by Nick Mamatas
“Well, let’s begin!” he started. “Race and Innsmouth. Just look at the news—wasn’t it obvious that Lovecraft, for all he is described as a ‘racist,’ was actually on to something? Both locally and internationally, so-called ‘people of color’ are more likely to be collectivist, more likely to be violent, and—”
“Bullshit,” Colleen said, loud. Her voice echoed along the titles.
Ranger continued over her, “and less likely to practice that which we call civilization. If we are to conduct a civilization, we have to understand that when we embrace multiculturalism, we embrace degen—”
Colleen grabbed her loaded towel, swung it high, and then slammed it against the ground. The floor tile broke like a tooth. She hoisted the towel again. This time, Ranger stopped talking.
“This is not the Innsmouth panel,” she said. All eyes were on her. She scanned the audience. Innsmouth breathers bubbled up in her head, but she managed to keep herself from saying it. “I wanted to talk to people about the fucking murder we had here this morning.”
“The police are handling that,” Ronald Ranger said.
“How do you know it was this morning?” Charles asked, his drawl slow and careful.
“I went to identify the body. I overheard some things,” Colleen said.
“Why were you the one to identify the body?” someone else asked.
“They were sharing a room,” Ranger snapped.
“So you were the last one to see him alive!” Charles said.
“This has to be obstruction of justice,” came another voice from behind her.
“You should leave,” Ranger said, pointing to Colleen. “You’re obviously the prime suspect.”
“I barely even knew Panossian,” Colleen said. “Why would I kill him, especially so horrifically? If I were a suspect, the police wouldn’t have brought me back to the hotel, would they?”
“Who do you think killed him, then?” Charles said. His tone was even now, thoughtful. He exchanged a glance with Ranger.
“I don’t know,” Colleen said. “I thought...we could compare notes.”
“I assure you that nobody here would kill Panossian,” Ranger said. He took a deep breath. “It’s essentially statistically impossible. Our demographic doesn’t commit violent crimes against members of our demographic. Middle-aged, middle-class white men have other tools at their disposal to create and maintain social hierarchies—we don’t resort to deadly violence against one another.”
Colleen just had to laugh. “Oh, is this the racist caucus! Now I get it. You’re a bunch of idiots.” She stood up, and swung her loaded towel over her shoulder. “I suppose it was my mistake for tweeting to strangers, but you know, there is a killer on the loose, and you people want to have some kind of Ku Klux Klan book club kaffeeklatsch. Or do you not care because Panossian wasn’t white?”
Someone murmured, just loud enough to hear, “Are Armenians white?” And then the conversation took off: “It’s part of Asia Minor,” “Close to the Caucus mountains, so Caucasian,” “They were called ‘Asiatic Turks’ in Lovecraft’s time...”
“Oh, of course he was white,” Colleen said. “I was just fucking with you.” Then she paused for a moment. “White-passing at any rate, as we used to say in graduate school. Did any of you think he wasn’t white before you heard his name?” She glanced around the room. “Only four hands up, see?”
Charles bowed his head. “I suppose you could say that Panossian lacked the ‘Innsmouth look,’” he said, wringing a few chuckles from the assembled.
“Unlike some people I can mention, Asparagus Head.”
“Your hair is green!” Ranger sputtered, pointing at Colleen as though he had just noticed her dye job. “What are you trying to prove? Are you edgy?” He started twitching his fingers to signal air quotes. “Are you some sort of ‘hipster’ type coming here because you were told on the Internet Lovecraft was ‘cool’? And you dare call my friend Charles Cudmore ‘Asparagus Head’?”
“Enjoy your Klan meeting, racist,” Colleen said. She headed toward the door, but two men blocked her path. They were tall and round, like bouncers, and one was already wheezing with excitement.
Colleen was calm. “You think you can keep me here?”
“You can’t just call someone a racist and then walk off, all lade-da,” one of the men said. “That’s a very serious accusation. You owe us a debate!”
“Oh, let her go,” Asparagus Head—Charles Cudmore—said. “She’s just a nitwit looking to sleep her way to the middle.”
“If she was Panossian’s girl,” the wheezing man said, “she actually slept her way down. Forget the bottom of the barrel, what happens when you lift the barrel up?”
“Tell you all what, why don’t I just bring one of the cops down here? Just to make sure you have your panel in peace, and don’t just spend an hour comparing notes and getting your stories straight,” Colleen said.
“Nobody here has anything to hide,” Ronald Ranger said. “You should be more concerned with people who are attempting to leave the hotel.”
“Nobody is allowed to leave,” Colleen said. “That’s what the police told me.”
“Ah,” Ranger said. “If only the police had attended the opening ceremonies to remind us all not to kill one another, then nothing would have happened to poor Panossian.” Laughter filled the room for a moment, until Colleen spoke.
“So, you think the murderer attended the opening ceremonies? Well, that narrows it down.” She licked her lips and smiled. The room was silent except for the bubbling of the pool. “Pretty much everyone here now was there then.”
“Including yourself,” Cudmore said. “And you called this meeting. So yes, please do find a police officer. If you think the Providence police will be shocked by the proceedings, you haven’t paid much attention to the news lately.”
“The police are on our side, Ms. Danzig,” Ranger said, his voice low. “They’re on the front lines every day. The average police officer can tell an innocent party from a guilty one just by taking in a person’s mien.”
“I guess I’m the innocent one, then,” Colleen said, and with that she left.
Exhaustion hit like a wave. Colleen headed back up to her room, the place where she had last seen Panossian alive. Where anyone had, she thought, but no, that wasn’t right. The killer was the last. Panossian must have made a left and moved to the elevator, unless he decided to take the steps down to meet the buyer. The room was only on the third floor, and Panossian might have wanted a little privacy. Elevators are packed with convention-goers at all hours during the Summer Tentacular.
No, Panossian may not have even gone down—he must have gone up. The body was discovered on the second floor, but it could have been moved there. The police had told Colleen nothing of the details, and the hotel moved to clean up the blood as soon as the police had given the okay. All this CSI-type stuff was giving Colleen a headache. She used her keycard, opened the door, and resolutely not looking at Panossian’s bed—was there an indentation of his shape on the blanket, does that sort of thing even happen?—went to her side of the room, threw herself onto the bed, which had not been made by the cleaning staff, and tried to sleep.
She closed her eyes and saw tentacles. They were everywhere, after all. On the name badges everyone wore, in the flower vases entwined with the usual fake hotel flowers, on most of the book covers and a good seventy-five percent of the t-shirts for sale in the dealers’ room. More than a few con-goers sported tattoo sleeves of tentacles twisting up their forearms and biceps.
Colleen had been curious to meet whomever it was Panossian was going to sell the book to, but not enough to invite herself along. That was the answer—it had to be.
Find the book, find the murderer.
No, she didn’t have to do anything. During the long interview with the police, she had explained all about the book and its cover reputedly made of leathered human skin, how Panossian had been sent a copy of it and now had arranged to sell
it to...someone. It was like something out of a lurid film noir, and the cops treated it as such. They’d asked Colleen about her own relationship with Panossian (“mild online acquaintances”), prescriptions for psychiatric medication (“I don’t have to answer that...but none”), her day job, as she certainly wasn’t Stephen King or somebody, now was she (“I write SEO stuff”), what the hell SEO was (“texts designed to bring a certain web page to the front page of search engine results”), whom she thought might have done it...
I can’t imagine anyone doing something like that, is what Colleen had said.
And even the female cop laughed. Some horror writer you are, she had said.
She didn’t tell them about seeing H. P. Lovecraft by the elevators. They probably would have either arrested her for messing with them, or sent her to the psych ward for evaluation.
Colleen started cataloging the convention attendees, but quickly realized that a roll of the con membership was printed in the back of the Summer Tentacular program booklet. The police certainly had gotten one by now.
It would be pretty easy to draw lines through attendees too poor to buy the book, Colleen thought, but then she realized how foolish that was. The goal was to lure Panossian to his death, not to actually buy the book.
The book was free.
Who would want the book? Colleen certainly wouldn’t. Not everyone would. Hardcore collectors. The most extreme of the weirdoes, ones who might decide to make their own human-skin volume of some book, maybe even using Panossian’s flesh for their own private collector’s edition.
Find the face, find the murderer. Actually, that would be easier, wouldn’t it? Colleen thought. The face would need to be kept on ice, or maybe tanned immediately, in order to work. Check the security camera footage for suspiciously extensive ice machine usage, run the hallways and keep a nostril out for unusual smells. She shuddered at the latter idea. Actually, Colleen didn’t know anything about preserving human skin for tanning purposes, but it would be easy enough to find out.
The Tentacular was a strangely aggressive environment—writers jockeying for position, people bellowing at one another, men sneering at women out of some abject simultaneous attraction and repulsion. It was high school all over again, except that all the kids with a measure of social intelligence were at the homecoming dance and the kids left behind were the meatheads, glue-sniffers, nerds, and minor league bullies. Geeks who liked to show off their knowledge of esoteric subjects, the more repulsive, the better. Someone downstairs would know something about tanning human skin and the binding of books with it.
All Colleen had to do was go downstairs, carefully avoid anyone whom she had encountered down by the pool, and strike up a conversation about the horrid murder and what might happen to Panossian’s face if it were to fall into the wrong hands. Half her work was probably done already—surely every creep at the con was already discussing the murder to the extent that they could get out of police earshot.
All Colleen had to do was go back downstairs and find someone to talk to. All she had do to was go downstairs. All that required was turning around, letting her feet hit the floor and standing up, then walking over to the door and heading over to the elevator. All Colleen needed to do was get out of bed. Sleep was not coming. She might never nap again. It was better to be awake, awake and around others. She had some friends downstairs, they weren’t all horrible people—there was R.G., and the guys, and they were just downstairs. She could have lunch. If she was afraid, she could stick close to one of the uniformed officers downstairs. All she needed to do was turn around and get a good look at Panossian’s bed, and stand up, and leave.
No, she didn’t need to look over at the other bed, which Panossian had barely used and so it wasn’t really his and didn’t really count, and shouldn’t even remind her of him. She could close her eyes. Turn around, and close her eyes. No, better to close her eyes first, squeeze them tight, then turn around, then let her feet hit the floor, eyes still closed. Up, arms out as the layout of the hotel furniture was unfamiliar, and find the door. If it was the bathroom door by mistake, that was fine, it was easy to tell by touch. And the closet too, also simple to figure out. There was the door.
Colleen was out in the hallway, finally. Then as the door clicked shut behind her, she realized that she had forgotten her keycard inside. She realized that the murderer might have Panossian’s keycard.
Let him come.
When Colleen stepped off the elevator and into the lobby, she was immediately buttonholed by an anxious R.G. Gonzalez. “There you are!” she cried. “Panel!”
“They’re actually holding the women’s panel?” Colleen said.
“Yes, and it starts in three minutes. I tried tweeting to you, but you didn’t respond. Come on!” R.G. turned on her heel and reached out a hand. Colleen yanked her wrist away, but followed R.G. closely.
“Why on Earth do you give two shits about the stupid Women in the Mythos panel?” Colleen hissed in R.G.’s ear.
“I don’t,” she said. “But the con is only allowed to run the panels because there are three cops in every audience. We have to just act natural, so play along.”
The panel was not well-attended. It was R.G. and Colleen and Chloe, plus Norman, who sat himself in front of one of the two mics on the table and declared himself “the token white male oppressor,” and Hiram Chandler, who had built an impressive Stonehenge-like display of books on the table before him, obscuring his folded paper name tent and even his own face behind the haphazard, cyclopean architecture. The audience—three uniforms standing near the back, a hotel employee who was texting on his phone, and all of four legitimate attendees. Two couples, actually—a large man and a small woman, and a small man and a large woman. Mutt and Jeff heterosexuality. Colleen briefly entertained the notion that they were swingers; perhaps at the next panel they all attended, the polarity of coupledom would be reversed and the heavies would be together, with the skinnies sitting and holding hands across the aisle.
“Only four people!” Norman announced. “And five panelists. When panelists outnumber the audience, we all get to go to the bar and get a drink. So, what do you say?”
“Why are we excluding some of the people here from being members of the audience?” R.G. asked. The hotel employee shot her a thumbs-up sign.
“Actually,” Hiram Chandler said, slowly, “the tradition is that the panel moderator lead us all to the bar and buy drinks for everyone—panelists and audience members.”
“Well then, in that case, let’s get started with the panel,” Norman said. He laughed at his own joke and everyone chuckled.
“I’m the moderator,” Chloe said. “I’m the moderator of this panel.” She was quiet though, and Colleen wondered if Norman even heard her. Forget the quartet, the empty chairs that surrounded them, and the police. They surely hadn’t heard her.
“So, I just wanted to start off by saying,” Norman said, “that I am entirely in favor of more women Mythos writers, more women Mythos game-players, more women Mythos everything. The more women, the better. But, let’s face it—Lovecraft isn’t exactly woman friendly.”
“Exactly,” R.G. said. “He hardly ever wrote any female characters—”
“Lovecraft’s work deals with the sort of cosmic philosophy that women just can’t deal with,” Norman said, his voice a little louder than before.
“No, that’s not true,” Colleen said. “Bhanushali is the leading Lovecraft scholar in the world, and she’s—”
“Oh, Bhanushali,” Norman said, as if a fly or a radio transmission captured by his fillings had put the name into his brain, “clearly doesn’t understand Lovecraft. Anyone can collect letters and memorize lines of dialogue.”
“I’ve never heard Bhanushali recite much dialogue,” Hiram said.
“That’s true,” Norman said, turning to Hiram and pointing. “That’s a very good point. She doesn’t actually know the stories well enough. She’s not even on this panel.”
“I
can’t imagine why not,” R.G. said.
“Not all Lovecraft is even cosmic horror,” Chloe said. “Look at his early stories like ‘The Hound.’”
“Please wait your turn,” Norman told Chloe.
“I’m the moderator,” Chloe cried.
“The topic is Women in the Mythos. ‘The Hound’ doesn’t even have any female characters. It’s just two dudes…what do they call that? An m/m story. I guess girls do like that kind of thing,” Norman said. He leaned in to the microphone before him, his wiry beard brushing loudly against it. He lowered his voice an octave and intoned. “Subtle. Homo. Eroticism.”
“‘The Hound’ is an important story,” Hiram said. “In it we find the first mention of the Necronomicon.”
“The Necronomicon!” It was the hotel employee, who was leaning against the back wall, near a table set up with pitchers full of ice water. The ice had already melted. “Like in The Evil Dead? The cover was a friggin’ face! That was some nasty shit.”
Colleen shuddered in her seat. “Now there’s a topic: human skin used to bind books,” she said.
“What does that have to do with women in the Mythos?” Chloe said. Now her voice was loud enough to be heard by everyone in the room, as was the edge of steel in her tone.
“Well…is that a woman-friendly image?” Colleen ventured. The panel was already a wreck, it couldn’t get much worse. She might as well try her best to take it over. “I’m not trying to say that women are squeamish or anything, but we’re the gender that generally embodies things. Women’s fiction is often about the body…uhm, and Lovecraft’s isn’t, really.”
“Anthropodermic bibliopegy,” Hiram said, and the other panelists turned to him.