“I’ll be good. I promise,” Trevor said, glancing from me to Cleo. The smile she offered her oldest son and the eyes that demurred to not meet mine signaled all I needed to know.
I put a hand on Cleo’s shoulder.
“If it seems at all risky I’ll bring him back. Is it okay for him to go?” Cleo nodded at me and ruffed the boy’s hair. He took my hand and we headed down into the bookstore and then out into the street.
The magpie stood on the sidewalk atop a tattered magazine that he scratched at to turn the page. The sun still hung low on the horizon bathing the street in brightness. I imagined the yellow glow, hard to remember. The air felt cool, autumn coming. The leaves on the trees (arranged at regular intervals on each side of the cobbled street) looked dessicate and I wondered if they’d started to morph from green to yellow, auburn, orange, and brown. Occasionally red. The breeze carried the stench of the water from a few streets over. I only saw a black and white version of the dying City.
The bookstore rested on a hilltop in the neighborhood but I wasn’t convinced it would keep us safe from the rising waters. Or if it did, we’d end up on an island. I figured with another week we’d be able to judge and then, if appropriate, I could broach the subject of moving on.
The Magpie squawked at Trevor.
“He’ll be fine, magpie.”
“Stompersss of magpies,” the bird said, clicking.
Trevor smiled.
“Hi, crow,” the boy said.
“Notsss a crowk. Magpie.” The bird turned back to the magazine and sounded out words with his black beak.
“Did you knows the Moon Plague wrras created in Bollywood? They was making a musical of storrry called Silver Bullets.”
“I don’t believe that for a second,” I said.
The bird launched into the air and flew north from the intersection, landed on a blue postal box and turned back toward us. Trevor clutched my hand and and we tramped after the bird.
“It saids it in the mackazine,” the magpie said.
“Oh, well, in that case.”
“Is it possible to cavort in a chair?” the magpie asked. I screwed my eyes up looking at the animal and turned without answering his nonsense.
We walked in the cool morning air upon the sidewalk and cobbled streets, beneath the speckled shade of the decorative trees, past storefronts and restaurants surprisingly intact. Eddie Bauer and other ritzy boutiques, their manikins toppled over and the stores filled with gloom. Most of the windows remained unbroken, shining in the morning light. I wondered how and then realized more of the City infrastructure was alive than I’d first thought. I had assumed, after seeing the flood, that the City was all but dead.
One nook below a parking garage held an array of tables before a black door and a neon sign that read ‘Hobbes End’. A nightclub. Right beside a dry cleaners. I chuckled at that.
Trevor skipped and ran, hid behind trees and laughed when I found him. We played most of the way to our destination, irritating the bird.
Rounding a last corner we came in sight of the church. A cathedral, really, with a high steeple and bell tower. That’s not what stopped me and wiped the smile from my face.
“Sees? Sees! I said theys was being brrrad.”
Trevor looked up to me, confused and scared.
Chanting issued from the Cathedral. Small, high voices, the exultant cries of intelligent rodents. Rats chanted.
“Fa-gluey mug-low naf cu-too-loo real-yah wah-gah naggle fa-tang!” the phrase repeated again and again, rising in volume and tempo. Occasionally a single, falsetto Texas-twang called out in English:
“In his house at Real-Yah dead Cutooloo waits dreaming…”
***
Water surrounded the cathedral. After settling the boy and bird in an entryway to one of the closed stores around the corner, I bolted across the street and into the shelter of the trees lining the cathedral property. In the distance the cathedral architecture played at Byzantium grandeur. From there I used one of the unsubmerged walls to get the the side of the cathedral and then climbed up the sloping walls to a broken window. Domes and arches flew high into the cloudy sky, the building an ornate eyesore in the modern faux-hometown neighborhood. Near the window, the chanting grew in volume and clarity. Their voices rang with a nasal quality, high and grating.
Revulsion wrinkled my nose as their stench wafted out the window: shit, carrion, and filthy hair and hide. A shuddering weakened my arms as I looked upon the majestic space filled with vermin. Rats stood on planks and detritus floating in the water, on the tops of pews, and on other structures built in the holy place. It had grown into a haven for these creatures, full of wooden towers, islands made of televisions, radios, computers, lawnmowers, and other trash and treasures. Human bodies lay twisted in some of the mounds where rat holes twisted in, out, and up to platforms atop most of the islands where rats leaned together in worship. They stood like tiny men, hands raises, eyes closed.
Toward the front of the cathedral where bisecting domes created a cavernous space lay the pulpit lit by hundred of candles of all shapes and sized. To one side a disco ball twirled atop a dais and phased through the spectrum of colors. The rats atop the podium wore small white robes and waved their arms in rhythm to the chanting.
One rat stood on a box atop the podium, leading the others, arms stretched up, mouth open, a scruff of wiry black hair growing wild atop its little skull so that it looked even more like a miniature man. In the white robe, it reminded me of a evangelist or that old singer, Tim DeLaughter. This rat, of the falsetto cattle call:
“In his house! In old Real-Yah! Not-dead Cutooloo! Waits dreaming!” Arms waved, smiles raised, and tiny exhalations warmed the air.
A large rope stretched from just below my broken window to the nearest tower of plywood and junk. Four rats perched atop it and gazed in toward the pulpit but did not partake in the worship themselves. Many ropes and cords spanned from tower to tower and all these paths converged in this nearest platform.
When two of the rats turned their black eyes toward me I realized I gazed in through the main entrance of their domain.
The third rat screeched and jumped when it glanced my way while the fourth, already aware, lugged a long stick over to an aluminum lid hanging above them. When the animal struck the lid a satisfying twang rang out in the vast overhead space.
The chanting stopped.
I heard a rustling as the rats turned and gaped, first at the watchtower, them at the interloper the four sentries pointed toward. The rat colony screamed their rage as I slid from the window and ran.
TWO: A Magpie, (Mistaken, only)
We are the walrus, coo-coo-ca-too-loo…
Old Cthulhu… Almost a myth you might have thought, you thought. With a chuckle. The boy eyed you and whined for the woman pretending to be a man. For a moment you thought how precious a heartbreak that revelation would be. You needed the kid’s devotion, trust, and adoration of Win. For now. But that moment of heartbreak would come as surely as this brat’s demise.
“Staysss here and I checksss on Win,” you bobbed your head until the boy smiled. Humans. So easy. Except when they had the Moon Plague. You knew this having tracked Win’s last lycanthropic spree from the north and down into the ruins of the Cordoned City. You came calling because tonight was the full moon, and time for the Rats to see their new god arise from the rising waters.
At the corner you fluttered, startled as Win ran past. Startled by the undulated landscape of fur and flesh that followed. The tittering of the rats scratched at you as you cawed and screamed, flapping back after your Win. Your plans dashed by these damn rats. Or by Win.
“What the hell, bird,” Win said, running while the boy bawled in her arms.
“Tolds you theys being brrad. Summon elders gocks.” You turned one eye back along your path to see the vermin tide flowing up the street like shit-colored death. “The worst one of alls comes tonight, Rat tells me. One wrrrat takes name. Oats.”
“Those monsters are… made up… fiction. What have I done? Can you tell them?”
“Notss fiction!” You said. “Comes. Nots running brrack to brrook store. They gets other little ones. And girly girrrl.”
“Hell,” Win hissed. “Where can we go, Magpie? I can’t carry him much farther.” The words came out it great gouts of steam. The air chilled, clouds scuttling low above the City, the waters nearby already forming this neighborhood into a shrinking island. The humans didn’t seem to realize that, or didn’t care.
“The aquariums,” you cawed. “The aquarium.” And you flew ahead, guiding the two to their doom. Guiding the rats, and the Rat calling itself Oats most of all, to the apotheosis of their summoning.
***
…and we are the radishes…
You glided over the running woman, serene. Past unbroken expanses of glass hawking dead displays of clothing, jewelry, cooking supplies, electronics, hams (god the stench), and other necessities of human civilization. The Cordoned City sprawled dying, but still served its absent masters. Unseen hands repaired the glass and mortar, pruned the trees. Nonperishables were restocked. A sort of life went on in the city, beyond the newly intelligent animal species.
The Cordon did not contain any more utility fog, and hence no intelligences in the mist to observe the comedy you created. So you thought.
***
…and we are the spiders…
Into the waters that sluiced over the lost carnival, the parklands, the gazebos and the concert lawns, Win struggled while the boy slogged along beside her.
“The aquariumsss is rights ahead, past ferris wheel,” you told them.
The rats stopped at the edge of the water, searching for other paths, lifting to their haunches to see where the humans were going.
“Go. Runsss. Go into the aquarium building and waits for me,” you commanded. “I trysss to talksss to rats.”
Win heaved forward in the water, up to her thighs, and nodded in understanding.
***
…and we are the elephant…
“Oats!” You drifted over the vermin army, tiny black eyes turned up toward your own black form, black eyes, black soul. The rats wore robes of many colors, or white, or black uniform outfits, or were naked but for their wiry hides.
“Speaks the Magpie with Oats. Nowsss or Old Cthulusss not to come!”
Alighting on a yellow post protruding from the water near the shore, you watched the wave pass back through the rats as they whispered the message. You had taken on a role in their new mythology. An avatar of Nyarlathotep, one of the few mice among them had confided. It didn’t mean much to you, despite having read the stories. You didn’t fathom the attraction of the vaginal horror monsters and old stories with cats named Nigger Man. Animals should not have names, anyways. It was that hubris on Oat’s part that sparked your initial ire. After that it became a matter of momentum.
Falsetto, but slow with a definite Texas twang. It was a voice, but for the high tone, that should talk of sweet tea and fried taters, driving out to the stock tank and checking on the cattle, or of trips to the drive-in and then to DQ for a dipped cone. Precise, friendly, knowing. A voice full of cracks and nuance, implications, deceptions, promises. A preacher’s brimstone lust crossed with a sharecropper’s simplicity.
These thoughts flitted through your mind: observations borrowed from your extensive reading. You didn’t know if nutty bars and land ownership were any more real than Dogon or The Outer Ones.
Humans were such good liars. The rat coughed at your clicking: an insolence otherwise ignored.
“What… I said what is this talk I hear, brother crow?”
Your clicking stopped, but for once you didn’t insist on your odd little charade.
“I needs these two. You can has the other humans,” and with those words you set right your plans.
The fat rat raised it’s head to the sky. You thought it the way the rats smiled.
***
…and we are the singular octopus, of a rarer plague than mere literacy…
“Can’t we just get another copy of the book?” Win asked.
“Nope, nope,” you cawed. “Its limited editions. Gots to dive and gets it, Winnie.” You bobbed your head but Win did not smile. You perched on an eve above Win and the boy who sat on a dry ledge looking down on the aquarium. Feet dangled, arms on the rails. They could have been father and son. You started your damn clicking then stopped yourself.
“And this Octopus?”
“Just an Ocktopops. Maybe sprrrays ink at you if you gets close to him.”
“Why not just ask him to bring it to us? You said he can read, too. Is he keeping it for himself?”
“Won’t come up no mores. Mads I not brrring more brrrooks.”
“Win, don’t,” Trevor said, yanking her sleeve.
“Quiet, Trevor.”
Win rose and skulked down the winding steps in the circular building to where the water began. From there she crossed to the submerged platform just above the tank, standing in the water up to her ankles.
“It’s really cold,” teeth chattering.
“Quick you goes and it wrrron’t take long,” you said.
Win clambered onto the railing, told the boy she’d be right back, and dived in. The creature hid until Win reached the red smear of the book and then attacked.
You sat and clicked as the bubbles reached the surface, then the blood.
“Win? Win!” the kid screamed. You flew up to him and hovered before his face.
“Final ingredients! Yecks. It didn’t have much fight in it until I added the spiders and wrrradishes. Did you knows wrrradishes were the most vicious veggies after Animal Farm hit? Shoulds have called it something else.”
The boy listened, eyes red and glistening with tears, nose clogged with snot, face clenching into a mask of childish rage.
“What did you do to Win? You nasty crow,” the boy surged up the railing and swung at you with startling speed. But he had to turn away from you for a moment to regain his balance.
You stopped clicking, filled with rage.
That’s when we whispered in the boy’s ear.
“He’s a stupid, mean, little bird, isn’t he, Trevor?” We did not mean to startle the child. Our face manifested in the utility fog, soft, feminine, not unlike a combination of his mother and Win.
But startled he was, as you, and when he turned to see our face, floating behind him, smiling… his hands must have weakened, shocked. The fall was not clean. Skull against cement before the splash. And there he floated until the creature below came and pulled his twitching body into the reddened depths.
…and we are the ghosts of a dying City. And now a woman. And I am scorned.
THREE: A City, (Dead), and a Family (Uninfected)
At first sight the rough tide sweeping up the street below the kitchen window looked like a flash flood and she thought of Trevor and Win, rag clinched in hand. She leaned over the sink and squinted her eyes to better see.
Oh my god. A glance at the calendar on the wall, then she charged from the room, her socks slipping on the linoleum and dropping her to her knees.
“Fuck!” She lifted herself and continued down the hall.
The triplets stood in their room, crowing to her with smiles.
“Fruck!”
“Puck!”
“Muck!”
One of them clapped his chubby hands, giggled, and then ran when she reached for him.
“Get over here, you.”
She caught one in each arm, then lifted the third as best she could.
Out into the hall, up the stairs to the roof, and out into the midday sun.
Cleo used a length of timber she kept on the roof to barricade the door, wedging it between two other pieces of wood nailed to the door and roof. Teeth marks marred the wood.
“Moon, mamma! Moon.” One of the triplets crooned.
“Yes, baby, that’s what I’m hoping for.”
Cle
o walked toward the leading edge of the building and looked down to the street where the rats lingered.
“What do you want, Oats?” she clenched her fists and struggled to slow her trembling.
All the while she scanned the sky, hoping, instead of dreading, to see the orb of the moon.
“Praise be to our Lord and all his myriad host,” Oats called up to her. He spoke through a megaphone that rendered his voice in metallic echoes full of reverb. Rats hefted the megaphone on each side like pall-bearers.
“What the hell, Oats?”
“You know you’re the last humans in the city?”
She leaned over the brick ledge and eyeballed the little animal with his crazy mop of hair. “what. Do. You. Want.” Teeth clenched, tendons ached in her neck and shoulders.
The bird. The goddamn bird alighted on the wall, clicking.
“Girly, girrrl. Nots looking so good.”
The rat barked orders and chanted cadence or some other strange litany in the megaphone that tumbled into incomprehension. before her the black and white landscape of fur jolted into action, scurrying forward over the sidewalk and up the walls.
“Where are Win and Trevor, crow?”
The clicking stopped.
“The wrrrats haves them. Haves them both at the Cathedrrrals.” It jumped and landed on her arm where it jabbed its beak into her flesh before she could swat it away. It jumped away and landed a bit further down the wall. The bird looked down toward the rats and squawked. Behind Cleo the triplets gurgled and growled like dogs choking on their own tongues. One of them whimpered.
The bird fluttered in the air before her.
“Look,” it whispered, just loud enough over the blood beating in her temple. “Looks. The babies founds the moon.” And the bird streaked away, straight up into the air toward the vast, ugly lunar face that stared down at Cleo with its maria and crags, pale as bone or lost hope.
She slid to her knees, wracked with the plagues activation, as the first rats cleared the bricks and plumped onto the roof.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011 Page 15