Waiting

by Stephen Jones

  Kindred examines him with that muddy green gaze that makes Howard think he’s staring into a pond, then nods slowly. “Of course.”

  “Well, I think the Aunts are monsters,” says Howard quietly, but he does not mention the night that might have been a dream or a truth, when he saw tails trailing from beneath his mother’s and aunt’s skirts. Kindred laughs again, a not unsympathetic laugh.

  “We’re all a little monstrous, Howard. They’re not so bad, the Aunts, just different. Impatient. When the time comes, they will be there for you.”

  Howard gives the tutor a look of frank disbelief. Kindred smiles and says, “Or perhaps not. Shall we discuss a program of study?”

  It has been two months since Kindred (his first name is Ward, Howard has discovered) joined the household at 194 Angell Street, and Howard wonders how they ever got by without the man’s quiet presence. The Aunts, if not loving (that would be too much to expect), are at least unwilling to risk the tutor’s ill opinion and so are solicitous to their nephew. Sarah and Grandfather, initially displeased at Lillian and Annie’s highhandedness, were soon charmed by the young man’s manner and intelligence.

  He has been kind and considerate, uncomplaining and happy to undertake extra duties such as escorting the women of the family on shopping trips, carrying their parcels home again, and spending evenings in the study with Whipple discussing—while Howard listens with wide eyes and wide ears and a mouth tight-lipped lest they remember he’s there— history, politics, astronomy, physics, and mathematics of a very strange sort indeed, the sort that opens doors between worlds and dimensions.

  “A purely theoretical idea, of course,” says Whip after a particularly intense discussion about gates and gods and doorways and demons. He laughs a laugh that Howard recognizes as the one he gave after their adventure on the lake.

  “Yet some swear the great Abdul Alhazred’s formulas can be made to work under the right conditions,” says Kindred politely. The old man nods.

  “The Necronomicon. You know,” Whipple pauses. “You know, my great-grandfather claimed to have owned a copy. Never saw it myself.”

  “When I was younger—”

  “Lad, you’re barely out of short pants!” shouts Whip with a snort.

  Kindred takes it in good spirit. “Much younger, then, I traveled to Egypt and was there shown a copy by one of my hosts, a man of terrifying and voracious scholarly habits.”

  “And did you read any of the spell-formulas?” asks Grandfather rather eagerly.

  Ward Kindred shakes his head, smiling. “To what end? Had it worked my host might have been most put out as his own efforts had never borne fruit. Had it not worked, would I not have looked the fool?”

  Whipple Van Buren Phillips chuckles and sits back in his chair. “True.”

  Later that evening when Kindred escorts Howard to bed (Ward himself has been given one of the small attic rooms), the boy asks a question that’s been burning the inside of his mouth for hours:

  “Are dreams doorways, sir?”

  Kindred stops in his tracks, tilts his head and examines Howard as one might a babe in arms who has suddenly addressed one in a fluent and full sentence. “I’d not thought of them as such, Howard, but I suppose they might well be. How your mind works, young man, is a constant delight.”

  Howard, no more immune to Ward’s complimentary pronouncements than the rest of his family, blushes.

  “But I think they must be more personal thresholds, Howard, not necessarily something one can pull another through. A doorway for one’s daydreams and dreads.” Kindred smiles and touches the boy’s thin shoulder. “Sleep well, Howard.”

  “Yes, sir,” says Howard with certainty, for since Ward Kindred’s arrival his dreams have been serene. Neither the queens, nor the dog-sphinx, nor the man-thing that climbed the stairs of the dark castle have made an appearance in Howard’s nightly theatre of slumber. Nothing has troubled him, not even hints of Grandfather’s fairy-tale night-gaunts.

  When Howard is older he will realize this period as the calm before a storm. He will experience many such occasions in his life, sometimes knowing them for what they are and using them accordingly; other times he will be too rushed, too stressed, there will be too many voices in his head and he will forget to take a brief safe harbor. But now, at this moment, this evening, Howard does not think of such things. He has begun to take peace for granted.

  And so it is only fitting that this night is a point on his timeline when there is a great turning of fate.

  His sleep has been so deep that it takes a while for the rough hands to shake him awake in the dark watches. There is no light from the open curtains for the moon has hidden away—like Howard’s mother, for this is one of the times she demands for herself—but there is a glow, a faint violet, tender and fragile emanating from somewhere in his room. A dark shape moves against it, blocks it for a moment, then Howard is shaken again and again, half-sits, is half-pulled into a sitting position.

  “Howard? Howard! Get up, boy.”

  He does not recognize the voice, it’s neither Grandfather nor Mr. Kindred, and certainly not Mother or the Aunts. It is a man, his tones low and rough, as if he’s not spoken for a long while. The covers are thrown back and the boy is hauled to his feet. He’s distracted, looking around for the light source but cannot find it; somewhere in the back if his mind the word witchlight is whispered, a memory seeded long ago by one of the servants or the Aunts or his mother when no one thought he was listening. Perhaps even Whipple in one of his stories. The illumination is omnipresent.

  The man crouches in front of him; Howard can smell him now, stale sweat, foul breath, other things too that do not bear thinking about. The boy tries to breathe shallowly to lessen the effect. Matters do not improve when the man shoves his face close to Howard’s and talks. “Hurry up, boy. We need to be away. Are you scared? Don’t you recognize me? How can a boy not know his own father?”

  And Howard realizes then that the pale face in front of him with its matted beard bedecked with flecks of food and old vomit is that of his departed paternal-type parent. It’s the face he glimpsed that day by Watchaug Pond when he fell in. His father has been watching him. Did Sarah know Winfield had escaped? Did the asylum doctor write and let her know? Who has been hiding this secret?

  As if divining the boy’s thoughts, Win grins, showing that his remaining teeth are blackened. “In and out, boy. I can do that now, since I figured out the right order of things. No one knows I’m gone. C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  And so saying, Winfield wraps a hand around Howard’s mouth as if he senses the boy is about to cry for help, and with the other hand he draws— using a cut finger that still oozes ichor—a series of signs and sigils on the pristine wall beside Howard’s bed. The marks almost look like equations, but there is something almost too elegant and artistic about their fluidity; Howard thinks of Grandfather’s talk of eldritch mathematics, Mr. Kindred’s comments about the formulae of Abdul Alhazred having worked under the right circumstances. As the thoughts coalesce in his sleep-heavy mind, he watches the wall: The bloody marks act as if they are blunt knives or brushes laden with acid. Where a sign has been drawn the wallpaper and the wood beneath it peel away. The spaces between disappear and, faced with a newly created door, Howard forgets the urge to scream, just for a moment.

  His father tries to shove him forward, but Howard resists. Winfield cuffs his son hard, and the boy’s ears ring. He stumbles, directed by the rough hands of Winfield Lovecraft, the father he’s mostly forgotten.

  The humming is terribly loud here, the humming he’s heard for much of his whole life. The thrumming rhythm that’s been the lullaby of his nights, the comforting white noise of his days. Now, unfiltered by walls or planes or dimensions, it is as powerful as blood rushing in the ears.

  There is the sound of water, too, rushing, and Howard’s feet are wet. He’s afraid to look down at them lest they be transformed like that day in the lake. His father’s hand
is still hard on his shoulder and he feels the flesh bruising.

  “Father—”

  “Shut up, boy. Can’t hear myself think.” As Howard watches, Winfield shakes his head, more a nervous twitch than a voluntary movement, and he raises his right hand to tap out the rhythm on his chest, the sequence, which is the strongest memory Howard has of his father. It is also, he realizes, the sequence in which Win wrote on the wall of his room to open the door through.

  “Have you been here before, Father?”

  But Win doesn’t answer. He keeps a tight hold on Howard and pulls him along in his wake as he wades through the cold groundwater. Mist hovers just above the surface of the liquid; there are no trees here, just a lot of rock and, Howard sees, an arched stone roof, a natural configuration. The farther they go into the cave—for a cave it most certainly is—the louder is the humming, as if pressed from many throats, and the light grows stronger (although not quite as violet).

  They come to a place where the tunnel opens into a much larger cavern. A huge rock formation dominates the center and, covered as it is with creatures of green-gray with round heads and wide mouths, it puts Howard in mind of his dream of the rocky reef off that nameless seaside town. There is no sign, however, of the gleaming city beneath the waves, with its dreaming spires and rising towers.

  And atop the rock, Howard recognizes the three queens. They lie, preening—it would be basking if there were any sun. Around them are creatures like them, but not alike. A different bloodline, Howard ponders, a different strain, a different caste, just as bees are divided into drones and workers and queens. Howard is terribly startled when his father shouts.

  It is not any particular word, it is a formless kind of a cry, but it does what Win intended it to and it attracts attention. The queens, their courtiers, all heads turn, bodies slew, arms outstretch and webbed fingers point. The three queens slither down the rocks at an incredible speed, almost serpentine in their motions, then they come to stand not far from where Howard and Win wait. The boy cannot believe how quickly they move, that they slither then become upright on two feet as if they’re closer to humans than reptiles, than fish.

  Winfield drags Howard against him as if the boy might provide a shield. One hand goes into the pocket of his ragged coat and pulls out a knife with a long stained blade. He rests the dull edge against his son’s neck, the cool of the metal a brisk contrast to the warmth of the skin where the blood flows so close to the surface. A tiny cut is made as Win’s hand shakes, and Howard does not know who to fear more: his father or these strange queens.

  “I’ve brought him!” shouts Winfield as if addressing a rioting crowd even though the creatures before him are silent and still; he gives a sort of broken bow and Howard is struck by how the gesture weakens Winfield. “Take him back. Take him, he’s yours. Give me my mind once again. Return my wife as a normal woman, as she was before the child! Just take the boy away. Get out of my dreams, make me forget and all will be well again!” He sobs and says words Howard’s heard from another mouth. “Is it so much to ask?”

  Had he spent more time with his father, had he truly known him at all—or at least the man he was—Howard might have felt more betrayed than he does. The queens remain silent, swaying back and forth where they stand, like snakes hypnotizing small, stupid prey. A whimper escapes Win’s lips and he lets go of Howard. The boy has the presence of mind to step away as his father sinks to his knees, sobbing; Howard then moves behind Win, all the better to put something between himself and the queens.

  “I’ve brought him home,” weeps Win. “Back to his spawning pool, back to the birthing ground. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that it? Tell me, tell me it’s what you want! Take him! Take this little tadpole and give me back my life.”

  In later years Howard will wonder if it was simply a childish desire to pass on the hurt, but his deepest self knows that it was the anger to hear the little pack-leader’s words, Deirdre’s words, come from his own father’s mouth. To feel that somehow there should have been more loyalty than this.

  He pushes his father. He raises his hands and shoves Win squarely in his shoulder blades. The man, already unbalanced from his own rocking, is easy enough to tip, and he doesn’t try to save himself. He falls, unmindful of the dagger in his hand; he falls until he is stopped by the soggy ground, by the blade that enters his stomach, and is pressed in farther and farther by his body weight. Again, Winfield does not try to save himself; he gives only a brief, sharp cry, then subsides to a kind of relieved weeping.

  Howard, vaguely horrified, vaguely fascinated, backs away, whispering, I’m sorry, though he’s not entirely sure he is.

  The queens shriek and howl, and the noise is taken up by the creatures around them, the sound becomes deafening. Howard fears his ears will bleed. He backs away, unable to take his eyes from the scene of his father writhing in the few inches of water that’s become pink, now cherry, now burgundy, now black as his lifeblood leaks into it; or the scene of the queens and their acolytes, screaming and shuddering. He backs away because he cannot shake the idea that once he turns to run they will be upon him with preternatural speed.

  Yet still they do not approach.

  Howard is taking more backward steps, unsure he will be able to find his way through the tunnels, find the door, find his home, when he bumps into something. No. There is the weird give and resistance of a human body: someone.

  He twists his neck to see, but keeps his frame facing toward the pack as if that will somehow keep them at bay.

  Ward Kindred stares down at him, his expression a mix of relief and concern. His glance takes in Win’s now-still form, the now-silent queens and their court, the now-sluggish creep of blood from Howard’s neck. The tutor places a hand on the boy’s head, a reassurance, a benediction, and says, “Wait here, Howard.”

  Howard watches as Kindred walks with assured steps through the water, stopping just short of the queens. He does not bow, makes no obeisance. Howard hears Kindred begin to speak, but he does not recognize the words. They are not English nor any other language he can identify. The boy listens carefully, trying to map the syllables onto his memory so he will know them if he ever hears them again. They are the sound of the waters, of amphibian creatures, sounds made by mouths uniquely evolved to press them out.

  The conversation is short; at its end the queens nod, and Kindred comes back to Howard with quick steps. But Howard is not really paying attention to his tutor, for the crowds of creatures have turned their rounded heads, their ichthyoid gazes, toward him, toward Howard.

  All of them, all in their rubbery, amphibian monstrosity, all bow to him now, croaks diminished to a respectful thrum, a chorus of awe.

  Kindred’s hand on his shoulder startles him. “Howard, come away. Come home, Howard, it’s not time for this yet.”

  Kindred escorts him to the doorway that stands as a silver tear in the air, and beyond its ragged edges is Howard’s room and Whipple Van Buren Phillips, looking even older, as if his vitality has been sapped by the past—minutes? Hours? Days? The tutor helps him step through into Whip’s waiting arms. Grandfather is shaking so tremendously that Howard fears for the old man’s health.

  “It’s all right, Grandfather, Mr. Kindred saved me.” He strokes the old man’s cheek gently and smiles, then turns to Ward Kindred, expecting the young man to step through the doorway, too, to join them.

  Kindred shakes his head. “Howard, I cannot go with you. We have spilled blood here, pure human blood, and for that atonement must be made.”

  “But you saved me!”

  “It does not matter, Howard—this was my agreement with the monarchs and I shall honor it.” Ward crouches down so he can look the boy directly in the face. “You’re different, Howard. Listen to me, my young friend: you’ll always be between. Between dark and light, earth and water. Neither one thing nor the other. You’ll hear voices, voices beyond those around you, and it will get worse as you get older. Don’t always listen to them,
or they’ll drive you mad.”

  Howard has so many questions they all push at his mouth, get caught like a log jam of curiosity so none of them make it out. Before he can say anything, Ward Kindred straightens and peers past the boy, speaks to Whip, “And now it is time to begin Howard’s true education. I know you have dreaded this, sir, put it off as long as you felt you could, but the boy must be trained. Forewarned is forearmed and things will only get worse for him as he ages, as the layers of his mind become more sensitive, more receptive. At least allow him the ability to defend himself.”

  Reluctantly (Howard thinks), Whip nods.

  “Promise me,” insists the tutor. “Swear it.”

  “I promise. I swear on the blood of my dearest, dead wife.”

  Kindred nods, a single sharp movement of satisfaction. “Goodbye, Howard.”

  And Howard still cannot say anything. It will be one of his greatest regrets, this last moment, this first great failure.

  As the tutor walks away, his thin back growing thinner and more indistinct as the distance increases, the door between dimensions begins to close, a process that is simultaneously too slow and too quick. At last there is a sort of searing pop and the threshold is gone, no evidence left on the wall that it ever existed, not even the bloody marks Win made there. No trace.

  No trace in the morning either of Ward Kindred when Howard wanders into the tutor’s room, seeking some sign that he did but dream the night’s adventures. The small chamber is so neat it seems there’s no proof of him ever having been there, ever having existed. Howard feels strangely bereft.

  In days to come, the newspapers will report Winfield Lovecraft’s death at Arkham Asylum. The printed letters will gleefully dwell on the method of demise: Choking on his own tongue at the height of a psychotic episode. An empty coffin is buried in a quiet ceremony, and none of the paid pallbearers comment on the lightness of the box.

  Howard has already told his mother and the Aunts and Grandfather what happened in that other place, of the facts of his father’s true exit, and although Sarah weeps her last tears for her lost husband, she is pleased and proud of her son; she hugs him close. The Aunts, their demeanor altered, exchange a glance with each other and then, to Howard’s great astonishment, face him and drop into flawless curtsies. While their relationship to the Nephew will never be without pressure fractures, bumps, and incidents, from this day forth it will be changed.