Best Little Witch-House in Arkham

by Mark McLaughlin

  “Oh, I don’t judge them. I only want them to be happy.” Then she smiled. A radiant, crazy smile. “All they need is love.”

  Yes, I suppose that is all they need: the love of millions of devoted fans worldwide, all clamoring to buy the new CD by The Vittles.

  Rest assured, I won’t be purchasing a copy.

  Sometimes at night, I cry when I think for too long about Laura. Kind-hearted, loving Laura, who detested the thought of eating anything with a face.…

  She was a strong woman, but in the end, she was no match for the power of Kugappa. I will never forget her expression, right after she fell under the sea-god’s spell—that look of bestial hunger as she reached out, tore Ko’s head free of his neck, and bit into his plump cheek with carnivorous gusto.

  The Groveler in the Grotto

  Assuredly I am not a trembling leaf of a man—not the sort who chirps with terror and befouls his dungarees when some weensy, breeze-tossed speck of pollen tickles the inside of his nose on a golden summer’s day. No, I am not the sort who waves crucifixes at kittens or calls out the National Guard just because a cricket is nibbling on the crust of his sandwich. And yet I remember a day back in 197-ought, when I did run as fast as my legs could carry me out of the house of my childhood friend Reginald Blathingsmythe. I wore a mysterious black leisure suit, and I ran and ran until I collapsed, and then I got up, ran some more, stopped at a coffee shop for some cappuccino, and then ran for another five minutes.

  By then, I was home.

  But the next day, while doing the dishes, I thought about what had happened in that accursed house of mind-shattering doom—and the water from the tap suddenly ran cold.

  My name is Wintergreen Fortescue St. Valentine, and at that time, I was renting a house in the peaceful town of Dunwich—the sort of laid-back little village where nothing ever happened and people felt free to leave their back doors unlatched at night.

  At that time, I was writing a bestselling series of thrillers with the words ‘portfolio’ and ‘death’ in the title. Dr. Portfolio and Mr. Death. Death of a Portfolio Salesman. Ring Around The Rosie, A Portfolio Full of Death.

  I was working on my latest epic, and I needed a new place where I could really think. I was having difficulty coming up with a new title. The best I could think up was Portfolio, Portfolio, Portfolio, Death, Death, Death. Not bad, but I felt that I could do better. I found I could no longer concentrate in my lavish Manhattan penthouse. The little cherrywood table next to the bidet had once given me a nasty splinter. Cherrywood. Feh!

  My old pal Reginald Blathingsmythe had always spoken well of Dunwich, so when my publisher tapped his wristwatch in reference to my deadline, I decided it was time to roll up my sleeves and get to work in the peace and quiet of Smalltown, USA.

  Lars, my live-in butler, secretary, and disco-dancing instructor, took care of finding a house for me. He arranged for some of my clothes and belongings to be transported there. He made sure the utilities were turned on, all the bills were paid in advance, the lawn was mowed, and he even put a chocolate on my pillow (on a doily, of course, so it didn’t leave a mark on the fabric).

  “This whole moving business has been a terrible ordeal,” I said to Reginald on my first day in Dunwich. We were seated in his living room, eating cucumber sandwiches. “But I think I will find the strength to pull through.”

  “And how does your Lars, your lover, like the town?” Reginald asked, handing me a steaming cup of oolong tea. Reggie was a plain-looking, chubby fellow with thick black hair and eyes of different colors—one green, one orange.

  “Lover?” I chuckled dismissively. “You mean ‘butler.’ Lars is my hired man.”

  “But he lives with you. Yes?”

  “Of course,” I replied. “That is what butlers do.”

  “And he makes your meals. Yes?”

  “He is my disco-dancing instructor as well. He keeps track of every calorie I ingest, since a potbelly would ruin the classic lines of a leisure suit.”

  “And he goes to bed with you?”

  “All part of a very specific exercise regimen. He says it loosens up the hips, and I am inclined to believe him.”

  Reginald choked on his tea and began to blink furiously, so that for a moment I thought he was conveying a message in Morse code.

  Reginald’s furnishings, I noted, were solid oak. Oak! Now there was a wood you could trust. I noticed something odd about his bookcase—something that caused a small but sharp bell of warning to ring in my mind. Most of the volumes on its shelves were quite old, and bound in rotting human skin. Finally I noticed the thing that had set off my inner alarm: the bookends were mismatched. One was a human skull and the other was a kitschy little plastic owl. Certainly plastic has no place in the decor of a gentleman’s study.

  Then I saw something else rather unusual. “So tell me, Reginald. That door in the corner—the one marked with that blood-red symbol of unholy dread. Where does that lead?”

  The bland, cheery face of my host then underwent a marked change. His plain, dreary features—too boring to be considered ugly, really—suddenly twisted into the spasm-ridden, demon-haunted visage of a doomed soul being relentlessly pricked by the flaming pitchforks of the demons of Tartarus.

  “The doorway to the secret grotto—I mean, spare bedroom?” he whispered hoarsely. “Nothing hideous or diabolical about a spare bedroom, I assure you.” He laughed nervously. ‘This relentless questioning of yours is uncalled-for! It really is too much!”

  What an interesting response, I thought.

  “So the door really leads to a secret grotto, eh?”

  “Dash it all!” he cried. “Who told you? The shocking legacy of my accursed family has been kept hidden in shadow for well over three-hundred years! And now it seems that everyone with an unusually intimate butler named Lars knows about it!”

  I found Reginald’s behavior to be disturbing and inexplicable—not ‘cool,’ to borrow a term from the young people of the time. “So are you going to tell me what’s in this grotto of yours or not?”

  “No! Never! It is forbidden!” His cuckoo clock then warbled the hour. “My mood-ring discussion group will be here at any moment,” he said. “Do stop by tomorrow—so long as you do not mention the black door of the Blathingsmythe family secret, or dance-cults that worship primordial devil-gods!”

  “Now why in the world would I mention—” But I cut myself off in mid-sentence. No sense in throwing poor addled Reginald into another tizzy. But I saw he was looking at me curiously, so I thought of a cunning finish to my sentence. “—puppies?”

  He smiled pleasantly. “Puppies are fine. Puppies are cute. You may mention puppies as often as you like. Just not devil-gods or ancient scrolls.”

  “Very well then. Puppies! See you tomorrow, Reggie.”

  * * * *

  Back at the house, I told Lars about Reginald’s behavior. He put down his newspaper to listen to me, and also to help me with my grooming. I did not like the paper’s lurid headline—GRAVE-ROBBERS AGAIN ABSCOND WITH THE HIDEOUS ROTTING CARGO OF LOCAL TOMBS. People so often jump to outrageous conclusions. Why, maybe the grave-robbers in question were just borrowing.

  “This matter of Reginald…very curious,” my butler stated. “I shall have to ask the group their opinion of the matter.”

  Lars, in addition to his many other talents, was also a singer with a musical group called ‘The People of the Village.’ I was forever telling them to shorten that name—to perhaps take out some of the smaller words. But their response was always that ‘The People Village’ was a bit awkward, so they would be leaving the name as it was.

  There were five members, and they dressed in the garb of various professions. Lars, of course, had his butler suit. Gregor wore a pirate’s swashbuckling finery. Theodore sported the billowy hat and smart white outfit of a French chef. Horatio’s costume was that of a matador, while Calvin favored the multi-colored togs of a circus clown.

  “So you will be going bac
k tomorrow?” Lars asked. He had just finished applying a thick layer of wax to my back. “Perhaps I should go with you. This Reginald fellow may be dangerous.”

  “I don’t think I have anything to worry about. Reginald wouldn’t hurt a fly.” I screamed just a bit as Lars ripped off the wax, along with hundreds of thousands of back-hairs. “You know,” I said after I’d regained my composure, “I’m still not sure what back-hair removal has to do with disco-dancing.”

  “Nothing. I just like waxing people. How hairy is Reginald?”

  I ignored the question. “If for some reason I do not come home tomorrow, feel free to come and rescue me. Bring the group if you like. The more the merrier.”

  “That’s what I always say,” Lars said with a smile. He aimed a pair of tweezers at my face. “Now let’s see what can be done about those eyebrows.”

  * * * *

  The next day, I had to knock several times before Reginald came to the door. I was appalled to see that my friend had experienced a shocking transformation since our previous meeting. His thick black hair was now streaked with white, and his plump face now sagged hideously and was networked with the deep wrinkles of advanced age.

  “Great bowls of clam-dip!” I uttered. “I take it your mood-ring discussion group didn’t go well…?”

  He lead me into the living room, where the coffee table was set up for the dispersal of any sort of drink one could imagine—except coffee. Bottles of gin, vodka, tequila and ouzo cluttered the lacquered surface. Reginald’s booze-soaked breath conveyed to me that he was pretty lacquered as well.

  “How can a man,” he sobbed, “endure the burden of a century-spanning legacy of unspeakable decadence, the likes of which no decent, God-fearing society could ever tolerate?”

  “Don’t know…” I looked around the room, and noted that the black door was open about an inch. “But I bet this whole legacy of terror rigmarole concerns what’s behind that door.”

  He followed my gaze and, seeing that the door was open, rushed over to shut and lock it.

  “Oh, stop being such a mollycoddle,” I said with a laugh, mixing myself a Manhattan from the assorted bottles on the table. “Let us see what is behind this door of delirium, this entryway of evil, this gateway of ghoulishness, this—”

  “Okay, okay, I’ll show you.” Heaving a huge sigh, he unlocked the door. “Follow me.”

  I quickly downed my drink. “If what’s behind that door is so terrible, shouldn’t we carry a machete or two? A kitchen knife? An especially sturdy cocktail umbrella?”

  “There is no weapon on Earth one could wield against such terror!” he moaned.

  “Oh, I see. Then we should just go in unarmed. Well, fine. Lead the way.”

  We passed over the threshold of the black door, into a hallway of stone and earth walls shored up with heavy timbers. The way was lit with bare bulbs strung every ten feet or so on an electric cord that ran along the ceiling.

  “So. Your decorator is into minimalism,” I remarked.

  “This is no time for bon mots and flippancies!” my host thundered. “The matter at hand is as serious as the Pope having a heart attack while wrestling with the Devil over the fate of the world’s blind orphans!”

  “Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so?” I followed him.

  “My ancestors,” Reginald said, “came to America from a little-known country called Lower Belgravia—a harsh, windswept, forsaken country, only three miles across, bordering the Flemm River, just north of Even Lower Belgravia. Oh, I know you probably thought I was descended from British royalty—in line for the throne and all that—”

  “Actually, the thought never crossed my mind.”

  “Anyway, when my people came to this country, they shortened their name to Blathingsmythe so that they would fit in—”

  “They shortened it? What was it before?”

  “VanDeBlubblatheringsmythenstein. My ancestors came to Dunwich hundreds of years ago, bringing with them huge boar’s-hide trunks filled with all sorts of ancient secrets—some of those being in fact living secrets, which my ancestors have had to feed for centuries, and which I had to feed about ten minutes before you arrived…”

  “They like mixed drinks?”

  “No, you fool! That was for me, to steel my nerves. Have you not read about the local grave-robbings?”

  “I saw the headline, but I didn’t have time to read it. Lars needed to wax me.”

  Reginald raised an eyebrow, then continued with his lunatic ravings. “Long story short, I have to rob graves to feed the—the things—you are about to see. They are quite frightening, I assure you.”

  “Is that why you look so grey-tressed and age-ridden?” I asked. “Did the sheer fright do this to you?”

  “No. I just took a shower and forgot to reapply my hair dye and Skin-So-Tite face cream. I’m actually ninety-seven years old.”

  “But you were my childhood friend!” I reminded him. “We played together on the jungle gym, the see-saw, and the steam-powered child-slinger…which is now, I understand, outlawed in most states.”

  “I was having a spot of trouble with the law back then,” he said. “I was in disguise.”

  “That explains a lot,” I said, remembering his thick childhood moustache.

  “Behold!” he suddenly and very dramatically cried. “The Grotto of Grotesqueries, where the VanDeBlubblatheringsmythensteins have hidden their loathsome secret for lo, these many years.”

  Certainly I’d had no idea what was to be found at the end of the tunnel trek, though I half-suspected giant killer moles with snail antennae. Imagine my shock to find—milling around in an enormous, fungi-encrusted cave, littered with skulls, ribcages, and class rings—not giant killer moles with snail antennae—but in fact, enormous centipedes with goatlike heads and bulging multi-faceted fly-eyes. And yes, snail antennae. I was right about that, at least.

  “Sweet coleslaw for breakfast!” I wailed. “These beings are the very pinnacle of vileness! Nothing could be more horrible!”

  “Wait until one humps your leg,” Reginald said with a shudder. “My ancestors brought the eggs whence these atrocities hatched into this country in those hellish boar’s-hide trunks, for they sought to someday harness the insidious power of these creatures. But alas their efforts failed miserably—as have those of all their descendants leading right up to me. Of course, now I am the last of my family—all my relatives have died of old age, and I never took the time to get married and have a few kids. So there is no way I will ever be able to control these living blasphemies. What a pity that no six male Lower Belgravians have ever lived at the same time who all had a natural sense of rhythm. I do, but I have never met or even heard of any others so endowed. For only those from Lower Belgravia can unlock the ultimate secret of these multi-limbed abominations.”

  “I don’t quite follow you,” I said. One of the goat-headed, fly-eyed, snail-antennaed centipede-creatures began to sniff at my penny-loafers, so I shoo’ed it away.

  Reginald crossed to an alcove on the far side of the cave, where he rummaged around for a while in an old trunk and finally produced a time-yellowed scroll.

  “Unhallowed centuries ago, my ancestors engaged in numerous hideous acts of carnality with the dread primordial nature-god Shub-Niggurath, who is known as the Goat with a Thousand Young. This fiend is endowed with both male and female…properties. Months later, my female ancestors—and I blush with mingled horror and embarrassment to tell you this—unnaturally spawned the eggs that eventually hatched into the grotto-dwelling spawn you see before you!”

  “So you are related to these loathsome beasts?”

  “Don’t rub it in. And actually, they are called blogdoths.” He unrolled the scroll and held it out for my inspection.

  “It looks like…” I studied the charts, the graphs, the pictures of little feet, the curved lines, and all the bizarre mathematical formulas and musical notations. “…like some sort of ancient…dance lesson.…”

  * * *
*

  Suddenly we heard a great shuffling of feet. “Reginald,” I whispered, “are more of those blogdoths heading this way?” Then I realized that the noise was coming from the tunnel to the house.

  Imagine my surprise when my faithful butler Lars and his musical group, The People of the Village, emerged in full costume from the tunnel’s mouth.

  “Hello, boys,” I said cheerily. “What brings you to the Grotto of Grotesqueries?”

  “Well, in the middle of rehearsal, I realized you’d been gone an awfully long time,” Lars said. “Nobody answered the phone when I called Reginald, so we all decided to rush over and see if old Reggie had gone crazy and slaughtered you like a pig. Oh, hello, Reggie. Say, where did all the blogdoths come from?”

  “You know about blogdoths?” Reginald exclaimed.

  All of The People of the Village nodded. “Sure,” Calvin said. “We’re all descended from good, hearty Lower Belgravian stock!”

  “Astonishing!” Reginald enthused.

  Horatio nodded. “Yes, we met at a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Lower Belgravians over in Arkham a few years ago. We found out we shared a love of singing and dancing, and the rest is history.”

  “I wish I’d known about that society,” Reginald said. “Especially since it’s dedicated to people from my home country!”

  “But aren’t you British?” Lars queried. “Heck, I thought you were in line for the throne.”

  “Look at all these blogdoths,” Gregor said. “I was just telling Theodore the other day, what a pity we don’t have access to some blogdoths and the Dance Lesson Scrolls of Shub-Niggurath. Why, we could, according to old Lower Belgravian legends, control an eldritch force of unspeakable power. Isn’t that right, Theodore?”

  Theodore nodded.

  “What a mind-boggling series of coincidences!” Reginald marveled. “For here…here in my hands…I hold those very Dance Lesson Scrolls!”

  “Quite a coincidence indeed!” Lars said. Then he turned to me. “Well, Wintergreen, we’d better be heading home. You’re long overdue for a pedicure.”