by Joshi, S. T
“What are you doing?”
“This is irrational, but it might be our only chance—on a cheesy TV show I saw once, it claimed that blood can be used as a kind of hurdle—that no metaphysical entity can cross a barrier of blood more than one time. Maybe this will stop Court.”
“That’s ridiculous!” she exclaimed.
“Yeah, I know—too much TV rots your mind. But we’re in a looking-glass world here. At least we can give it a try! It can’t hurt.”
The sounds from the tunnel were louder now.
“He’s coming!” cried Evelyn.
“One last thing—just to be sure.” Philip scooped up a can of gasoline from the closet, splashing it liberally around the area. Pulling Evelyn into a shadowed corner, he crouched down behind several draped sculptures as the trapdoor pushed up and Alex Court emerged.
Court moved to a shelf, picking up a pot of fresh clay. He placed the container on a stool next to the massive sculpture as a shaft of moonlight from the window illumined the bizarre scene. He dipped his fingers into the clay and began filling in the creature’s eyes.
“He’s almost finished!” Evelyn urgently whispered.
“Yeah. Guess the ‘cross the blood line’ thing’s a bunch of crap,” Philip said sheepishly. “Just what I figured.” He tightened his grip on the gun, ready to attack Court.
Suddenly, Court dropped to his knees and began an alien chant: “Zthy’gar … s’Yenob Absorap’th … e … ak’Xerim …”
The figure’s eyes opened as the clay twitched to life. The creature stretched, like a great cat, while Alex Court, in rapt worship, leaned to touch his forehead to the floor.
Appearing suddenly to smell the gasoline, Court snapped his head up, looking feverishly around the room.
Philip leaped forward, brandishing the gun in one hand and his silver cigarette-lighter in the other. He thumbed it to flame and tossed it. The gasoline ignited explosively in a wave of fire as the newly animated creature thrust itself toward Philip and Evelyn.
The huge beast appeared slowed by the flames. Realizing it was engulfed by the fire, the thing went berserk: snatching Alex Court in one of its monstrous appendages, it shook him fiercely. Philip and Evelyn could hear Court’s breaking ribs, his snapping spine, over the roar of the blaze. Court was shrieking in agony as the beast crushed his skull between huge, clawed hands, the pulp of his cranium sizzling in the inferno as it oozed onto the thing’s hands.
Philip and Evelyn ran for the outer door as the creature raged behind them, helpless to escape the flames. Its tremendous bellowing caused the ground to shake as it tried to catch up to them. Looking back, they saw the great creature transforming, its figure becoming deformed, its screams more pitiful as the clay popped, melting and shrinking from the intense heat, revealing the bizarre physiology of the creature’s viscera.
They jumped through the door as the building erupted into a fireball.
* * *
One week later, Philip was on the phone with his publisher, Sanford Evans, again.
“That’s the whole story, so obviously I can’t go ahead with the original manuscript.”
“Sorry to hear that, Dex.”
“Yeah, me too. But … things have changed.”
“I understand,” Evans replied. He sounded discouraged.
“I’ll return the advance.”
“Hey, Dex, let’s not be hasty! Why don’t you write this book instead? Could be a bestseller!”
Philip stared from the window of his Malibu home, his eyes narrowed in thought. A storm was moving in off the water, making the sky dark, portentous. “Could be interesting, I suppose.”
“Damn right, Dex! Besides, what happened after the fire?”
“After they put it out, Sheriff Hartley found Court’s bones and masses of melted clay. Looks like he was sculpting several of these ‘demon’ things, whatever they were … or had tried to before he got it right.”
“And what about the ring, Dex?”
“They found it in the pile of ashes that used to be Alex Court. So, if I do this book, one last thing.” Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Philip could see lightning on the horizon.
“Anything, Dex! You name it! Think we got a real winner here. Name it! More money? A car? What?”
Philip twisted the Osiris Scarab slowly on his ring finger. “Just stop calling me ‘Dex’: I hate it. As I told you—things have changed.”
A CRAZY MISTAKE
NANCY KILPATRICK
WHEN I BEGAN THIS RESEARCH, I HAD NO INTENTION OF TRAVELING down such a dark and horrifying path. In fact, I was in a relatively good frame of mind, enjoying myself in the mildly cynical howbeit jovial manner I once was known for. I had work and all was right with my little world. At least for a while.
Bottom line—and I have to remember this—I’m just a low-level researcher, someone who scans history, mythology, and legend to find interesting bits that movie directors can use in their science fiction, fantasy, and horror films. I’m the person responsible for discovering ancient lore about such stock supernaturals as vampires, werewolves, elves, ghosts, dragons, UFOs, and zombies and digging out a factoid from the collective fantasies of the past that can be spun into something fresh and modern yet still recognizable for a ninety-minute screen-scream aimed mainly at fraternities sharing a kegger with sororities, both cliques hoping to get lucky, cine-grisly playing as romantic background noise.
I have no illusions. My work will never win me a Nobel Prize. I’ll never even win one of the Oscars you don’t see on television that are given behind the scenes because nobody cares about the researcher or research team. My work is silly, pointless in a way. It’s a job, one I try to enjoy, that probably keeps me from losing my mind, or at least I used to enjoy it.
This madness that’s engulfing me now began when I was asked to research early religions for a Tarantino-imitation split story about mummies and space creatures to see if anything in the oldest spirituality humans adopted could be spun into a somewhat believable yarn as back tale for an apocalyptic invasion-from-space film that features desiccated insectoids and half-naked women. “We’re an alien experiment,” the director chirped excitedly, philosophizing from his near-constant inebriated state. At the best of times, he tends to present ideas that have been headlining tabloids and floating through the Internet forever as if he had invented them. “Aliens are big, Kim. Everybody believes they were here before us and have been for a long time. See if you can find the first women they knocked up. You know, the Amazons or something.”
My initial reaction should have been: Kevin, lay off the small-c coke! But of course I said nothing like that. This work is my bread and butter. And with the young and restless clawing at my heels, I’m finding myself not as in-demand as I once was. Hence, my personal script has become stock phrases, something along the lines of: “Yeah, Kev, I know exactly where you’re coming from. I’m sure I can find something you can use.”
And so it went. I had the fat contract and the usual two weeks to find backstory material for what would ultimately be labeled a low-budget waste-of-time turkey that goes straight to Blu-ray and Netflix.
The day I began the research, I realized I had a huge problem on my hands. A quick search on the Net brought up very little, but I did find that not much had been written about the early religions and the women who espoused them, at least not in the easily digestible bytes found virtually. In fact, it seemed humans only started chiseling the details in stone when the patriarchal religion guys took charge.
“So, Franklin,” I asked when I phoned my high-school best-buddy, college boyfriend, now lifelong friend who is working on his third M.A., this one in comparative religions at Miskatonic University in New England, “this is more complicated than I thought.”
“Kim, you have no idea. I don’t even go there. My area of study is the patriarchal religions. Some people don’t even believe there were matriarchies.”
“Do you?”
A typical Franklin
pause, followed by a decidedly oblique answer. “Occasionally an anthropologist will attribute a certain significance to objets d’art in matrifocality without applying undue emphasis on female power-rule.”
“In English …”
“There are social scientists who believe that some prehistory societies might have had women as heads of the society, but the notion of them as power-oriented hasn’t been proven.”
“Thanks. Okay, so they did exist, and you kind of agree that they did. A yes or no answer, please.”
“A qualified yes.”
“What about the Amazons?”
“What about them?”
“Well, they were female rule, right?”
“They were warriors during classical antiquity—around the time of ancient Greece. There’s plenty of information about the Amazons, much of it mythology. But I thought you were looking for early religions.”
“Well, kind of. What do you know about the Amazons?”
And he told me of virgin warrioresses pre-Xena who wouldn’t have anything to do with men until they wanted to breed female children, who cut off their left breasts so they could more easily use a bow and arrow or a spear, who were big and tall and strong and could fight the male of the species the way Kate Beckinsale takes on macho lycans. “They’ve even got their own commemorative genre of art—amazonomoachy.”
After a ten minute lecture, I figured I had enough information that Kev would be thrilled. Especially the virgin part. He seemed to have a penchant for virgins.
Still, I wanted to do a thorough job. Despite being a research hack, I’d always held to a few standards I tried to maintain, just so I could look myself in the mirror the morning after the movie premiered.
“So, I can get a book on the Amazons?”
“Easily. Look in the classical mythology section, or better yet, children’s books in your local bookstore.”
“Snide comments will be overlooked, my friend.”
A Franklin-style guffaw.
“What about the prehistoric matriarchies? Where can I get facts about them.”
“Nowhere.”
“Well, if they existed—”
“They’re assumed to have existed from the pottery and clay figures left behind that predate recorded history.”
“There’s nothing written about them?”
“There are a few books that postulate their existence, based on these finds, and also looking at what we know about early female-based goddess worshipping cultures usurped by aggressive northern patriarchal cultures and their religions conquering, if you will, of the more feminine-based societies and changing the notion of deification by 2400 B.C. For example, the Mesopotamians—a patriarchal culture with male deities invaded Egypt around 3000 B.C. From what we can ascertain, prior to that time, goddesses in goddess-based religions ruled alone, most of the time their son as their lover—”
“Ick!”
“—and gradually through the influence of the patriarchal societies that conquered, over time that young male figure ascended to power while the female’s power declined. That took place in the day-to-day lives of ancient Egyptians too, where the line was previously mother-kinship, going through the females, and women transacted business while men were occupied with weaving and other artistic endeavors. But regarding the gods, we know, for instance, that in ancient Egypt the female deity Au Set—Isis to you and most people—had a son or brother consort, Osiris. By 3000 B.C. Osiris had risen to ruler with Isis identified as his sister whom he married. So, voilà, her position was more or less usurped!”
“Yeah. The glass ceiling of the goddesses. Anyway, what books?”
He gave me a list of a dozen volumes, starting with one published in 1861. Johann Jakob Bachofen authored Mother Right: An Investigation of the Religious and Juridical Character of Matriarchy in the Ancient World. “It’s the bible,” he said.
Although Bachofen’s book had a fair following over the next few generations, Franklin assured me I probably wouldn’t find it for sale. “It’s long out of print, even the modern reprintings, but you might find a used copy if you do a search, and you can surely track it down in the stacks of a university reference library.”
“Which would mean a trip back to the East Coast to see you if I had more than two weeks, which I don’t.”
“Worry not, Kim, I’m busy as the proverbial bee. It isn’t that I wouldn’t love to hang out with you too, but even if you had a month, I’m jammed up with seminars and I’m in the middle of writing my thesis. This phone call is about all the time I can spare.”
“Oh,” I said a bit grumpily. “Well, I guess I can save the airfare!”
“Don’t be petulant. It doesn’t become you. And you know I’d see you in a New York minute if I could.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Franklin. Sometimes I just miss the old days a lot. I miss you.”
Another pause, this one his now-what-do-I-say? hesitation. I’m the one who broke it off; I felt I had to. I’d sculpted him into more father figure and less lover, and I could see I was suffocating him with my unspoken demands that he be the parent that had abandoned my mother and me when I was a child. He had to focus on school. I understood that—at least intellectually. Emotionally, I felt deserted.
One day I packed a suitcase and moved to L.A. I got work in the film business spending my days and nights contributing to the cesspool of cheap B-and-lesser-grade movies for the entertainment of the lowest common denominator, which career move effectively buried my feelings. Franklin’s the one who carried the torch for a long time. Despite that, he forgave me, eventually, and we’ve been best friends since.
“So, those books?” I reminded him. “On matriarchies? What can I get my hands on easily?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a little strained. But he was on familiar turf again and quickly directed me to two specific volumes on the list.
Modern research began with Bachofen, but the newer titles—mainly by women, most written when feminism was first gaining ground in the 1970s—were scholarly enough that they had likely based their good research using the older tomes, saving me the time and energy. I called around and found When God Was a Woman by Merlin Stone at a women’s bookstore in Berkley and had them ship to SoCa via overnight.
“We’re good?” I asked, as I’d ended my conversation with Franklin.
“Always, Kim.”
“Let’s try to get together when you have a break from classes, maybe in the summer.”
“I’d like that. But listen, if you hit a snag, call me. I didn’t mean to sound unavailable to you.”
“I know. Me too with you.”
The book turned out to be a hard slog for me. I was never of an academic bent, and the various names of early female deities and the names of ancient societies began to blur quickly in my mind. Where was Samarra again? Who was this worshipped goddess named Astarte, a.k.a. Inanna, Nut, Anahita, Istar, Attoret, Hathor, and a dozen other names, revered throughout the Middle East that existed in the past? The author traced some of these deities back to carvings from the Neolithic era, 7000 B.C., and some even as far back as 25,000 B.C. and the upper Palaeolithic cultures, and a bit of this early artwork was still extant. These were the figures Franklin told me about, one or two of which I’d seen on the Net, and photographs of which I was now viewing in the book, everything from anorexic stick figures to images that looked as if they needed stomach stapling by today’s standards.
They were fairly similar except for the oldest one, from 25,000 B.C. Try as I might to make sense of this grossly obese figure with what appeared to be a beehive—not her hairdo, her head—I could not. The author described it as an Upper Palaeolithic Venus figure, one of several found throughout Europe and Asia from the same period. The only other image that came vaguely close was one from Anatolia dating much later, 5750 B.C. But the heads of those earliest Venus figures found did not resemble anything human to me, and I couldn’t see a connection to the 3rd century B.C. Roman goddess of love and
beauty and the exquisite images of her that still exist.
I put the book down. Maybe Palaeolithic humans made no connection between what they saw and what they sculpted in clay. But did that seem reasonable? The earliest of the 350 prehistoric cave paintings discovered was radiocarbon-dated from 37,000 B.C., and the animals—99.9 percent of what our ancestors depicted—looked very much like animals that we see today. Still, 12,000 years later, shouldn’t artistry have evolved? Why would this later ‘Venus figure’ with a real beehive be so strangely distorted?
Goddess worship, as the books defined the matriarchal spiritual beliefs, was a natural view back then based on the flesh-and-blood women who existed. Before fecundity and coitus were understood as leading to childbirth, women were seen as the source of life, since only they could give birth and the input of males wasn’t yet known. Also, women were the main source of food production, so they sustained life too.
Despite my lack of academic acumen, I soon became obsessed with prehistoric goddess-worshipping societies and resolved to try to find out more, particularly about the oldest, weirdest images.
I kept the movie research to the Amazons, and Kev was thrilled with just knowing, “They were virgins! Yeah, that’s good, Kim, real good. I can use that.”
The check arrived and was duly cashed and it allowed me to take some time off work. As I stood in line at the bank, a brilliant idea struck: I could spend a few days researching matriarchies! It would be like a mini-vacation. And despite Franklin’s warning to not bother him, I caught a flight east, heading directly to Miskatonic U’s vast research library. I had access to the library through Franklin, when I was still his significant other, and neither of us saw much reason to change overlapping library cards and insurance policies. I didn’t tell him I was coming, though, but he somehow found out and tracked me down in the stacks.
“Kim, what are you doing here? And why didn’t you let me know?”
“You’re busy. I didn’t want to disturb you,” I said, staring sheepishly up at his so-open rosy-cheeked face. I’d always loved his sandy hair and eyes—I found them restful as sandstone sculptures, especially so now after two weeks of not seeing the sun while immersing myself in tomes that weighed more than I did.