Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2011

by Mike Davis (Editor)

  ***

  Five year before, the Moon plague swept out of the Indian subcontinent with the same ferocity of the Vulcan, Animal Farm, and Gandhi Plagues. Kansas just depressed people. The other plagues, especially as they intermingled in host populations, destroyed civilization.

  A few human stragglers managed alongside the new animal societies. The Gandhied avoided all contact with other sentients since their compulsions disallowed self defense of any form. The Vulcanned acted with often bloody logic, made worse as the cities faltered. Animals worked out their new place in the intelligent ecology. And finally, with the Moon Plague, the roles grew fully reversed. Men ran the streets, mindless, while the animals contemplated and planned.

  Meanwhile, other, undocumented plagues arose, manufactured by the AIs of the One City, some of the last human pilgrims from outside the Cordon speculated.

  Some travelers whispered of forms, figures, faces, coalescing out of the air in the cordoned cities. Some told tall tales of a vast, metahuman intelligence molding all of sentience for an unknown and unfathomable ends.

  They whispered about a war among factions within this intelligence. That it was not monolithic, but splintered and factional.

  Some of the travelers gleamed wicked smiles around campfires, and disappeared as if they were ghosts the moment one’s back was turned.

  ***

  Cleo woke in a trash heap surrounded by water.

  She shook away a dream of someone talking about the plagues as if on Sunday news show of the old world.

  The moon painted the alley in stark contrast. Flooded, whispers of lapping waves and stench of sewage and rotted food and carrion. corpses floated with gleaming meat and maggots, out-gassing occasionally.

  She howled to the gleaming face above and its smile. It took hours sometimes to regain control after the plague hit her. The darkness spoke to how long she had raged, all animal. She stood in the refuse, a paw sinking into a bag of muck, and felt the scars and gashes burrowed into her thin hide.

  Her belly hung full of rats, so that was one good thing.

  Jumping into the chill water, Cleo swam toward the end of the alley where the cobbled street surfaced. Behind her something huge sloshed and splashed, its passage filling the night with a scraping as of a monstrous form pulling itself from the deeper waters and into the alley.

  She turned back from the sound and looked up the street. Cobbled road and decorative trees. Hobbes End and a dry cleaners. Shops shining in the night full of expensive accouterments no one would ever need again. And the cathedral, Our Lady of Abject Hope. The domes and spires were not gothic but Neo-Byzantine, she knew from the kid’s daddy. He’d caught the Gandhi and died with a smile in his eyes and his throat in her jaws.

  The thought of the babies stopped her, and then the chanting from the cathedral raised her hackles. Lowering her head and her eyes twitching back and forth, she trotted toward the church. Water surrounded the building and Cleo had to swim the last stretch, clawing through the top of shrubbery protruding from the water to pull herself onto a wall, free of the water by mere inches.

  Even ruled as she was by instinct and the miasma of scents on the breeze and the mother wolf rage, she understood the waters were rising fast.

  From there she padded along the wall, up to a broken window, pounced over a fat rope, and onto a platform where she eviscerated four rats and threw them aside with a twitch of her neck.

  Before charging across the be-candled maze of heaps, towers, and ropes she glanced back out into the moonstruck water-scape, where something glistened above the waterline and moved closer with an sound like shrieking and laughter, mixed and murdered.

  Cleo leapt for the next tower, and the next, and a third, killing as she went. Her three youngest wolflings yelped and cried, hog-tied in the pulpit. Oats reveled and posed, all wiry hair and multi-colored robe. The other rats danced amid the candles, chanting. That cursed bird launched into the air at her approach as she squinted her eyes and surged forward to destroy them all and get back her pups.

  The she-wolf yelped, too winded for a full howl. The wolflings turned toward their mother’s call.

  A small voice deep in Cleo’s mind, a human remnant riding her more animal nature, wondered at two absences. Where Trevor; where Win?

  ***

  The holy space above the animals echoed with screams as the bird flew over the berserker wolf and its mewling, whining spawn. The yawning darkness multiplied the chanting of the rats and the occasional indignant yowl that curdled on one of their tiny mouths as the mother wolf ripped it from the world of breath and blood-flow. The joined hemispherical spaces covered in baroque scenes of heaven and hell vibrated with a cracking, architectural moan that silenced the animal mob so that when the building snarled and crashed and splashed with its front wall ripped from its body, all the actors upon that stage fell silent and turned to gape at the countenance of ultimate horror, amid floating faces and thrashing tentacles. The entire street-side wall of the cathedral had been torn away by the beast that now filled its absence. Only the she-wolf noticed the limp body of a small boy held in one of the tentacles.

  ***

  The faces drifted around the monster.

  “Oh, little bird,” they called.

  They smiled terrible smiles.

  ***

  The monstrous thing surged forward, a wall of water foaming before it, towers toppled and ropes tangled at it passed, candles in all but the highest alcoves and eaves falling cold.

  Thereby darkness came along with the leviathan.

  ***

  Oats stood in a small crowd of his disciples, his normally immaculate robe splattered with blood and grime and streaks of wax. His black eyes reflected the coming of his new god. His first god. A god that did not despise the filthy humans so much as it engendered an abiding indifference to them.

  From the first, that made such sense to his despairing heart. He understood that in Cthulhu, there was one that might offer clarity to him and his tribe.

  He had read enough of the Jehova to not expect an actual appearance.

  His mouth hung, until he realized himself and he stroked at his unruly head of hair.

  “Ai! Ai! Shub Niggurath, hail! Cutooloo. Great Cutooloo! He comes because of our pleas and our suffering and our sentience. Hail Cutooloo!.”

  The rats screamed in compliance, but fear rattled their throats. When the wave reached the pulpit, of the vermin, only Oats and a small white mouse were not washed away. Oats clung to the she-wolf, and the small, crying mouse clung to him.

  ***

  The crow hovered in the multi-domed space and its images of angels and satyrs, clicking at the mayhem below.

  Its back eyes shone in the black vault of the ceiling. Black wings flapped black feathers. Black heart, black soul, black, clicking laughter rattled with mirth.

  Until, in the holy blackness, a thin, smooth tentacle slithered around his feet, butt, body, gently pulling the wings in.

  He lost a single feather.

  ***

  Cleo turned her head back and was about to pry the rat from her hide and eat him when the feather hit her muzzle and a long, mournful squealing erupted above.

  She, the rat, and the mouse all turned their eyes to the ceiling. The wolflings stared in silence at the wall of monster before them.

  ***

  Tentacles, feelers, antennae, eyes both human and compound, reflective and dark as night, teeth, fangs, tongues. Vaginal folds where there should be something else. Anything else. The voice spoke. Voice of the octopus first betrayed merely for the sport of manipulating to it strange enveloping plague. The elephant tricked long ago to add mass to the creation. The radishes and spiders, snakes and rats. The woman, Win. And something more. Something connected to the faces floating nearby, watching him. He did not understand how they became a part of his creation.

  The tentacles groped him and violated his tiny body. Pain and he shrieked. Was that his guts, sliding out of him? His beak
hung open, as if hungry for air.

  “I am the walrus…“

  As the words crawled into his head, slow, methodical, the tentacles drew him closer to the pseudo-mouth until it spoke around him, and them spoke into him even as he felt the throat swallowing around him.

  He cried in pain and despair as the voices continued on into an endless night.

  ***

  When daylight came, gone were all but Cleo and the triplets. The plague had passed. The babies slept in exhaustion, pink skin prickled with the morning chill.

  On the pulpit steps lay a sad hybrid of too many beasts to name. At its center lay Win, entwined in the fleshy tentacles like a human bloom. Her eyes opened and she smiled at Cleo.

  “Trevor…”

  Cleo just nodded, eyes brimming. She held an arm over her breasts.

  “No, baby, no. Listen.” Win spoke with effort. Cleo ran her eyes over that body. Nipples now dark, body spotted and rough. Creases of flesh and new appendages stretching out from her periphery.

  “They can still give him life, but one of them would live inside him from then on. I didn’t know what you’d want.” Tears rolled from her human eyes. The others just sparkled in the morning light.

  Cleo realized the Win-creature’s diminished size.

  “You have the Moon Plague?”

  “So do you,” Win said with another smile.

  “You knew?”

  “No. I was going to use the bird’s crisis to go away before night. What about Trevor?”

  The tentacles pulled him out of the waters. He looked pale and serene. Cleo went to the body and hugged it, shaking with sobs until the sobs passed. Then she rolled the body back into the water.

  “Let them know if they enter him I’ll kill him myself,” Cleo said, tears still in her eyes but no emotion.

  “You just told them,” Win said, gesturing with a mandible toward a face floating nearby.

  “Will you leave us for a moment?” Cleo said to the face. Win nodded at the apparition.

  When they were alone Cleo stepped forward and gently mounted the Win bloom in the middle of the monster, where they kissed long and deep. Moaning, Win whispered, I have something I think you’ll like, and she expelled a phallus from her vagina and they made love before anyone could interrupt.

  A new phase of their family life had begun.

  -

  -

  Brandon H. Bell is a writer of weird fiction, co-editor of The Aether Age: Helios, and editor of Fantastique Unfettered. His work has appeared in publications from Hadley Rille and M-Brane SF, as well as zines such as Everyday Weirdness, Nossa Morte, and Byzarium. He is an advocate for sensible copyright and Creative Commons licensing, a member of the Outer Alliance (supporting his GBLTQ counterparts in the genre community) and a Rissho Kosei-kai Buddhist. His novella, Elegant Threat, is due out in April as half of the M-Brane SF Double. He can be found online at nithska.blogspot.com. Things We Are Not, originally published in Things We Are Not from M-Brane Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission.

  Story art by mimulux.

  Return to the table of contents

  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.

  Descent Into Shadow and Light

  by W.H. Pugmire

  I awakened in my windowless tower, to the smell of ancient books and the worms with which they were infested, and swept the pale winged things from where they had nestled in my coiled hair. Pushing the silken coverings from me, I stood and stared at the white sphere of soft illumination that hovered just above my elongated shadow – the sphere that has been, always, my companion. By its light I have devoured the words found within the ancient books, syllables that I could taste when they were spoken. I cannot quite remember how it is I learned the art of reading, but I have a dim semi-recollection of she who danced in my dreams and always held onto a white book, showing me its illuminated leaves and carefully moving her silent lips so that I could comprehend the words that they formed. It was this woman in white who, at the climax of one vision, dissolved into a globe of light that followed me out of slumber and dwelt with me in the lonesome tower; and it was this sphere of radiance that accompanied on my day of resolution, when I determined to vacate the tower and explore the surrounding forest. Thus I departed from the tower room that had been my home for all of memory, stepped down the winding steps of stone and crossed the arched threshold to the floor of silent earth, where all was dark except for the places that were kissed by the glow of the sphere that followed me. I breathed into the icy air and light mist floated through my lips and drifted toward the dark mute trees of the inarticulate forest. Although there was no sound, I imagined that I could detect sly movement behind distant trees, and thought perhaps the pale winged things that nestled in my hair at time of slumber were surreptitiously shadowing my steps. I did not mind – I liked their smooth cold forms when they wove their way into my coiled hair and kissed my scalp.

  The dark trees of the endless forest stood like quiet sentinels that watched me on my path, and as the way began to bend and drop toward a lower region I reached out for one nearby trunk, so as to support my balance; but it startled me, as I pressed my palm against the dendroid form, how unsubstantial the creature seemed, as if it could have been an element of a dream through which I wandered. As I contemplated this, the pale sphere that was my attendant shot before me, followed by pale winged things, some of which reached for my hair and tugged me on my way, out of the forest at last and toward a field where slim black stones protruded from the ground. It was only then that I became aware of sensation, as an experience of chilliness enveloped my flesh. The ground on which I stood took on an aspect of solidness, its rough texture unpleasant beneath my naked foot. The sky above me was black as pitch, but as I peered into its vaulted expanse my sphere of light floated just before my face and pressed against my eyes; and then it drifted from me, into the midnight sky, where it transformed into a bloated, fungoid moon that cast decayed light upon the slabs that tilted above the surrounding soil. I touched one slab and tried to read the words that had been etched thereon when the silence of the place was ruptured by a sound with which I was somewhat familiar; for in my tower chamber there had been a collection of bells of various sizes, and I would sometimes entertain myself by lifted them and listening to their clangor. What I now felt on the chilly air and heard within ear’s depth was a deep peal, as of from some distant mammoth bell; and wasn’t it queer how I could almost see the vibrations of the sound in the air before me and feel them push into my flesh, my eyes, my tingling mouth? And when I followed that sound it was soon accompanied by a lighter trembling of noise – and this, too, I recognized, for one of my possessions in my chamber had been an antique music box that, once wound, played a lilting melody that often ushered me toward slumber. The din that now reverberated in dark air was a similar sound, yet enhanced and weighty.

  I followed the enchanting sound and espied the rectangles of golden light that proved to be apertures of a tower that was not unlike mine own. It was from this edifice that the music sounded, music that was a lure and summoned me to climb through one golden aperture, into a bright room. I stepped onto a smooth and polished floor and saw the being that burned beside me, a figure that resembled me in that it had limbs and torso. I saw that the room’s illumination came from the creature’s upheld hands, which burned with yellow fire. I saw the others of its kind who stood dead still, their flaming hands providing the light by which the chamber’s other occupants moved in dance to the music t
hat was performed by figures crowded upon a platform. One of the dancers moved to me, and I marveled at her whiteness, at the artificial wings that had been sewn into her gown, at the touch of her gloved hands as they wove their fingers through my hair. I marveled at the reek that emanated from my new companion, a heavy stench such as had never assaulted my nostrils; and yet, as much as it violated my senses, there was an aspect of it that I found comforting. I was led into the dance and embraced by a fellow in motley who had lost most of the flesh that had once covered his visage, and I laughed at the sense of grim pleasure that emanated from his too-wide grin. Another winged woman in white drifted to me, and I wondered why her feet seemed to float just above the gleaming floor. My heart trembled violently when I beheld the white book that she clasped, the book that was opened to me. I stood, spellbound, as the woman moved the pointed nail of one long talon into my finger, and I nearly fainted at the smell of the dark stuff that began to spill from my punctured flesh. Her hand guided my own to press my wounded finger to the clean white page, and when I took my hand away I saw the insignia of my print upon the shimmering paper.

  I was still gazing downward when the white book was removed from me, and thus I saw the image on the floor of polished glass; and I knew that what I was seeing was my own reflection, of which I had read but never witnessed, for there had been neither window nor mirror within my tower chamber. I fell to my knees and touched my hand to my smooth likeness, and I marveled at how I was a thing of iridescent whiteness like unto the sphere of light that had once been my constant companion. I laughed to see how thin the texture of my face had become, thus revealing the skull beneath my mask of flesh. I knew that I would soon join the throng of friendly ghouls that crowded around me, and this knowledge so enchanted me that I raised my face and moaned in ecstasy, at which signal the others gathered ‘round me and offered me their ghastly hands, or that which had once been hands. And I hummed in accompaniment to the orchestra’s macabre waltz as my compatriots knelt around me and welcomed me within their carrion caress.