Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011

by Mike Davis (Editor)

  -And you, Mister Caldwell, where your partner leads you follow. Is that correct?

  -Yes.

  He put the side of his thumb to his lips, stared. Nodded like he answered his own question. Took off his eyewear. His eyes were white hot, campfire coals.

  He was The Devil. Cold fact. And he could do whatever he wanted.

  -You really are no fun, Mister Rossevelt. Has anyone ever mentioned that fact to you?

  -Not as I recollect.

  He laughed and slapped his leg. Eyes went black. Not the center part, the whole damn thing. Then he slapped his leg again, twice.

  Hell, I thought he was going to fall to the ground and roll around.

  -You are willing to go under snakes for a book you cannot even read. I have read Prinn’s scribbling? I can quote it chapter and verse. ‘Tibi, magnum Innominandum, signa stellarum nigrarum et bufaniformis Sadoquae sigillum.’

  Devil looked at me.

  I got black stars. Remembered the stars back East, the hollow black space between them. Didn’t care to hear more. Signs and seals be damned. Let hellish secrets stay in old books and away from the eyes and ears of simple men. Could burn the load they carried. Might be fitting. Had half a thought I maybe shoulda been a knot-herder, never heard a sober cow-puncher tell of meetin’ The Devil, except in that damn song.

  -Killed dead. Spurs to never jingle again. Over a book? Shook his head and laughed. Laughed.

  Sudden-like I got it. He didn’t really care about the book. He was just in a mood to test a man. And there we were. Dance went ‘round and he tired of it. Wind changed, this way t’went the other. Plain as that.

  Might be he figured our souls warn’t worth the bother. Can’t rightly say.

  Coulda left our bones for the buzzards, but without a tip of the hat or a goodnight, he danced off crazy-like, hoppin’ from one foot to the other. Laughing. His cats and phantoms of smoke at his heels, followin’ their shepherd. ‘fore the darkness swallowed him I heard him blownin’ a screech from an bent, old wooden pipe. Sounded like souls burnin’ in Hell.

  Whatever thing was driving his ghost-wagon followed along. Not sure what that worm-thing was. Shaped like a man, but color of something dead. And it looked slimy.

  My hand shook a bit. -Devil. Heard he can change how he looks.

  -Not sure that was him. Something as bad, but not him.

  -I reckon.

  Bart took his hand off the saddle horn, pulled his Colt and stared at it.

  I wondered if it was tellin’ him stories.

  -Let’s get this Devil’s book to that Platt fella . . . And I’m intendin’ on finding me a little whiskey. After I drink half the bottle, planning on gettin’ a nice fat whore who’s lively.

  He spurred Will. Traveller and me followed.

  Hadn’t gone far when Bart pulled up and turned to me. –I ever hear another son-a-bitch tell ‘bout tyin’ knots in the Devil’s tail again, I’m gonna shoot ‘im.

  He got quiet. Looked up at the stars.

  I smiled best I could.

  -Tristan, God and Holy matters come to yer mind back there?

  Didn’t turn to face him. -Didn’t.

  He pursed his lips. Nodded. Spurred Will.

  I followed.

  -

  [Michael Martin Murphey “Tyin’ Knots in The Devil’s Tail”] (C) 2011 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr.

  -

  -

  Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., is the author of the Lovecraftian novel Nightmare’s Disciple, and he has written many short stories that have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Ellen Datlow’s Year’s Best Horror and S. T. Joshi’s Black Wings and Spawn of the Green Abyss and many anthologies edited by Robert M. Price. His highly–acclaimed short story collections, Blood Will Have Its Season and SIN & ashes were published by Hippocampus Press in 2009 and 2010 respectively and as E-Books by Speaking Volumes in 2011.

  Joe is currently editing 2 anthologies for Miskatonic River Press. A Season in Carcosa and The Grimscribe’s Puppets will be released by MRP in 2012.

  You can find his blog at: http://thisyellowmadness.blogspot.com/

  Story art by mimulux.

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  NOTE: Images contained in this Lovecraft eZine are Copyright ¬©2006-2012 art-by-mimulux. All rights reserved. All the images contained in this Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without my express written permission. These images do not belong to the public domain. All stories in Lovecraft eZine may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted, borrowed, duplicated, printed, downloaded, or uploaded in any way without the express written permission of the editor.

  Things We Are Not

  by Brandon H. Bell

  ONE: A Mans (Kansased, only)

  After my third day in the City a crow alighted next to me on the park bench where I slept, squawking of a wonder at the city aquarium. Its feathers beaded with moisture, its beak dripped blood. During the night I had dreamed of faces floating in the mist above me, caught inside the cordon around the City as it died.

  “I’m tired of wonders, crow,” I said to it with a swipe of my hand. “Shoo.” A roundabout contained the park (unusual for Texas) and a sculpture of painted metal shaded my bench from its center.

  “Not Gandhi’ed,” it observed. I pulled my gaze away from the sculpture to the creature. I decided that it sounded like one of the muppets. Grover, maybe.

  “Just Kansas’ed, my friend. Don’t forget it,” I sat up and wiped the sleep from my color-blinded eyes.

  Another slap toward the bird and it launched in a storm of wings. The city stank of trash and sewage. Blocks away to the east water filled the streets. The sky held low clouds but the breeze felt cool despite the humidity.

  “Nots a crowk,” it cawed. “I’ms a magpie.”

  ***

  “A few other Mens left in the City,” said the magpie. It pecked at a hunk of bread on the bench and pretended at nonchalance.

  “You think I care about other people,” but my hands trembled with fear and hope.

  “I shows you where they is if you open the brrrook store doorrr,” it said, one gleaming eye then the other turned my way.

  “What do you want with the bookstore?”

  “Brrrooks!”

  “And why do you want books?” I looked at the dark eyes of the nearby buildings and wondered where these other people hid.

  “To wwwrrread!” it cawed.

  “What? Oh. You can read? I didn’t know Animal Farm did that,” I said, referring to the plague that gave it speech.

  “Only tree of usk in the city can, so far as I knowwws,” the crow said. Magpie.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yecks. Me, a wwwrrrats, and an ocktopops,” the bird’s head bobbed in excitement.

  “Wow. Lucky you. Victims of an undocumented plague. What do you like to read?”

  “Not sure yets,” it said, head twitching side to side. “Mrrrostly newspapers and mackazines so far. I wwwrrread Choke,” it screamed and then pantomimed choking, falling over, dying. It sat up, clicking. I realized the sound was its laughter.

  “Well, let’s get you to the bookstore,” I said.

  The bird hooted.

  ***

  Trendy sidewalk cafes and restaurants lined the cobbled streets near the bookstore. This, before the plagues wiped everyone out, was a Cordoned City. A limb of the One City. Now, I wasn’t sure what it was. Mankind’s fossils. A corpse for the AIs that once regulated the utility fog within the Cordon.

  Slouching toward the bookstore I spied second story flats. I propped the door open, left the bird to his books, and trotted off to find the stairway leading up. The bird shrieked in my wake.

  “Wrrrhat should I get?”

  “Lovecraft for the rat,” I said with a grin. “Verne for the Octopus… or maybe Blatty. And for you… Poe?”

  “Not a rrraven!”
I chucked, perplexed how he got the reference.

  “Okay, Okay: get some Daniel Steele. You’ll love it.”

  The magpie hooted and flew off into the store.

  Upstairs I took three tentative steps into the hall, a florescent still shining down on industrial carpet and stained walls, when one of the five doors in the corridor cracked open and a dark steel tube emerged.

  “Stop there,” a voice demanded. Female. Adult. Frightened.

  I held my hands up.

  “I thought it was abandoned. Just looking for a better place than the park.” I smiled and tilted my head to silence. “Anywho, I’ll leave ya be. Sorry to scare ya.”

  “You from up north?” the woman asked.

  My fingers twined. “Texan by birth, but I spent a good part of my youth in Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto, Phoenix–”

  “You moved a lot. Military?” That was a dangerous question.

  “Absolutely not. My dad was in stress relief. Sounds like shrink stuff but it had to do with power plants.”

  “Plagues?” she asked.

  “I have Kansas, sad to say. No others. Outside the

  Cordon at the beginning and lucky after that.”

  “Vulcan, Moon, Gandhi?” She asked.

  “No. Promise. You?”

  The door swung open. She looked younger than I: mid-twenties with her hair tied back, bespectacled, with a hint of base, lipstick, eyeliner. I couldn’t tell what colors she wore, thanks to the Kansas. Shorts, sneakers, tee-shirt with the words “I’m kind of a big deal” printed across the front and deformed by her breasts.

  “I’m not even Kansased,” she smiled. “Nor them,” she said with a flick of her head. Triplets (two boys and a girl) about one year old and a boy of seven or eight stood behind her. They all had curly blond hair and faces smeared with peanut butter and jelly. The woman clutched the gun to her side. “Around here, there’s just Animal Farm. These days.”

  The magpie shuffled into the hall, squawked, and the woman yipped in surprise.

  “He’s with me,” I said.

  “Woot, woot, woot,” the magpie screamed. “Boy meeks girrrl in worrrld series of loves!”

  I rolled my eyes and looked at the woman. The magpie just voiced the mistake this pretty thing was about to make. I hoped. The mistake that a boy had just met a girl.

  “Shut up, crow,” I said without conviction.

  “Are you hungry?” the woman asked.

  “Nots a crowk!” the bird said.

  “I am hungry,” I said. “My name is Win, by the way.”

  “Cleo,” she offered along with her hand.

  I stalled as she gazed into the convoluted patterns of my Kansas’ed irises, the only visual tale-tell of any of the human plagues.

  “The world’s not the same in black and white.”

  “I’ll risk it,” she said, and I took her hand.

  “I’sss a magpie! Magpies don’t has names. Animals not supposed to has names.”

  Cleo led the bird and me in for iced tea, grilled cheese, and conversation. The kids played bashful at first, but grew inquisitive and silly. It was a good afternoon. Almost familial.

  ***

  “The Trinity spilled its banks last spring and never receded. Now the west shore is just a couple streets over,” Cleo said.

  The triplets played in the other room except for Trevor, who sat beside Cleo watching us.

  His blond hair hung too long and curly for a boy, and his dark eyelashes looked girly. The overalls acted as compensated. His feet propped on the coffee table sans shoes.

  “He’s not had a man around since…” Cleo said. Her smile faltered. She’d given birth to triplets a year ago. I shuddered. “Go check on the triplets, Trevor.”

  “Cansss I go too?” the bird shifted his head back and forth eying Cleo and me.

  “Trevor will stomp you if you touch the babies,” Cleo said without a glance. She sank her teeth into her grilled cheese and chewed. Trevor grinned with dimples.

  After he led the magpie into the other room Cleo swallowed the last of her sandwich along with her inhibitions and lifted from the couch to sit beside me on the love seat. The faux-leather creaked with every motion either of us made. She slid against me, her shorts riding up and tightening against her crotch as she reached an arm around my back.

  I clinked my plate down on the finger-smeared coffee table, meeting her lips with mine. Her tongue penetrated my mouth and I tasted milk, cheese product, and the tang of tobacco.

  Between the horrors outside the Cordon and the human silence within it, I thought I’d never know this moment again. With fear and trembling, I drew another breath, tilted my head, touched my tongue to hers, and reached up to cup her breast, tweaking the nipple. She growled deep in her throat and her hand began to slide toward my fly and what it hid.

  I grabbed her wrist and she pulled away from me several inches, eyes searching my face. She saw the tears. I nodded toward the other side of the room where one of the triplets stood with a finger planted in his nose, watching us. Cleo laughed and I smiled.

  “We have plenty of time,” I said. “I won’t go unless you ask.”

  “Really?” She asked, betraying herself with a single word.

  She would ask me to leave.

  “Really,” I said, wondering if I betrayed myself in kind.

  ***

  That night we had a party, made popcorn, sang songs, and watched a movie at the local theater. The waters surrounded the cinema on all side but the west where the Marque lights still shone. I’d once worked at a cinema, and thought the automation would still work. I was right. We had to buy tickets at the counter with my card, still carried out of habit.

  “Winnie?” Clean remarked. “What were your parents thinking?”

  I laughed. “Who knows?”

  We sat in the abandoned theater and watched a cartoon movie with the kids. Cleo held my hand and leaned on my shoulder. The bird had left with a promise to return the next day. Cleo had made a pitcher of margaritas that I lugged to the theater (she carried glasses) and we spent the two hours drinking ourselves into a nice buzz.

  Only occasionally did I feel as if unseen eyes watched, though I realized for the theater to still function, some of the city AIs remained resident. What must they think, of their dying body that was the One City?

  We stumbled home, the kids coming off their sugar high and ready for bed. Even Trevor rubbed at his eyes and complained in a high voice of his fatigue, while the young ones whimpered in their huge stroller.

  All four of them curled into dreamy sleep as soon as we laid them down. I left the room while Cleo tucked them in and she joined me in the kitchen where I had poured two shots from her tequila bottle.

  “Here’s to us,” I said.

  “Here’s to us,” she said. Glasses lofted, tinkled together, drink downed with winced expressions. She exhaled and widened her eyes.

  “One more,” I said.

  “If you’re trying to get me drunk, you don’t–”

  “Just one more.”

  She nodded.

  We drank another round and then I led her to bedroom. I turned out the light and she kissed me again. I undressed her, gently. When she stood naked I ran my hands over her shoulders, down her back, up her goose-pimpled arms, over her breasts and down to her belly and hips.

  “Lay down,” I said.

  Then I stripped. My bag lay beside the bed and once I stood naked in the dark, I reached in and pulled a phallus attached to straps from the bag, stepped into the harness, and grappled the huge cock I now wore to be sure it was positioned correctly.

  We were intimate for the first time that night. At some point she whispered, I love you. I said it too.

  ***

  I knew she knew. She still held my hand the next morning at breakfast and I made stupid jokes with Trevor and he laughed.

  After the kids went to play in their room we sat with our coffee cups steaming between us, sipping at the warmth. Her eyes w
elled with tears.

  “What does this make me? What does–”

  I held up my hand.

  “I’ll leave if you want. I’ll understand. It doesn’t make you anything after that you weren’t before. Just someone who needed to be touched.”

  I sat, waiting, for what words she chose.

  She wiped at her eyes and laughed.

  “I don’t want you to go,” she said. “Last night was nice.”

  I nodded.

  ***

  About four weeks passed before the magpie returned. During that time all but Trevor contracted Kansas.

  ***

  The nape of my neck prickled at the clicking sound. I sat at the kitchen table, drinking my morning coffee.

  “Gocks to come sees the wwwrats,” the magpie said from the windowsill.

  “Long time. I thought the aquarium was the rocking place ’round here?” I took a sip and leaned back in the chair. The light in the kitchen shone like an old photo.

  “Please. They’s doing something brrrad,” the magpie’s head juddered and bobbed.

  Cleo walked into the kitchen and smiled at the bird.

  “Hey there, magpie,” she said the last word like it was the silliest thing in the world. Looking at me she screwed up her eyes and said,”You’ve never seen a magpie before?” She nodded when I shook my head.

  “Heys there, girlie girrrls.”

  “The magpie says the rats are up to no good,” I explained around my mug. It wanted for more coffee, less cream and sugar.

  “He might be right. They’re more organized than most of the other animals. When we were in Carrollton it was dogs, in Fort Worth cats. Up here, the rats are king.”

  “Okay, let’s go check it out, magpie.”

  Later I would think this the moment when everything changed. I’d not realize while still alive it was that first moment on the park bench that damned me. The moment I befriended the magpie.

  ***

  I kissed Cleo and turned to follow the magpie down into the bookstore when I felt a tug at my cargo pants. Trevor had crept between us and when I turned he stared up with an earnest look on his face.

  “Win, can I go?”

  “Little man, I’m not sure about this time,” we’d been over to see the partially flooded fair grounds and aquarium to the south beyond the metal sculpture, and on daily expeditions to the neighborhood parks.