Letters to Lovecraft

by Jesse Bullington

  But the house was secure, and Micah was asleep, wrapped in that heavy, unbreakable teenage-boy sleep that rivalled Suellan’s drugged slumber. Becky just had to wait. Sacrifice the poor old cat and wait for the dawn, figure a solution tomorrow when the sunlight burned away terrors. The rush of adrenaline began to wear off, and, in its place, came the sluggish flow of exhaustion. It crept through her limbs, and she closed her eyes. She sat there in front of the window so long that she began to drowse, head drooping; from somewhere a song seemed to start, at first lulling her, numbing her mind, calming her until she had almost slipped to the bottom of night’s well… but then she realised that the beat was wrong. It wasn’t a lullaby, or a comfort, it was familiar and the memory of it made her shudder and fight, swim up from the darkness and wake.

  The girl had begun, at some point, to sing: a siren song of amphibian longing, a soothing, a calling, a summoning, so low at first that Becky barely heard it. But it had gotten louder, triumphant, and then Becky had recognised it. She wondered if Aidan had fought or simply given in because it was easier than anything else, because the tune had convinced him to go quietly as easily as it had convinced her to let him go.

  Then she heard, quite distinctly, the slap of large bare feet on the linoleum downstairs, the kitchen door being unlocked and thrown open to bang against the wall. She struggled up as if swimming in glue and stared down through the glass, watched as the girl’s smile widened and she opened her arms to the boy covered only by his ratty boxers. Riddle, released, sped back into the house, a streak of frantic flame, passing Micah as he padded into the yard.

  It was only when they’d trudged off into the gloom that Becky found she could move freely again. She took the stairs so fast she almost fell, yelling without hope that Suellan would wake. Sprawling into the kitchen, she hauled open the cutlery drawer, looking through the knives, rejecting each one because none seemed big enough for the task at hand. Then, as she sobbed, she remembered all Buck’s abandoned things, the remnants of him that haunted the house: the golf clubs, the tennis rackets. The speargun, that waited atop the laundry cupboard, where Suellan had stashed it when Becky was smaller and unable to reach, but now… She’d grown just enough that she could jump and tap the handle visible at the edge, just enough to dislodge it; one more jump and it dropped, followed by one — only one! — of the spears. But she didn’t have time to climb up and see if there was another; she had to get out, out, following her brother and the girl. Becky slid that precious bolt into place, just as her father had shown her.

  Outside, the clouds had covered the moon and the stars had dimmed, so she ran in the direction they’d disappeared, guided only by the textures under her bare feet: grass soft then gritty; then small stones, some sharp, some smooth; then coarse sand as she found the path; and finally the shingle itself with all the fine loose particles that made movement so difficult. And it was dark, so very dark, and she couldn’t make out anything in that blackness as she hefted the weight of the gun and felt… not the trigger, but the button, the button of the light Buck had fitted to the weapon. She remembered how proud he’d been when he got it to work. Becky pressed the switch and a weak yellow light leaked. She swept the pitiful circle ahead of her, across the beach until she found them in a huddle halfway to the water, as if the girl couldn’t wait.

  Micah was draped across her knee and left arm; her right steadied his shoulder, while her head bowed over his chest. Sensing the pale wash of light, the girl lifted her face, and Becky saw how full of teeth her mouth was. And her tongue, her long tongue, the tip of it suckered lamprey-like to the boy’s bare torso. Becky screamed, and the girl hissed, dropping Micah to the sand and standing, arms at her sides, the bat-wing sleeves of the dress spread.

  Becky fired. She had the girl dead to rights, and the barb flew straight, but at the last moment she shifted like an eel, and the spear went through the wing of her sleeve… no, not a sleeve, Becky realised.

  Webbing.

  The webbed skin tore and the girl shrieked, flapping the left arm against her side in pain, making the wet hole bigger, bigger. Becky took her gaze from the girl, just for a second, to see if Micah was moving, but she couldn’t tell. Then the girl, the thing, moved faster than Becky would have thought possible and rushed towards her, the uninjured arm striking out and connecting with Becky’s jaw. She saw starbursts against her eyelids, and she wished as hard as she could that she’d had more than one spear.

  Becky dropped the gun, and the light flickered off, and it didn’t matter that she opened her eyes, because clouds had rolled in and the night was pure pitch, and all she knew was that the girl was looming above her, and then the breath whumped out of her as the creature settled on her chest. Then there came the oily sting of something attaching itself, snake-like, to her shoulder, between the neck and the collarbone, and Becky couldn’t believe how much it hurt. She couldn’t believe Micah hadn’t been yelling and screaming when she’d found them, not with this happening to him. She wondered if the girl would just injure her badly, incapacitate her, then make her watch as Micah was taken; wait until her heart, already battered by the loss of Aidan, was broken completely, and only then kill her.

  And Becky could feel something other than blood flowing from her: life and energy were drawn out, replaced by pure anguish, because she knew she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  Then, as despair settled on her, heavy as the girl herself, the clouds were caught by a new wind, and pulled apart. The moon and the stars were revealed in all their shocking brightness, lighting up the stage of sand and sea as if it was an open-air theatre, and the girl, her tongue releasing Becky and falling limply away, froze.

  Becky twisted, finding the girl easy to throw off. She half-scrambled, half-crawled towards Micah but, realising the beach was brighter than it should have been, she glanced around. A shape, in the form of a young man, drifted over the waves and the sand, untroubled by salty water or grit, for he floated above both. As he drew closer, Becky recognised him, and whispered a silent apology for ever doubting her mother.

  It was Aidan, drawn home, but Aidan remade, with starlight and moonlight running through him.

  Aidan, but Aidan as if he wore light as a shroud.

  Aidan, but Aidan as if his life, his death, his afterlife were transparent layers. Becky could see the skeleton innermost, then the pale muscle and flesh, then the punctured, suckled-upon skin holding all the marks to show how he’d died, and, finally, the astral radiance that wrapped him all round, and shone from his eyes and his mouth and his nose. His light began to pulse and pulse and pulse.

  And the sight of him, oh! The sight of him made the girl, who’d taken his life so boldly, cower and shrink.

  Becky smiled at her eldest brother, but he didn’t smile back, didn’t seem to see her, just concentrated on the girl, as the shining intensified and then blazed out surely as a solar flare, engulfing everything.

  Becky was blinded for long moments. When she at last blinked away the searing whiteness, was able to focus and remember what had happened, she became aware of a scent: ozone and fried fish. Not far away she saw Micah, sitting up as if waking, rubbing his head. She struggled over, hugged him until he laughed and told her to stop. And they found they were both crying.

  “What happened?” he asked, and she didn’t know how to explain.

  Then she realised that the beach was still lit, though moon and stars were once again hidden by clouds. She turned and found Aidan, hanging in the air a few feet from them. She wondered if he would fade, disappear, his work done, his siblings saved. But though they stared for a long minute, then another, then another and another, their brother, transparent and luminescent, remained in place.

  Becky didn’t know what was worse: having sacrificed him, or having him back. The remorse that made its home inside her welled up and stuck in her throat. Did he know? Did Aidan know what she’d done? What was he, now? Swallowing, she made a decision, and, with halting steps, Becky approached. She re
ached out and took Aidan’s hand, which was as fragile and airy, as cold and sharp, as she imagined starlight to be. She tugged at him, and he floated along beside her. Micah stood, watching, waiting, afraid to touch.

  “What do we do?” he asked, and Becky shrugged.

  “Tell Mama she was right.”

  That Place

  Gemma Files

  “Because we remember pain and the menace of death more vividly than pleasure, and because our feelings toward the beneficent aspects of the unknown have from the first been captured and formalised by conventional religious rituals, it has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore. This tendency, too, is naturally enhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities. When to this sense of fear and evil the inevitable fascination of wonder and curiosity is superadded, there is born a composite body of keen emotion and imaginative provocation whose vitality must of necessity endure as long as the human race itself. Children will always be afraid of the dark, and men with minds sensitive to hereditary impulse will always tremble at the thought of the hidden and fathomless worlds of strange life which may pulsate in the gulfs beyond the stars, or press hideously upon our own globe in unholy dimensions which only the dead and the moonstruck can glimpse.”

  Like any kid who grew up on C. S. Lewis (my favourite was The Magician’s Nephew), I’ve always wanted to write something involving a portal universe, one of those stories where people stumble sidelong and end up somewhere completely different, awful in the oldest sense of the word. For me, Caitlin R. Kiernan’s “Onion” sets the standard, though I also mention Elidor, by Alan Garner, in the text, because its mixture of numinous terror and gritty realism has stayed with me since only slightly after my initial tour through Narnia, leaving me with a lingering fear of looking through front door mail slots. As for how the Lovecraft quote ties in, meanwhile — why it suggested to me that this might well be the time to act on these impulses — I think it’d have to be the line in which Lovecraft says, “[I]t has fallen to the lot of the darker and more maleficent side of cosmic mystery to figure chiefly in our popular supernatural folklore. This tendency, too, is naturally enhanced by the fact that uncertainty and danger are always closely allied; thus making any kind of an unknown world a world of peril and evil possibilities.” Stay out of that wardrobe, kids.

  ♦

  So say two sisters finally come back home, after their parents die — twins. Their names are Holly and Heather. They have a younger brother, Edwin, whom they haven’t seen for some time. Estrangement’s grown up between them all, for no apparently good reason. It’s sad, but these things happen.

  Holly and Heather attend university in Toronto. They also room together, because why not? They’ve always been like that. They can’t ever remember being apart.

  Edwin never went to university. He finished high school, then trained as an auto mechanic, so he works all year round. He does most of his calls along the rural routes of northern Ontario, circling the area where they used to live, in Lake of the North District; his specialty is extending the life of trucks and four-wheelers, fighting planned obsolescence on behalf of people who can’t afford to trade up. Distance is an issue, up there. If you can’t drive, you can’t do much of anything.

  One night Holly gets a call — it’s Edwin. Mom and Dad are gone, he says. Accident, out near Overdeere. Black ice pile-up. You need to come into town to hear the will read, then muck out the house with me.

  The girls know this isn’t going to be easy, either way; it’s not like their parents were hoarders, as such, but they did tend not to ever get rid of anything. There’s a lot of stuff to appraise, most of it probably worthless, except on an emotional level. But it’s got to be done.

  We’ll live there while we do it, Heather decides. Go up just after midterms, spend a few weeks. It won’t take longer than that. Not if we don’t let it.

  “Town” is Chaste, up past Your Lips, almost to God’s Ear. Five traffic lights, a church, a school, a gas station strip mall, and a clinic that does double duty for Quarry Argent. Around it, there’s a network of small farms, plus acres of uncut woodlots. Cabin-style houses here and there, like the one they grew up in. It took thirty minutes to drive to the town limits, then twenty more to walk in, so days started early, up before dawn. Insects singing in summer, dark and cold and silent all winter.

  Hope the fireplace still works, Heather says.

  Funeral’s already happened: cremation. The lawyer’s office is in the strip mall, right next to a hardware store. Edwin’s waiting outside, their parents’ shared urn under one arm. The reading’s brief — three-way split. The lawyer suggests they sell the house as soon as possible, and they agree, once it’s cleared out. They sign, initial, and drive up, Edwin leading the way.

  The house looks the same

  The house smells the same.

  The air is full of dust, already. It hasn’t been that long. Does this happen, when people die? Does dust just fill the air, like you’re breathing in their ashes?

  Edwin puts the urn on the mantel above the dusty fireplace. I was thinking we could scatter them in the garden, he says, but we’ll have to wait for spring. Too cold, right now. Earth’s frozen.

  Yes, Holly agrees, while Heather says nothing.

  She’s looking at the urn, its dull silver curve. Thinking she can almost see something reflected there, besides them, but unsure of what.

  ♦

  So say they work all the rest of that day, as the light slowly dims. Outside, overhead, grey clouds scud a mackerel sky. Inside, Edwin, Heather, and Holly are going through closets, pulling out drawers, looking under sinks and poking around cabinets, finding spaces they barely remember existing. Every inch of secret room packed tight with boxes, bags, piles of paper. It’s amazing what stacks up.

  Why would they keep all this? Heather asks, amazed.

  Edwin shrugs. Why wouldn’t they?

  It’s a valid question.

  Upstairs, under the bed in their parents’ room, they find the box. It’s plain cardboard, with both their names written on it: Holly & Heather, 1995. When Holly opens it, it makes an odd little sound, like a sigh.

  It contains a collection of seemingly random objects, some broken and melted, all discoloured, as though exposed to bright sunlight for long periods of time before being stored. Some sort of tin, slightly flattened; a necklace with two clear, cracked plastic beads; a handful of shells and stones, still crusted with dirt. A doll’s hairbrush. A stiff gilt ribbon. And also two folded sheets of paper, worn along their creases, like they’ve been kept inside a wallet. Opened, these turn out to be covered in rambly, vaguely familiar writing, too large for an adult’s… Holly think it’s hers. Heather thinks so, too.

  Go there, the top of the first one says. Throw each piece down, as you do. A trail. Breadcrumbs.

  Wind the string (and there is string, Heather sees now. It used to be purple) around three corners. Wait.

  Words will come. Say them.

  Let it form.

  Never knock first. Wait until THEY do.

  Wait again. Until THEY go away.

  Open.

  And on the second page, nothing but this — a warning, one can only assume:

  If it’s That Place, then don’t.

  The don’t is underlined, three times.

  They all three examine the box and its contents for some time, Edwin watching his sisters, as though waiting for them to speak. Eventually, Holly asks: What is this?

  I don’t know, Heather replies. Some kind of game?

  We made this, though. And I don’t remember…

  … ever playing anything like this? Me either.

  Those rules are crazy. It’s like we were high when we wrote them.

  Heather shakes her head. That’s how you wrote till you were ten. Unless you were doing stuff
you never told me about,“high” didn’t come into it.

  But you must’ve been there too.

  Been where when? When this got made? I don’t —

  Holly turns the box lid over again, pointing out: Not the rules, no, but this here — that’s not just labelling. That’s our names, the way we used to sign them. Mine, and yours, too. See?

  Yeah, sure. Like you say, though… I don’t remember.

  There’s a snort, then; a swallowed laugh, curt and ugly. It comes from Edwin, who they turn to look at, as one. He raises his eyebrows.

  Seriously? is all he says.

  ♦

  An hour later, they’re sitting at the kitchen table with a gas lantern turned up high and a whole sheaf of crumbly newsprint spread out in front of them. Edwin took the file from a drawer in their Dad’s desk in the icy little add-on office he built out back when the girls were eleven, looking out onto the not-so-distant fringe of almost all-conifer woods. Now that most of the leaves have fallen except for the evergreens, you can just make out a pale little smudge halfway up the sloping rock face that marks where they once set up a wooden card table and used it for shelter, sitting beside each other under its shade, staring down at the house from up high. It was blue once, but age and weather have chewed its planks almost bare.