by Nick Mamatas
“Welcome, all. When the hour strikes, we’ll be ready to begin,” Norman said. He opened the folder and handed the person on his left—not Colleen—a sheaf of papers. “Take one and pass the rest around.” More silence, except for the shuffling of the papers. Everyone in the room seemed pleased to take the story; any excuse to stare down at their laps rather than look at one another.
The story was not good. Colleen saw that right away. There was something in the shape of it that was wrong. Non-Euclidean indentations, dialogue between half a dozen characters bunched together in the same paragraph, and that paragraph filled up most of the first page.
The story, which had no title, was only three pages long, single-spaced. A quick skim showed that Norman was telling the truth. Cthulhu’s dimensions—everything from wingspan to the Rockwell scale hardness of the Elder God’s hide—were detailed. There was a trace of a theme in the tale, and even a sort of literary allusion. In the year 2112, an obvious reference to the fourth album by the band Rush, a half dozen marine scientists are taking measurements across the carcass of the dead Cthulhu, recording their findings using a variety of means. Unsurprisingly, their conclusions all disagree with one another à la the blind men bade to describe an elephant after touching its legs and trunk and ears, and they take to arguing in a very non-collegial way—montages of threats and scatological insults in speech, text, and video crackle over the speakers in their hyper-advanced diving helmets. One of them digs up an “ancient Internet meme” featuring a still photo of a professional wrestler emblazoned with the legend “Your Mama Rode Space Mountain, Fat Boy!” It was amateurish and stupid, but Colleen guessed Norman had some reason for it—perhaps it was supposed to be Freudian? Or worse, an in-joke designed to please either members of his cult or tweak a particular attendee of the Summer Tentacular. The sentences were seasoned with plenty of typographical errors—“alot of us disagree on what were experiencing”—as well, but after a few years in the Lovecraftian small press, Colleen was used to that.
All the squabbling among the scientists is vanity, as far above the ocean depths, an “autonamated astronomy satellite the size of a 12 aircraft carriers” notes that the stars are finally right, and Cthulhu rises, awakens, and consumes all the scientists, bursts from the Pacific and expands to ingest the entire planet without even perceiving that sapient life existed upon it until, towering over the ionosphere, Cthulhu opens his eyes to observe the infinite cosmos as the satellite in its orbit “crosses the great black eye like a razor slicing across the orblike eye in the 20th century surrrealist silent film Un Chien Andalou.” Colleen sucked on her teeth at that line.
She glanced up from the pages and tried to take the temperature of the room. There was a split—skimmers who had finished reading early looked as chagrined as Colleen felt. The people still reading it seemed intrigued by the story. Someone snickered, appreciatively rather than derisively.
“Norman…” R.G. said. “Did you hear about Charles Cudmore?” R.G. was in the skimmer group.
“Of course,” Norman said, his tone solemn.
“I mean, did you hear what the police found?”
“…his body?” Norman said.
“Patches of his skin were missing, all along his back and thighs.”
“Arkham,” Raul said.
“So, he was the creator of Arkham?” A general murmur arose across the room.
“He was a little guy; was there even enough, you know, flesh for that?” Colleen asked.
“Arkham is supposedly an octavo edition,” Norman said, holding up his hands, fingers and thumbs at angles, to form a little rectangle. “Wouldn’t take that much.” Norman sighed. “Anyway, we shouldn’t be attached to such concerns.”
“He was a friend of yours,” Colleen said.
“Spending mental energy on Charles Cudmore won’t bring him back to life, and even if I could bring him back to life, he’d die again, eventually.”
“You could bring him back to life again,” Raul said.
“Over and over,” someone else, who had just finished reading the story, said.
“And I might die and then he’d die and there would be nobody to bring him back to life,” Norman said, suddenly pissy. “Listen, we’ve gotten off track. Our collective focus has been disrupted.” He glared at R.G. “Everyone read the story again. Then we’ll begin.” He pulled out his smartphone, tapped at it to make it play some ambient buzzing drone, and placed it on the coffee table before him. “The lights,” he said, and the lights dimmed. Colleen hadn’t noticed anyone in the kitchenette area, but here was Hiram Chandler, who hadn’t said hello or otherwise made his presence known to anyone prior to this moment.
There was enough illumination for Colleen to read the story again, but she couldn’t bear the thought. She tilted the paper up and peered over it, trying to determine why R.G., Raul, and Barry would even come to an event like this.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” Norman muttered. In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming, according to Lovecraft’s “The Call of Cthulhu.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” several of the seated people repeated.
“Do not attempt to visualize Cthulhu,” Norman intoned. “For he cannot be captured in your mind’s eye.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn,” everyone save Colleen said. Even Raul’s squeaky voice was part of the chant.
“Bring to the front of your mind some element of Cthulhu. The roll of the dice in a game. A line from a tale, perhaps the one you have just so eagerly read. A swipe of green and black from a dream you had once.”
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Norman’s voice was oddly soothing. There was something to the tone, to the measured cadence. It figured. If Norman were just a fat clown, he’d never have climbed the ranks as far as he had. But he had a bit of intelligence, enough money to afford a large suite at least for one night, and the organizational skills sufficient to keep the con running smoothly, despite the murders and the heavy police presence. Losers and stupid people never really achieve even minor positions of authority, are never given organizational responsibility. Even a minor competence is so rare…
Could Norman be the killer, Colleen thought. He had money—perhaps money enough for Arkham, and he seemed to know what it looked like. His blasé reaction to the news about Cudmore was telling. His religious beliefs were clearly nuts, and narcissistic besides.
The music swelled.
“In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. We are his dream. He is our dream.”
Colleen pictured dead Panossian, not dreaming at all, but extinguished, turned off. Not even granted the dignity of a burial, or a face. Maybe it was Cudmore—he was clearly the binder of Arkham. Did he send Panossian the book just to lure him into an ambush? But who killed Cudmore? Could it have been Phan-tasia? Or did Phantasia kill Panossian and Cudmore both? Maybe Colleen was wrong, and Phantasia had just been up here, in the penthouse suite, setting up the candles last night or looking for a working soda machine, when he wandered downstairs to the floor on which Colleen and Panossian shared a room.
Norman continued, describing Cthulhu. Cthulhu is beyond space and time. When the stars are right, and the stars are right, Cthulhu will materialize and fill all spaces in the world. The spaces where shadows form, the spaces between molecules, the spaces inside atoms. The image of Cthulhu in your mind is not the true Cthulhu. There is a vista of reality far beyond your island of ignorance, which is but like a speck upon a flea...
...there’s a hole in the bottom of the sea. Colleen’s mind wandered. At the very least, that meant that the ritual would fail and Cthulhu would not materialize and consume the universe simply by being active in the universe, the negation of the Uncreated that created Creation. Norman definitely had his spiel down, but he should have edited out some of the alliteration.
Final
ly he stood and said, “It is done.” Everyone looked up at him. “Okay, let’s drink!” A cheer went up, the lights flashed on, and from the kitchenette Hiram reached down out of sight and then lifted a giant plastic keg up onto the counter.
Raul caught up to Colleen with one long stride and whispered in her ear, “This is the part when we summon Cthulhu. The drink is basically absinthe. And lean.”
“You mean cough syrup...?”
“And melted Jolly Ranchers.” Raul reached out and snagged one of the cups, already filled with a greenish purple liquid. He gulped it down in a single swallow. “It’s horrible!”
R.G. appeared on Colleen’s other side, with a cup in each hand. “For you. You can tell that Norman actually believes in his religion because he makes you sit through the prayers first, and then you get the drink. It’s sort of like a Salvation Army soup kitchen, except fewer head lice.”
“Actually, just as many head lice,” Barry said from immediately behind Colleen. Colleen found herself surrounded. Before her, the crowd parted and she moved to the keg, where Norman had a red Solo cup full of the stuff waiting for her.
“Purple Death,” he said, handing it over.
Colleen glanced down at the cup. It definitely smelled like a combination of licorice and synthetic chemical fruit. She still had hardly eaten anything, and this seemed like a very powerful drink. Colleen raised her cup, said thanks, and took the teensiest sip to a chorus of boos. “Sorry, still a girl,” she said.
The crowd drank with an intensity that only comes with the combination of free alcohol, unsuccessful writers, and high stress. Colleen took sips, and the booze flooded her veins. Raul, as it turned out, was a sullen drunk, and took to murmuring about his agent and the big book deal that got away. Barry got loud, bellowing about how rough his father was, how the old man once piled all his copies of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in the bathtub and turned on the tap, destroying them all and clogging the plumbing, for which the whole family blamed Barry.
Norman climbed the coffee tables, feet awkwardly placed to keep his pant cuffs from the flames of the still-burning votive candles, and raised his cup.
“To Charles Cudmore!” he announced. “That man was a friend of mine!”
“To Cudmore!” Colleen joined in the response, but it felt unnerving and queer, treating Cudmore as though he had lived to a ripe old age and died in a hospital bed.
“Cudmore was a great artist, editor, critic, collector, and person,” Norman said. “How many other so-called ‘fans’ or ‘colleagues’ go out of their way to contact their favorite people, to compliment their projects, to send little gifts and messages of encouragement? Heck, I know I don’t do that sort of thing…and I probably should.”
Norman lowered the cup and held it in both hands, then held it out in front of him. “Got to pour one out for that homie. Uhm, you guys just drink, I don’t want to have to pay for a carpet cleaner.” He overturned the cup, and a few drops landed on the candles, sending them sputtering. “Anyone else have anything to say?”
Colleen stepped forward, raised her cup, and said, “To Panossian!” The room was silent. R.G. then repeated, “To Panossian,” quietly, her cup aloft by a couple of inches. A few others muttered, “Panossian, yeah.” “To Panossian.”
“Fuck that guy,” Norman said. “He made a fool out of me not forty-eight hours ago. You think I’m going to forget that?”
“Easy man,” Barry said. “That’s the Purple Death talking.”
“Oh, I don’t fucking care. You didn’t even take the ritual seriously, did you Cathleen?”
“Colleen,” Colleen said.
“Wolf’s blood! Fucking Danzig, yes I know your goddamn name.” Norman tottered forward, his toes at the edge of the coffee table.
“Don’t say anything you’ll regret, Norm,” Barry said.
“Let me tell you something about Panossian, Colleen. He was a fucking asshole. He wasn’t a part of this community, and that’s why you don’t see anyone crying into their drinks over his death. You get it? Nobody cares about him. You know why we tolerated him? Because we don’t have any fucking way to get rid of people. Anyone can show up and make a nuisance of themselves and chant ‘Lovecraft, Cthulhu, tentacles, Necronomicon’ and we’ll accept them. We, as a community, are way too accepting.” Norman gestured broadly. “That is the problem. That is why these rituals never work the way I want them to. This—” he said, turning around, his arms wide, “is why we—” and then he lost his footing and fell off the coffee table, slamming hard into two of the chairs that had been set up for the ritual.
A few people rushed to his aid, and brought him back to his feet. Norman shook them all off, and stomped back toward the keg of Purple Death. The whole front of his shirt was stained with the stuff.
Hiram said, “Norman, it’s all right. Maybe the ritual did work. In fact, I am sure it did. Nobody goes to a Catholic church, takes Communion, and then ‘wonders’ if transubstantiation occurs.” He put up his hands and flicked his fingers when saying the word “wonders.” As Hiram spoke, several people started filing out of the suite, cups clutched in their hands.
“Well, I’m sure it didn’t, it never does,” Norman said. He leaned his elbows against the counter and sighed deeply.
Colleen made eye contact with Hiram, who shrugged. “Does this happen every year?”
“This is new,” R.G. told her.
“Usually, it’s the Purple Death that’s the sacrament,” Hiram said, refreshing his own cup via the keg. “According to Cthulhuism, only black oblivion is ‘real’ and human consciousness and understanding isn’t just limited, it is actually alien, divorced from the cosmos. We’re the outsiders, utterly alienated from the true reality of the Elder Gods. We worship Lesser Gods—Christ, Allah, television, capitalism, you name it. So, we try to get blotto.” And with that, he drank. “It’s all about self-empowerment, right Norman?”
Norman just groaned. “Oh, Charlie, what have we done?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Colleen asked.
Hiram raised his palm and gestured toward Colleen, but she didn’t stop. She walked up to Norman and tapped him on the shoulder. “What have you done?”
“Nothing.” Norman cut his eyes at her and sneered. “Mind your own fucking business. I don’t even know why you came here.”
“I want to find out who would have a motive to kill Charles Cudmore.”
R.G. said, “Colleen, leave it alone. Leave it for the cops.”
“Yeah, I’m getting sleepy,” Barry said. “Are you coming up to the room, Colleen, or not?”
“Let’s all just go back to the bar,” Raul said.
“It’s closed,” R.G. snapped at him. “Colleen.”
“What did you and Cudmore do?” Colleen asked. “And who killed Cudmore?”
Norman whirled around and nearly lost his footing again. Colleen stepped back from the flailing, her hands up, a toe pointed. “I have no idea who killed Cudmore! It was probably you!”
“From the police station?” Colleen said. “Who did it, and why?”
“Someone did it,” Norman said. “Cudmore knew something, something bad. He was such a cool guy, a real friend. Gave his flesh and blood for Lovecraft, literally.”
“Arkham—he was the author?”
“No! That was me! Charlie was the bookbinder.”
“This is crazy, let’s go,” Raul said. “You didn’t write Arkham, Norman. We can tell from the story you make us read every year. You wouldn’t get a penny a word, much less a pound of flesh.” He was as unnaturally tall as Norman was wide. When he stepped up, the pair of them looked like the lowercase letter b.
“Norman’s always trollin’ trollin’ trollin’,” R.G. sang.
“Two people have been killed,” Colleen said. “And most of the people here, most of their supposed friends, are only mourning one of them.”
“You’ve done enough, Colleen,” Bhanushali said. She was standing in the doorway, about to
enter. “Ms. Phantasia has been arrested and is being held because you claim that you saw him headed to the location where Panossian passed away.”
“You missed the ritual,” Hiram told her. She stared a hole through him, then turned back to Colleen as she entered the suite. “Danzig; you shouldn’t even be here. This is a Tentacular function, and you are no longer a member of the Summer Tentacular. Was no one checking badges? Norman?”
“A religious exemption,” Hiram said, but Bhanushali ignored him. “I’ll have you thrown out of the hotel,” she said to Colleen. Hiram ducked away and busied himself at the sink.
“But I’m not allowed to leave the hotel,” Colleen said.
“Then I guess you too will have to stay overnight in the holding cell down at the city jail.” She called out, over her shoulder, “Armbruster.”
Armbruster walked in with two police officers. “Here she is, like I said she’d be.”
“You sent me up here!” Colleen cried out. The police surrounded her and pulled her wrists behind her back.
“I think you’ll also find a felonious amount of codeine cough syrup in that keg,” Bhanushali said, pointing to it. “This drunken fat man smuggled it into the hotel.”
Norman just moaned but Hiram lifted the keg and dropped it back onto the countertop, producing a hollow-sounding thump. “This keg is empty.”
“We’re not your personal honor guard, ma’am,” one of the police officers said. “We’re only interested in securing this hotel right now. If you think these guys were doing wrong, take it up with the front desk.” He scanned the rooms. “Everyone, line up single file and pour the contents of those cups down the drain of the sink. We’ll wait here while you comply.”
“Bhanushali, I do this every year. You’ve been here, you know—” Norman started. Armbruster marched up to him and yanked the badge from around his neck with a sharp snap. “You’re banned. Get out.”