The debt was steep but had been paid in full with both Dorian and Aaron’s lives. Sometimes life works out that way. A debt usually comes in many forms. It can be the breaking of a promise, giving up a girl, or painfully sacrificing one’s life as many have done throughout history – neither wanting nor claiming any glory. These two were no exception, Dorian the painter and Aaron the stranger from out of town.
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John Prescott lives in the deep southern woods of Mississippi with his wife Edie, son Grafton Caine, and their three cats. He loves to spend time with his son, take long walks, and draw, and he is, of course, an avid reader. He somehow finds time to umpire baseball and softball and be an art director. John started taking his writing seriously two years ago and just published his first book of short stories. Click here to purchase John’s new novel, Pray. Click here to purchase John’s horror collection, Before Sunrise.
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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.
Desert Mystery! Gas & Go!
by Ann K. Schwader
You’re going to buy a ticket. You just won’t admit it yet. Paying for gas takes five minutes but you’ve already been here for fifteen — browsing the magazine rack, picking out a Coke (diet? cherry? decaf?) for the road. The mom with her whining toddlers is long gone. Likewise the road tripping spring breakers, the two Texan sales geeks, the trio of gals talking nonstop about some spa in Sonora.
It’s just us, now. And the Mystery is waiting.
The sign by the cash register makes it easy. Tickets are only a buck, though I’ll push it to two-fifty come snowbird season. When I put one down by your Coke and the gas receipt, you shrug . . . then nod. What’s to lose? Curiosity happens.
Not often enough, lately. The dreams are getting bad.
I ring up the sale while you go make sure your car’s locked. There’s nobody else in that car. Or in the parking lot. Nobody headed down from the highway, either, despite those signs strung out between here and Tucson. The keys jangle in my hand as we head over to the Mystery’s building.
I like the new paint I gave it this winter. Lime and turquoise: striking without being an eyesore. Black question marks on all four sides, but the stencil looks professional. Don’t want folks thinking this is some roadside rip-off, another Black Hills snake ranch. I’ve got the real thing here.
I’ve got it.
Must remember that, though your questions aren’t helping. Losing focus isn’t good right now.
At the threshold, a lizard scuttles across my foot and I flinch. You laugh. It’s an uneasy sound: the sleazy sideshow vibe is finally sinking in, and I catch you glancing over your shoulder as I unlock the door.
Still no witnesses. I’ve already checked.
The air inside could be fresher, but ventilation’s a problem and the smell’s not bad this early in the year. No windows. One dim light with red bulbs blood-litten Yoth, gateway to lightless N’Kai and the rites of the Unspeakable aimed toward the back display.
Waking dreams now? Dear God. Not that I believe any more.
Pretty hard to, once you know what’s coming.
I let you see me shut the door carefully, but I don’t relock it. Never from inside. Most folks don’t notice, that big case is so flashy. Just a museum discard I picked up at an auction, but upholstery velvet and paint do wonders.
That and a little sandpaper on the glass. Can’t risk showing too much.
You might try leaving, and then where’d I be?
The answer to that is already seeping through the floorboards, burdening the air with a near-visible taint. There’s no smell quite like it – fetor would be close, if anyone still had a vocabulary – and your eyes go wide as you start coughing.
What the hell is it? Nothing so mundane as hell . . . but it’s time to get things moving. I touch the control in my pocket, and those red bulbs flicker like a Hammer Film effect. Like my dreams. You’re already hanging all over that case, staring down.
Depths beyond understanding, where the leavings of a race far older than humanity – but no wiser – wax sentient and cunning, vengeful with the slow turning of stars.
Dreaming now? Waking?
Your snort of disgust relieves my mind. We are still in this waking world, you and I. We both know a sand mummified coyote when we see one.
But you bought your ticket for a Mystery.
And I need the dreams to stop.
Turning away from the case’s false promise, I jangle my keys again and smile. This marks you out as one of the elect, immune to childish illusions and therefore deserving of truth. Here before you stands your guide to that truth –
Works every time.
I touch my pocket control again, and the red flickering stops. A single spotlight at the back of the room picks out one corner of the planking. The inset door is welded metal, equipped with a hasp and padlock. A very good padlock.
The fetor is even worse here, but you’ve stopped asking questions. You even edge away as I kneel to open that padlock and throw back the door.
Everyone expects stairs at this point. Maybe a ladder. But the way down into Mystery is a simple ramp, cut from the bedrock though unmarked by tools. There are no lights aside from the heavy flashlight I’ve just unclipped from my belt.
I’m almost missing your questions now, though their time is over. Better that we descend in silence, past fragments of the cairn which covered this shaft when I found it. Wish to hell I’d left it alone! But the stones with their jagged, incomprehensible glyphs intrigued me, and it was deep winter — too cold for rattlers to be active.
Can’t believe I used to worry about rattlers.
Of course, the shaft wasn’t this wide when I found it. More like a very deep prairie dog burrow, but it didn’t look dug: more like melted out, or maybe burned.
Then my flashlight beam caught flashes of eyes looking back.
Clusters of eyes.
I can hear you slowing behind me, dragging your feet. Struggling not to breathe. The smell is lightless gulfs of lost oceans roiling through time unmistakable, though we are thousands of miles from serious salt water. Millions of years too late to imagine what spawned in it.
There’s a distinctive sound, too. A thick sticky forward momentum like a slug and a freight train combined, but so far away – so deep in the ravaged rock – that it’s more vibration than noise.
Not picking that up yet? Better move ahead of me, then.
I insist.
No need to put your hands up like that. I’m not likely to get twitchy at this point. Not the way I got when the dreams first started, all stark white wilderness and dead stone cities glittering with ice. Ice, slime, and . . . corpses, I guess. Headless ones, though damned if I know what those heads must have looked like.
I only knew how they came off. And why prairie dogs or rabbits or the odd coyote weren’t going to cut it any more.
Size is strength. Time is strength. Time and size and strength against the slaving ones with their star-wings, their ceaseless wars and senseless cities. Tormented into being, reformed endlessly to serve. Mind-lashed, mind-leashed — until the great cold drove Them back and freed us.
Black dust upon the wind. Dust of life within retreating ice. Deep rivers lost to upthrust and fold, sediment and pressure and erosion. Starved centuries of darkness before –
The sound’s stopped now.
And you’ve stopped dead in your tracks, even though that’s just what might hap
pen. I can see it in your eyes. You’re not going one more step into this Mystery.
But you don’t have to. I can feel the darkness gathering itself ahead, cresting like a wave just beyond my flashlight beam. A wave of sentient shadows. Unending hunger. And a multitude of shifting, flickering eyelids, slitting open one by one as I bite down hard on a shriek.
It isn’t until much later – after I’ve dropped the flashlight, nearly dropped the .38, scrambled and slipped and crawled up that damned ramp and groped for the door and locked it down good – that I realize it’s not my shriek.
I am alone once more in my mind’s fragile silence. Tonight holds no dreams. No icebound citadels with strange echoes in their depths. Only coyotes will sing their mysteries to the moon, and the dead star-gulfs beyond this ball of dirt and ignorance will go right on being dead.
For a while.
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Ann K. Schwader lives, writes, and volunteers at her local branch library in suburban Colorado. “Lost Stars,” her tale of dark Egyptology, was recently reprinted in The Book of Cthulhu. Twisted in Dream: the Collected Weird Poetry of Ann K. Schwader (edited by S.T. Joshi) is forthcoming in October from Hippocampus Press. Her previous collection of dark SF poetry, Wild Hunt of the Stars (Sam’s Dot 2010), was a 2010 Bram Stoker Award finalist.
Credits: Active member of HWA and SFWA. Bram Stoker Award finalist (poetry collection) 2010. Fiction published in The Book of Cthulhu, Rehearsals For Oblivion, Horrors Beyond, Tales Out of Innsmouth, The Darker Side, and elsewhere.
Illustration by Leslie H.
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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.
The Tunnel Inside the Mountain
by A.J. French
Good evening. I wish to bring an unusual tale to your attention to-night. It all began five months ago, when I received a letter from my colleague, Jefferson Alston. I shall read to you his letter by the light of this fire:
***
Hello, Weston, my dear friend! Strange news I bring to you, strange, great, tragic news! Don’t be alarmed: I am in need of a compulsory ear, a trustworthy ear, in case something should happen to me. . . . But more on that later.
I know you are a busy man, and I suppose you presume me on a wild goose chase again, hunting after devils, or digging up unmarked graves. But this time is different! The college has fully funded my research, provided I emerge with irrefutable evidence. For now, though, I need someone I can trust to record my findings. So I ask, most humbly, you – my compatriot from days long past – to be the repository of my greatest work. And I thank you, Weston Price, with all my heart.
Three months ago I became the recipient of an urgent telegram from Mexico. The telegram was from Mr Marco Toledo. Francisco Diaz gave my name to him – you remember Francisco, don’t you? You and I met him briefly during our European sojourn.
At any rate, the telegram from Marco insisted I come to Oaxaca at once. He said there was a matter of “principal interest” awaiting my analysis. He admitted the sparsity of this proposition, but maintained that, with revolution unfolding in Mexico, extreme secrecy was required.
Now, I am sure you can imagine my elation upon reading Marco’s telegram. And because Francisco had referred me, I knew the matter would involve the occult. Such a godsend in my field of study does not come along often.
I boarded a train leaving Arkham, setting out on a journey through the rolling plains and forests of the American South and Midwest. Thence to the savage deserts of Texas; ah, those deserts: seized so tremendously by us not long ago. It took me five days to arrive at the Mexican border. There, after flashing my passport, I changed trains and headed into Mexico.
The train wound deeper, through Chihuahua, through Guadalajara, into that giant of romance, Mexico City. Breathtaking scenes surrounded me: jungles as wide and lush as any of Africa, snow- capped volcanoes, soaring mountains. Vestiges of the ancients loomed everywhere as pyramidal temples bespeckling the land.
In Mexico City, I changed trains yet again and descended into the Valley of Oaxaca.
I met up with Marco at the instructed location: a small village in the Sierra Madre del Sur Mountains. I will not impart the name of this village for reasons of confidentiality, but I’ve been staying here with Marco and his familia. They do support Zapata, as you might’ve guessed, yet I find nothing menacing about them. This is a community of farmers; all they demand is the right to sow their lands.
The quaintness of the village, as well as the rugged terrain surrounding it, is quite enjoyable. Densely wooded foothills fall away to every side, though much of the land has been tilled for the sake of agriculture. Dirt cart-tracks crisscross the village proper, lined by adobe houses and other shanty-like abodes. Rows of thatched roofs line the goat paths.
On the day of my arrival, I found Marco drinking in the cantina.
My boots were dusty, my bag heavy, as I stepped through the swinging brown doors. It was early in the morning, and I approached the only man wearing a suit, assuming he was Marco. He’d engaged the barkeeper in a conversation concerning Maximilian. I quietly allowed them to finish, then introduced myself. He brightened. He was a tall man with bronze skin, bushy eyebrows, and a straw sombrero on his head.
After a formal recount of my relationship to Francisco, I broached the subject of my visit. Marco smiled, sipping the tequila. “You want to see it?” he said.
“What am I to see?”
He downed his drink, standing up. “The tiny forest, mi amigo, and the tunnel inside the mountain.” He called to the small boy playing marbles outside the cantina. The boy was his son, Fernando.
Marco instructed him to take my bag to the house and bring the two mules. We waited in the sun for his return. When he arrived with the mules, I eagerly mounted one and declared my readiness to depart. Marco laughed, climbing aboard the other. We started into the mountains, Fernando plodding wistfully at our rear.
“I hope you are ready for a ride, señor,” Marco said.
“Indeed I am,” I replied.
We spent the next few hours following a crude path through the vegetation. Swathes of blond grass abutted harsh entanglements of branches, and Marco often alighted from his mule to hack free the passage. It was an odd conglomerate of nature: some trees were oak in appearance, while others were distinctly tropical. Great wooded ravines – barrancas, Marco called them – contrasted the periodic savannah-style flats. The whole mountainous region was a curious mosaic of conditions.
Coming into one of these tree-choked barranca, a tempest of butterflies descended out of the canopy. A kaleidoscopic display of colors whirled around us. Fernando laughed, chasing after the fluttering insects. Sparrows, thrush, and other native birds flitted through the treetops. Lost in that spinning tableau of nature, a silent peace came over me; my senses intensified; my consciousness expanded.
“Here we are,” Marco said.
The wall of trees ended and we emerged into the sun. Awestruck, I dismounted from the mule and took a few quiet steps into the clearing. But this was not a clearing, for there was no absence of trees. Sunlight shone heavily for one simple reason: the trees were dwarfed.
“Japanese black pine,” Marco said, sidestepping out of his mule. “They are bonsai trees. You know the ancient oriental practice of bonsai, no?”
“Well – yes of course I do.” I was half out of my wits. I couldn’t believe the magnificent sight before me. Small trees, hundreds of them, covered a square a
cre of land. Farther back, a traditional Mexican forest resumed. But here, in this concentrated area, the small bonsai grew in great numbers.
It was a paradox. The little I knew of bonsai art suggested it took a good deal of time and was easily botched. And I saw no sign of transplantation. These trees grew naturally out of the soil; some even clung precariously to rocks. Japanese black pine had no business surviving the fickle Mexican climate.
“How is this possible?” I asked as we waded into the trees, careful not to step on them. Fernando had taken his marbles out and was playing with them in the soil.
“Somehow the elements have sustained them,” Marco said. “There is no evidence of replanting or potted growth. And there is no evidence of pruning or clipping. It is a natural occurrence. Whatever her reasons, Mother Nature has selected the dwarfed trees to sprout up here . . . and to survive. I have refrained from contacting the university in Mexico City.”
“What the devil for?”
“Because of this, mi amigo.”
We came to a rising hill crowned with miniature pines. On the face of the hill, a large stone tablet, etched in hieroglyphs, stood out among the rocks. Marco informed me that the relief was Zapotec.
The Zapotec civilization, he said, dates back to the Olmecs, which meant the relief was very old. He was in the process of translating the inscription, but heretofore had deciphered only a single phrase: From the pierce of the flesh, the sorrow of transgression flows. A carving on the bottom of the stone depicted an Indian man slitting his own throat with a dagger. The image sent a queer chill up my spine.
“The slab opens on a tunnel into the mountain,” Marco said. “It leads to a chamber, señor Alston, and in that chamber dwells something I cannot explain.”
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