Hey!” I said. “Don’t!”

  For a second, both Pistol and I were frozen still. As for Dr. Peaslee, he stood at the edge of the river. I could see the gears turning in his brain. The only way up to the cave entrance was a ramp of jumbled stones, and its base had long been swallowed up by the river. No telling how deep the water was there. Every now and then I saw a dark shape bob by, usually a drenched branch or the rolling, bloated body of an animal.

  “You’re going to drown!” I shouted.

  He dropped his satchel beside him and opened it. Oh my god! Black syrupy stuff spidered out, stretching for the ground and groping at the air. Without hesitation, he jammed both of his hands in it until it poured out in thick goopy rolls. He lifted out a stone as big as a Thanksgiving turkey. It bled tar everywhere, and where the black syrup touched his clothes, blue flames licked up. Straightening up, Dr. Peaslee heaved the stone over his head and sang out in a weird ululating tongue.

  Far off, I heard a big splash. Then another. It was the same sound I associated with a frog jumping into the water, except magnified. Whatever had fallen into the river must’ve been at least the size of a mid-sized dog. Immediately, Pistol jolted with terror and swung around. Thrusting my .22 back into its holster, I jerked on the reins. Soon we were spinning in circles, he straining to race back the way we came, I trying to restrain him.

  I saw the scene in flashes with each rotation: Dr. Peaslee lowering the stone. Dr. Peaslee turning to regard us with knotted brows. Then, behind him, a long, sinuous arm lifting, dripping, from the water.

  “Dr. Peaslee!” I shouted. “Watch out!”

  Black, shining cords lashed around Dr. Peaslee’s throat and legs and arms and yanked him backward. He didn’t even have the chance to cry out. Down he went without a sound into the brown foam of the Brazos, stone and all.

  With a choking cry, I let go, and Pistol bolted.

  Pistol’s ears flattened against his skull, his neck stretched out, his hooves pounded against the hog paths. Low-hanging branches lashed us. Mesquite thorns scored us. The stacked stones stared as we galloped by. I strained to hear beyond my own heartbeat, but all that followed us was the roar of the river and the intermittent grumble of thunder.

  When we burst through the brush into the clearing where the River Rats kept their hog traps, I heard it: a rattling, clattering sound, one I had long associated with a hog’s headlong flight. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the mesquites shuddering from a pack of unseen pursuers. The wind breathed an overpowering, musky stink into my face.

  The steep incline rose above us, scarred by a single narrow path. Pistol took it without hesitation. Now, if it had been dry, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but down near the Brazos, the earth is a slimy red clay. Every second step was a slip or a stumble. When we were halfway up, his hoof slid in the mud and he pitched forward and down onto one knee. For a breathless moment I hovered over a dizzying drop into a cactus patch. I clutched at the saddle horn, grabbed Pistol’s mane, and clung for dear life as he struggled to his feet. I cast a frantic glance over my shoulder.

  Plunging through the careless weed were sleek black shapes, glistening like frogs, slithering and crawling in turns, some as large as cattle. And then, to my horror, a monster hog crashed through the branches, utterly black with matted hair, its barrel body pulsing with sickening throbs. Before I could see the whole of him, Pistol took off again, thrusting with his powerful hind legs. His headlong sprint had slowed only a little; he was dark with sweat, and his breathing was rough and tattered.

  As we flashed through the first gate, a sudden sickening thought occurred to me. The other gate was latched shut, and Pistol was no jumper. My guess was that he’d see the closed gate and veer alongside it into the underbrush, and if that happened, we’d be caught for sure. My mind spun, my heart sank. I’d have to stop a thousand pounds of panicked prima donna to open a gate, and there was a chance he’d take off without me if I timed it wrong.

  I jerked Pistol to the side of the road, where the earth was more solid and the branches slashed us, and thanked god that the road was straightforward. Pistol slipped once or twice on the mud, but foot by blessed foot, he put the distance between us and our pursuers. When I saw the gate coming, I wrenched him back, using all of my weight.

  Pistol strained against me the whole way. The more he fought, the more of a hold I took, until I thought his head would end up in my lap. My arms burned; I gnawed a bloody wound in my cheeks. His nose slowly tilted toward the sun, and his spittle was pink with blood. A few yards from the fence line, his haunches finally dropped and he skidded to a stop. I dove off, praying he wouldn’t run, and hobbled to the gate. I had clenched my legs against Pistol’s sides so hard and for so long that they didn’t want to bend.

  My fingers slipped on the links. I didn’t bother looking behind me, but I could hear it: the rattling, snapping sound of unseen Things breaking through the underbrush, and not far down the road, the rhythmic drumbeat of the monster hog’s hooves. His silent pursuit unnerved me. Hogs are usually such vocal creatures.

  I slung the gate open. Without closing it, I hopped into the saddle and kicked him so hard that he jumped. Off he sprang again, again at a full gallop. We broke out of the brush into flat, furrowed pastureland, where you can see twenty miles to the horizon on every side. Ahead of me, a mere six miles away, I could even see the abandoned church and someone’s pickup zipping along the road. I could have cried. Instead, I dared to peek over my shoulder.

  The brush shook and shuddered, but the movement stopped at the fence-line. I thought I saw the glint of feral eyes, wet, bulging bodies, and writhing limbs. Then a keening went up, a terrible screeching cry, and the monster hog shot out of the gate behind us.

  God, he was huge! Freed from the blinding brush, he was much easier to see. I regretted looking at once. His sides heaved not with regular breaths, but with a weird undulating motion similar to the pulse of maggots in roadkill. His stride was almost mechanical, as though he had no joints. Sticky black strings and tendrils streamed out of his nostrils and between his blackened tusks, and every now and then I fancied that they moved of their own volition, like the searching heads of blind worms. The only points of color were his eyes: bloody, rheumy, and red.

  As we fled from him, a cold wind enveloped us. A few heavy raindrops burst on my shoulders. I had neglected to watch the sky: the faraway storm had rolled toward us with unprecedented speed and we could hardly outrun it. Back in the brush, the keening transformed into a triumphant howl.

  Abnormal twilight cloaked the landscape and the wedge of rainfall struck us. The keening sound fell away and was replaced by slapping, slipping sounds. In a lightning flash, I saw dozens of amorphous shadows tumbling toward us. Pistol stumbled and his breath hitched. I leaned over him, shielding my face with the hat, and peered off into the distance. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder. All I could look forward to was breaking out of the rain or hitting the paved road. One way meant better vision and less pneumonia; the other meant that we could reach a neighbor’s house in only ten minutes or so.

  Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, and a multi-legged shape slithered out of the ditch in front of us. I jerked the .22 out of its holster, whipped it to my shoulder. The thing zigzagged toward us, slinging its ropy arms out as though to drag us down. I pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed, the shot cracked out.

  Wop! Black blood spurted across the road. Screeching, the River Thing recoiled directly into our path. Pistol darted hard right when the gun went off, but I ripped him back to the road and gouged him with the spurs.

  What I had hoped would happen: Pistol would run the Thing over like a car in an action movie.

  What actually happened: Pistol stabbed his front hooves into the ground, his head went down, and he launched me right over his neck. There was a sickening lurch and I was weightless.

  The next sec
ond, I kamikazed that River Thing so hard that the breath was knocked out of me. I wasn’t sure if I saw lightning or stars. My .22 cartwheeled off somewhere into the dark. I wish I could say I was back up on my feet in a second, brandishing my pocketknife, but all I did was gasp and flop around in a puddle. Pistol galloped away, stirrups banging against his sides, and disappeared.

  I rolled onto my knees. Through what may have been fortune, I had flipped over the River Thing and landed on the other side of it. It pushed itself up on its terrible long legs and panted, stinking, sloshing, ululating in a language I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see it well in the darkness; all I saw was a suggestion of countless arms, dozens of blinking eyes in every size and shape and color.

  It should’ve killed me. Instead, it hesitated, then threw its arms out. A stream of garbled English poured from its mouth. The voice… sounded familiar.

  I thrust myself up to my feet and took off running.

  My legs were stiff from the ride and even with my hat I could barely see anything ahead of me. It didn’t matter; I put everything I had into that run. The roar of the rain, the slopping slushing sound of the pursuing River Things, the rapidly approaching hoofbeats and tortured breathing of the monster hog—all these things ran together until they were a terrifying singularity. For a while I had no past and I had no future; I was a runner, I had been born running, and there was no future that did not involve running.

  I don’t know how long I ran, only that I was winded, aching, and exhausted. The rain slackened a little, and a building coalesced out of the darkness. I couldn’t see it well in the dark, which seemed strangely deep for the afternoon. How long had I been running? Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes?

  I dashed across the paved road. Offhand, I noted that it seemed strangely worn down, weeds growing out of faults in the cement. Then I stumbled down into the ditch and over the barbed wire fence. Ms. Ross’s husband had hung coyote carcasses on the fence posts, and the stink of their rot followed me all the way to the steps. It was only then that I recognized the building. Of course: the abandoned clapboard Baptist church, a single-room affair I’d visited once to look at the owl nest in the belfry. The windows had been boarded up decades before I had been born.