I heard Mrs. Chioma, more than once, telling people that the little girl had a big tooth on her forehead. She even said it was the girl who killed her parents, not the disease.
I asked her, “If the little girl was truly the cause of her parents’ death, what of the rest in the village? Was she also responsible for that?”
She retorted, “The girl helped the disease in escalating the death rate in their village.” According to her, “When the girl saw what the disease was doing, she availed herself of that opportunity and started sucking blood as much as she could.”
If people had only seen her as a gossip among those of us who were living on Nnaji Street, I wouldn’t have considered it a problem. The problem was that she instigated people.
At first, it began with people being afraid of the girl. From that, it escalated to direct verbal abuse. I can’t now precisely remember the person, but I can still recall hearing somebody, one day, exclaiming to her that she was a witch who had come to kill us all, as she did to her people. The peak of the whole thing came when an angry mob stormed my bungalow. They needed to exorcise her. Unsurprisingly, the mob leader was Mrs. Chioma.
I refused to yield to their demand. But they threatened that if I didn’t release the girl, they would certainly catch her.
As this was by no means an empty threat, not only was she now living in my bungalow, I took her with me wherever I went. The accusations never stopped. On the contrary, they got worse! Whenever anyone died, she was the cause. As each day went, the pressure of her potential exorcists increased. I would have yielded to their demand, were it not for the timely intervention of Professor Dimbo Theresa.
Professor Dimbo offered to carry out a test on the girl. She saw the case in another light. For her, it was a step towards finding a cure to the disease, if one could actually find out what made the girl different from the rest of her village. And, although she was fiercely warned that this was a case beyond science, Professor Dimbo was not one who would easily go back on her decision.
Within a week after this test, Mrs. Chioma, herself, died. With their worst instigator gone, the mob faded and the pressures on me subsided. Professor Dimbo later revealed her findings. It was as startling as it was ordinary: The little girl had sickle cell anaemia. Anybody blessed with this ailment has a greater resistance to the ADAIDS—similar to the immunity they had to malaria.
In the subsequent days, I went on more searches. None yielded results. After a month, I became tired and abandoned the project.
The survivors in Uwani dwindled.
They all died.
I became worried for the girl, because she was still so sickly, and hoped I would die first, but it was not to be. She died yesterday.
I have burned my dead. My suitcase is in the car; my supplies are packed.
I am heading to no destination in particular.
One day, I will find another living human.
But for now, I am the last man standing.
EXHIBIT AT THE NATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY MUSEUM IN TOMBOUCTOU
By Andrew Dombalagian
This is the first professionally published poem for Andrew Dombalagian, a long-time amateur writer. His other poetry, inspired by Lovecraftian illustrations, anime characters and everyday observations, has previously appeared in collegiate publications.
INSCRIPTION ON PLAQUE, Titanium-Gold Alloy, ca. 2250—2300 C.E.
This artifact, showing evidence of prolonged exposure to the conditions of space, was recovered by Professor Amadou Sangare in a folk market outside the New Lagos Desolation Zone, although its true origins remain unknown. The inscription is etched in a dead language, not native to Africa, believed to have once been a trade language prevalent on Terra. Translation has revealed the meaning of the prayer poem, though elements such as rhyme and metre have been lost in transition.
The plaque bears a prayer offered by early starfarers to the Elder Gods, pleading for protection and safe passage between planets and star systems. The crude mysticism and superstition once applied to space travel parallels the rudimentary nature of technology and knowledge of that bygone epoch. Note the childish optimism expressed in the verses, reflecting a primitive belief that the long-dead Elder Gods yet possessed any influence amongst the stars. This artifact represents both an infantile step in starfaring history and a remnant from the Dark Ages, when mortals yet doubted, and even challenged, the supremacy of the Great Old Ones.
The flapping of heavy, grey wings against the membranous thickness of the void
Echoes in the thundering roar of our thermonuclear heart, pounding against its carbon bonds.
Humble are we who sail the satin tapestry of night, ever on the verge
Of the Pit, where sleeping lies the Blind Idiot of all Oblivion.
May the sheen of Bast’s smile, though never so warm as upon her brood,
Find our voyage safe from the burning cold wrath of the aether.
Before Hypnos closes all eyes forevermore, for another day,
May we yet gaze with awe and horror unfettered.
Protect your servants from the ebon, bilious hearts that throb against the crystalline
Chains that bind them to the orbs and spheres that pulsate brightly in the
Eternally Yawning Gulfs. Their noxious, chromatic radiations pollute the
Eons with the foul beneficence of their Great Old Masters.
The narrow, blanched roads between worlds that our vessel travels overhang with
The looming, glassy canopy of galaxies and nebulae fertile with Three-Lobed Eyes.
They watch with a patience as icy as the void that cradles their bower.
Though our voices are mere flecks of cosmic dust adrift between eons,
Please heed this plea from your vassals, O Elder Lords.
May the dying light of the cosmos find our hull shining with the might and majesty
Of the vast shell that ferries Lord Nodens across his abyssal kingdom.
From the hearth fires of one sacred star to the next, may we lowly souls find safe passage,
And in our journeys, may we find comforting respite
Against the Old Ones who dream in their deathless slumber.
THE DOOR FROM EARTH
By Jesse Bullington
Jesse Bullington is the author of the novels The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart and The Enterprise of Death. His short fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming, in various magazines, including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Chiaroscuro, Jabberwocky, and Brain Harvest, as well as in anthologies such as Running with the Pack, The Best of All Flesh, The New Hero II, Robots vs. Zombies: This Means War, Historical Lovecraft, and Candle in the Attic Window. He currently resides in Colorado and can be found online at www.jessebullington.com.
I
WHEN PIPALUK, THE chief engineer of Hiurapaluk’s Peril Containment Plant, together with 12 of her most well-armed and efficient underlings, came at flickering, artificial dusk to seek the infamous Professori, Laila, in her amphibechanical facility on the lower-most substreet of the city’s underlevel, they were surprised, as well as disappointed, to find her absent.
Their surprise was due to the fact that Professori Laila had made much to-do about her expedition not taking place for another fortnight; all of Pipaluk’s plots against the Professori had hinged on there being sufficient time to gain the rest of the Quorum’s approval before confronting the rabble-rousing academic. They were disappointed because their formidable warrant, with symbolic fiery font glowing on an antique digital tablet, was now useless; and there seemed to be no earthly prospect of wiping the smug expression from Laila’s hairy face, to say nothing of confiscating her domestic warrens for the use of the Engineers Guild.
Ingeniøri Pipaluk was especially disappointed, for Laila was her chief rival in the Quorum’s science bloc, and was acquiring altogether too much fame and prestige among the Voormis of Mhu Thulan, that ultimate peninsula of the Grænland subcontinent. Pipaluk had been glad to receive certain evidence corr
oborating her suspicions that Laila’s expedition through the Eibon Gate could be catastrophic, and not just in terms of heightening the Professori’s already-dangerous popularity.
This evidence suggested that Laila was not, in fact, a devotee of the state-god, Tsathoggua, whose worship was incalculably older than the Voormi race. No, it seemed that the Professori instead paid tribute to Tsathoggua’s paternal uncle, Hziulquoigmnzhah, with whom the true god of the Voormis had suffered a falling-out sometime in the previous millennium or three. This schism, which had something to do with the fall of Humanity, or perhaps the rise of the Voormis of Grænland and sundry other peoples in sundry different places, had resulted in the sealing of the Eibon Gate.
Walling up the entryway between the worlds of the benevolent, bat-furred toad-god Tsathoggua and that of the much-less-attractive demon prince Hziulquoigmnzhah seemed a surefire means of reaffirming Tsathoggua’s favour. The Quorum’s vote on this matter had been unanimous, and so the pit where the portal was located was closed off using a variety of fail-safes, and then the whole area was surrounded in a series of airlocks, cultural heritage be damned. Until Professori Laila started in with her insane theories of interstellar harmony and pan-theological unification, no one had given any thought to reopening the portal of ultratelluric metal that lay buried in ruins of black gneiss beneath Mhu Thulan’s capital city.
Pipaluk had suspected the worst as soon as she discovered the Professori’s new laboratory was directly adjacent to the outermost airlock housing the gate to Cykranosh that the warlock Eibon had used to escape Earth in ancient times, if the mytho-historical record was to be given credence. Alas, the Quorum had dragged its feet, despite Pipaluk’s warnings, and now it was too late—she would have given her musk glands to kick the Provost in the kanaaks for postponing his vote as long as he had.
Pipaluk’s subgineers bustled about Laila’s laboratory in their glistening salamander-suits and, behind a tarp, they discovered where the Professori and her team of graduate students, clone servitors, and formless spawn had hacked into the municipal pipe that made up one of the facility’s walls and plugged in their plasmaborers. The tunnel they had excavated led—surprise surprise—out of the lab, through a mega-support column, and directly into the first airlock bay, the dull-metal doors towering some thirty meters tall over Pipaluk’s team.
“Airlock initially opened, Aggusti Second,” the voice of one of the subgineers crackled in Pipaluk’s pulsing, yellow bio-helm. “Breached on average twice daily each day since.”
“Hymirbjarg,” Pipaluk cursed, and several of her underlings grinned to themselves to hear their normally unflappable superior use such strong language. “I trust this is sufficient?”
“Fall back, Ingeniøri,” Provost Ole answered over the Quorum channel. “We’ll hold an emergency meeting. Politibetjent Chief Malik is on his way up, so extract your team and—”
“Wha—shhhack?” Pipaluk held down the garble button she’d installed onto her com-panel as she addressed her subgineers on their private channel. “Right, we don’t have time to deal with more dawdling by those kanaaks. Ane and Nuka, with me. The rest, seal this airlock after us and don’t open it, no matter what. I trust you all remember what happens when you open airlocks, yes?”
They did. It had been Pipaluk’s team, after all, who designed the last batch of svataarsualiartartoq-suits for Mhu Thulan’s formless spawn commandos—space stations tended to lack many gaps for the polymorphous spawn to flow through, so infiltrating the interstellar strongholds of those Yig-worshipping Valusians and Ithaqua-kissing Gnophkehs necessitated finding another way to get the formless spawn inside. Spacesuits that matched the design of those used by the targeted station, save with opaque helmets, did the trick quite nicely—fill a few suits with the spawn, trigger a rescue beacon on the station’s frequency, and float the formless commandos through the void until they were retrieved by drones and taken inside the airlocks. Then, total havoc as the deadly children of Tsathoggua swept through the station, a sentient tidal wave of ichorous death.
“How will we get back, Ingeniøri?” subgineer Nuka asked, his voice cracking.
“Have some faith, son,” said Pipaluk. “We’ll recode the locks as we go. Things were built by your ancestors; think their primitive programming is beyond your skill?”
Nuka straightened his shoulders, his three-toed foot snapping up in salute. Through the faceshield of his bio-helm, Pipaluk could see the lad’s umber fur bristling straight out from his face in embarrassment. Good, he should feel like an idiot.
“—stunt,” Provost Ole was saying as Pipaluk relaxed her finger on the garble button. “Is that clear?”
“Perfectly, sir,” said Pipaluk, and quit the channel altogether. “Right, let’s go.”
Nuka whined, long and low; Ane prayed, fast and loud; and the other subgineers all saluted as the ancient airlock opened into the deep.
II
There were three airlocks in total, and the trio had reached the control panel beside the second by the time the first had ground shut behind them. Before advancing any further, Pipaluk had Ane explore to the left and Nuka to the right—the Ingeniøri had been over the schematics a dozen times lest just such an emergency entry become necessary, but it never hurt to confirm what the blueprints had already told her.
“Dead end,” Nuka reported through the bio-helm’s thrumming com-membrane. “Basalt. Dry. No cracks.”
“Same here,” Ane said, as she hiked back across the bay.
“Good,” said Pipaluk. “Everything matches up. The reports state that the Eibon Gate was interdimensional, so they were able to completely surround it. Basically, they built a giant basalt box around the thing, with only an airlock leading in or out. Around that, another stone box with an airlock, and then another. So, through this door is another bay and across that is the final airlock, which opens into the ruins where the Gate is. Professori Laila and her team are either in the bay beyond this door, working on the last airlock, or they’ve managed to breach it and gain the ruins, which could be bad. Very bad.”
“‘Bad’?” said Nuka. “‘Very bad’?”
“Depends,” said Pipaluk, hoping against hope that her quarry was still fiddling with the last airlock and not beyond it. “Even with the feeble half-lives they were capable of producing, back when this was all built, the fail-safes in the ruins should still be operational. So, in a best-case scenario, the fail-safe will have arrested the Professori’s advance. Worst-case scenario, Laila will have somehow gained the Gate.”
“Fail-safes?” Nuka whimpered. “Issi.”
“Act like you’ve got a quad,” Ane snorted, petting the slimy muzzle of her microwave spitter as she sidled up to Pipaluk. The weapon purred at the subgineer’s touch and Pipaluk made a mental note to invite Ane over for a soak in her breeding bath when they were safely home—the Ingeniøri’s whiskers needed a serious stroking and she had a feeling this was just the Voormi to give it to her. This wasn’t really the time for such concerns, admittedly, but stress always made Pipaluk’s glands overproduce.
“Remember,” Pipaluk said, as her fingers danced over the airlock’s panel, “we need to stop Laila at all costs. Alive to stand trial is preferable but by no means necessary. The main thing will be avoiding the fail-safes, if those idiots have opened the airlock, and the Professori’s formless spawn if they haven’t. We may already be too late, so from here on out, we move faster than fast, got it? Now, let’s get this heretic.”
“Oh yeah,” said Ane, and her weapon shivered in anticipation.
Nuka whinnied and made the sign of Saint Toad.
Pipaluk opened the airlock. A rush of cooling, semi-congealed blood poured out over their feet.
III
The bay between the second and third airlock doors glowed a faint turquoise from a K’n-yan luminance system, and before the Voormis’ bio-helms could tint out the blinding, pale light a fail-safe leapt on Ane and bit off her head. The thing’s gears screamed and
spat puffs of rust as it thrashed atop the decapitated subgineer, a blur of slick, amphibious tails and bluish metal pincers. Nuka panicked, his high-pitched howl nearly blowing out Pipaluk’s com-membrane, and the Ingeniøri had to force herself not to attack the subgineer before taking out the fail-safe. She spat out the immolation code for Ane’s suit, even as she leapt out of the way of the imminent blast. Even through her own salamander armor, she felt the wave of heat buffet her like a solar flare.
The fail-safe was still alive, but its metallic components had melted to the point of incapacitating the thing. Nuka had managed to avoid the worst of the blast, but was still crying like a Gnophkeh, sitting in the tacky, smoking blood that had flooded the bay. The bio-helm filtered out everything but the smell, the bouquet of burnt hair and engine oil making Pipaluk’s eyes water. She didn’t look down at the fused mass of mewling fail-safe and gorgeous, dead subgineer. Instead, she yanked Nuka to his feet and fired a cold-shower code down his channel—the result was instantaneous, the coward straightening up and shuddering as his suit doused him in a psychoactive chemical spray.
“Subgineer Nuka,” Pipaluk barked in his face while he was ripe for imprinting. “Ready your weapon and follow me. Those hymirbjarg-brained academics have obviously breached the last airlock. Hurry!”
The subgineer saluted and snapped his olid-pistol off his belt. It was no microwave spitter, but it was better than the ceremonial gladius that Pipaluk had brought—had she known Laila wouldn’t be in her lab, ready for arrest, she obviously would have brought something more substantial. At least there weren’t any more fail-safes between them and the final airlock. Probably.
They cautiously entered the final bay, splashing in puddles as they moved through the cobalt twilight. Judging from the oily whorls of colour in the blood, the team of grad students, servitors, and spawn had taken out a fail-safe, as well, but there was no sign of the fallen guardian, nor, for that matter, any of Laila’s crew, beyond the blood. That was...odd. Holding her hand up to the last panel, Pipaluk saw her talons were shaking. She gritted her fangs, willing herself to enter the code, when Nuka nickered excitedly behind her. She lowered the volume on his channel before turning to see what was bothering him now.
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