Letters to Lovecraft

by Jesse Bullington

  You don’t remember any of this, Edwin repeats, finally, after they’ve told him that several times. That seems… no, seriously?

  We don’t, Holly says. Heather snorts.

  It’s a joke, she tells her sister. He’s making it up. She gestures at the articles Edwin’s been showing them, the documents, the photos. Not the getting lost in the woods part, obviously — we could’ve blocked it out, trauma, all that. Just… everything else.

  Why would I lie? Edwin demands.

  Another snort. Why wouldn’t you?

  What the file says is that when Holly and Heather were nine years old — Edwin was seven then, odd man out since birth — they disappeared for roughly three days, seventy-one-and-a-half hours, after having “gone for a walk” one afternoon. That they were found in a clearing, one the adults searching for them had already covered, marking it off their maps a good thirty-five hours earlier: dirty, unconscious, mildly wounded (scrapes, bruising, a long scratch down Holly’s cheek, which may have created that faint scar she’s never known how she got) and starving. Having lost so much weight, in fact, that it almost seemed they’d been gone for far longer.

  What Edwin says, however…

  You used to play the game, all the time. You’d never let me play. It was something you made up one day, passing the paper back and forth, like you were writing a story together. Words just appearing in your heads, like you were being told them.

  Oh, you are so full of —

  You said it opened a door to somewhere, Edwin goes on, undaunted; probably gives him immense pleasure just to say it out loud, after all this time. Someplace that scared you, but you kept on going back again and again, probably because it did scare you. And I wanted to go too, ’cause I wanted to do everything you did, but you told me it wasn’t a good place to go. Said if I did, they’d know I wasn’t supposed to be there, and they’d get me.

  “They” who?

  How’m I supposed to know? He looks down at the table, taps the closest headline: GIRLS RECOVERED UNHARMED. This is where you did it, right here, where they found you. Not at first — used to be you’d go upstairs, into the attic, till you caught me sneaking up after. That was when you took it outside, into the woods, up past the old table. Up over the rock, with that clump of three trees.

  Holly shakes her head. Okay, Ed, Christ. That’s more than enough.

  I’ll show you. You think I can’t? Take you right fucking there. Been there enough times, since.

  Sure you will, Heather mocks. The scary place in the woods! The door! Fucking Narnia.

  Holly laughs. Fucking Elidor, sounds like.

  They grin at each other. Edwin sit there sullen, arms crossed — twice as big, not that that counts for much. Bent in on himself like he’s already eaten so much of his own rage, over the years, it’s gestating inside him; has to hug himself hard, or it might break free and flop out, spraying everywhere.

  You two, he says, to no one in particular.

  ♦

  None of them will be able to remember how they got there, later on. Just that they’re suddenly standing there, bundled to the eyes, breath puffing out like steam, rising ghostly into the black, black sky. The clouds hang heavy except where they gap here and there, wind torn. Through these few rips, patches white with numberless stars can be glimpsed, finally freed to reveal themselves now that the city’s light pollution’s been peeled away by cold and distance — sharp, small, glinting bright. Pins, velvet set. Weasels’ teeth.

  Three trees and a dip, a crevice full of dirt and leaves where two rocks meet underground, grinding against each other. Frost on the bark, odd speckles of snow. A ferocious lack of light, so deep it almost becomes a fourth presence, pooling between them in that triangle, that inverted chalice.

  Here we are, Edwin tells them, unnecessarily, as Holly feels the hair on her neck — hood hidden though it might be — start to lift.

  This is bad, Heather says, equally unnecessarily. This is…

  (fucking terrifying)

  And they don’t even have to look at each other, don’t have to say it at all: don’t know why, could care less, but they just can’t stay. Wild horses couldn’t keep them here one single moment longer, let alone their stupid-ass “little” brother, whatever goddamn game he’s playing — there’s nothing to be done but turn, grab hands, and run, run and keep on running. Back down the path, ’round the rock, past the table. Back to the house, the warmth, the light.

  … the worst place on Earth, Holly thinks, as Edwin falls behind, startled by the sudden swiftness of their mutual retreat; he’s yelling something after them now, but the wind has it, snatches it from his lips like a great, black, invisible hand. And they’re long gone, anyhow.

  Back at the house, they fall into bed, clutching each other, hearts hammering. Every breath seems to shake the world, drawn and let go in a shudder. There’s no way they’ll fall asleep, not tonight — maybe not ever again, if they can’t get back to Toronto fast enough, once the sun’s finally up.

  That’s what they think, at any rate. Until, inevitably, they do.

  ♦

  And when Holly wakes up, much later, she’s alone.

  ♦

  Four in the morning, probably. The whole house is cold, dry, empty. Dim, but not exactly dark — there’s light coming from somewhere, all right. Awful light.

  Holly has trouble making herself get up, let alone open the bedroom door, but she does. She has to. And the first thing she hears, stepping out into the hall, is the sound of something crunching underfoot.

  She looks down, squints. Can just make out a trail of objects, leading to the attic stairs.

  Throw each piece down, as you [go there], her mind whispers, unprompted. A trail. Breadcrumbs.

  It’s the stuff from the box, definitely. She doesn’t have to look closer to know it.

  Names in her throat, caught and choking: Heather? … Edwin? But she can’t let them go, physically can’t. Not when who even knows what might be nearby but hidden, all unseen. Might be —

  (watching)

  (listening)

  (waiting)

  Holly swallows, so soft she can barely feel it. Directs her feet along the prescribed path, one reluctant step at a time. And as she follows, tracing the route Heather must surely have set out for her, she finds herself wondering, resentful —

  How could you start without me?

  — and almost freezes in realization’s wake, shockwave rocking her top to toe. Thinking, helpless: Oh God. So I do remember…

  … a bit, something. Not enough.

  Up the stairs, one half at a time, braced tight against any creak, each puzzle piece increasingly leaf- or dirt-encrusted, increasingly deformed, as though they’ve been buried and trodden on since she, Heather, and Edwin first pawed through that stupid box. A curl of formerly purple string lies outside the attic door, question mark–curled, frayed at one end; not cut. Sawed, or bitten through.

  Wind the string around three corners. Wait.

  Her hand is on the door, pushing. It falls open without a sound.

  Inside — still cold, still dim. The light increases. This is where it’s coming from.

  (Of course.)

  The rest of the string, already wound, maps a rough triangle on the floor in front of one wall, the one without a window. Stone piles form corners, three to five stones each, uneven granite eggs, earth-smeared. Somebody (Heather) has obviously already skipped over Words will come. Say them, for which Holly can only be grateful, though she thinks she can almost feel those same words — or similar ones — plucking at the corners of her brain’s folds.

  Let it form was the next instruction, as she recalls. And… it has.

  There’s a door sketched on the wall, six feet by two, complete with lintel and threshold, even a knob. From a distance it looks spray-painted, scratched, its slightly uneven dimensions filled in with greying black, but, as Holly draws closer, she sees it’s actually more incised or even burnt into the plaster. Worn
, like it’s been there for years.

  She and Heather were up here yesterday, though, when the wall was clean. Empty.

  The rest of the list plays itself out as she stands there, not wanting to come any closer. Four final groups of instructions, paragraphed, like so —

  Never knock first. Wait until THEY do.

  Wait again. Until THEY go away.

  Open.

  If it’s That Place, then don’t.

  Them, Holly thinks, over and over, frankly unable not to. That Place. And she stands there not knowing what to do — there’s not exactly a smell, maybe the memory of a smell… like the woods. That place in the woods, the hollow, the three trees. Shadow of leafless branches above, ruin of fallen leaves below.

  (The worst place in the world)

  So she stands, and she doesn’t knock, and she waits. And then, finally — from behind the door, deep under the plaster, or somewhere even further than that — she hears her brother Edwin’s faintly wavering voice reverberate, struggling through, as though the wall’s a skin he’s trapped behind. As though it’s a metaphorical stand-in for the flesh cradle they all once shared, both separately and together; the slightly bulging membrane of their dead mother’s womb, fresh-wrapped in architecture.

  Open the door, man. Holly, I know it’s you, gotta be… just let me back in, please. They’re coming.

  And: THEY, she thinks. Them. That Place.

  (don’t)

  She swallows again, throat scratchy. Manages to ask, at last —

  Is Heather with you?

  A pause. Dunno, Edwin says, finally, before she can convince herself he was never there at all: quieter, faster, growing panic threading through each new word, tightening till they start to ruck. I went in looking for her, found them instead, and now — they’ve seen me, they’re coming. I think they have her… please, Holly, let me the fuck back in! Please!

  Barely a whisper now, but if it was written down, it’d be underlined — four times, maybe five. And Holly knows she should do something, anything, though she isn’t sure what. But…

  Shouldn’t’ve gone, she finds herself thinking, with a dreadful lack of sympathy. Not when you saw where it was. We told you not to.

  And what did we think we were doing, anyway? Playing this game… all of it? Where did we want to go?

  Anyplace, perhaps, so long as it was different. Not that we could have known where we might end up, when we began.

  (A wardrobe, a door in the wall, a blister; a mirror turned window, different on the other side. Three trees, a wood between the worlds. Narnia. Elidor. Charn.)

  We didn’t know, though.

  (No. Of course not. But —)

  — THEY did, I’ll bet.

  And she can’t move, and the light, the smell. So horrible. The very worst. And then —

  — her brother starts to scream, high and thin and anguished, more like an animal than a man. And after he stops, stops short, as though the sound itself snaps in half, there simply are no other noises, just nothing. This deafening silence, where surely there should be noise.

  So: Holly stands there frozen, hand half reaching. And then there’s a grinding noise, plaster dust sifting, spotting the floor like snow. And then…

  … the drawn-on handle begins, very slowly, as if manipulated from the other side…

  … to turn.

  The Horror at Castle of the Cumberland

  Chesya Burke

  “Much of the power of Western horror-lore was undoubtedly due to the hidden but often suspected presence of a hideous cult of nocturnal worshippers whose strange customs — descended from pre-Aryan and pre-agricultural times when a squat race of Mongoloids roved over Europe with their flocks and herds — were rooted in the most revolting fertility-rites of immemorial antiquity.”

  I entered the horror genre a fresh nub, having read many of the classics of horror literature but feeling as if most of it didn’t relate to me in my life. One of the good things about being a newbie is that more experienced writers are quick to tell you the “must read” titles, whether you ask or not. Atop each and every list thrown my way was H. P. Lovecraft. I had not read him, so I quickly picked up everything I could find. I read, with growing trepidation, the descriptions of those things that Lovecraft feared. For me, those fears sounded all too much like… me. Brown people and black people and yellow people, and Jews, Lovecraft believed, would corrupt the good, decent Aryan race.

  Lovecraft, it seemed, feared me and those like me. More importantly, horror (and speculative fiction generally) had built an entire genre around this fear of The Other. The hoard, the zombie, the monster, the fear of anything that isn’t white, pure, and virginal.

  So my question, when confronted with the above quote was: What happens when you’re a member of a corrupt system and you gain the knowledge to resist it, as Lovecraft did? What happens when that system is unopposed, left to continue unchecked, unchallenged? What happens to later generations who refuse to confront it?

  So for this piece I did something that I rarely do; I wrote about white people. A white man. A man who has the choice, as Lovecraft did, to accept or reject the ideologies fed to him by society.

  Understanding society as I do, it is, even for me in writing this, a difficult choice.

  ♦

  Edgar Kay Morrison died for the first time on August 13, 1900. He would die many nights after that, it would seem, always for the same reason. He was an enigma to some; to others, an evil devil sent to bewitch; and still yet, a prophet to most. However, on that night, he was none of those things. He was a seven-year-old boy who thought God had sent his chariots down for him, on the count of him having been such a good boy all his years.

  At least that was what his momma whispered in his ears as he lay there wrenching in pain. The cramps started in his legs two days before, and had quickly taken over his body. That was when Momma sent Papa to get Doc Warner. He would know what to do, she said.

  “Calm yo self, boy. God ain’t gonna set no pain on you, as you cain’t take.” Even as his momma spoke, another cramp seized his body. “Them chariots gonna be worth all this if they get you tonight,” she sounded so sure, but he saw tears rolling down her too-pale cheeks.

  Edgar closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see her this way. He felt guilty. His sister had died just the year before, and his momma had stayed in bed for two weeks. She had cried so much that she said she had run out of tears. He didn’t want her to go through that again.

  The pain — like a lead pipe snapping down on the small of his back — seized him again, and his body contorted; his arms flailing behind him, his head thrown back. He looked for all the world as if he were trying to roll himself up in a big ol’ ball, backward. His fingers were knotted in peculiar shapes, and he couldn’t get them to move.

  “The devil,” his younger brother, David, whispered from somewhere behind his head.

  “Shush up, boy. Now go on over there and get me something to put under his head. Go on now.”

  David watched for another moment, and as Edgar screamed again, he jumped and ran into the other room. He didn’t come back for a full ten minutes, when he did, the only thing he brought with him was the old thick Bible, which was the only thing Momma had gotten from her father when he’d died twenty years before.

  Momma took one look at him and shook her head. “Get… Give me that thing.” She took the Bible from David, and placed it under Edgar’s head. “This here will give you comfort in your time of trouble.” She told him, kissing his hand and touching the Good Book.

  Outside, thick drops of rain hit the crude windowpane that Papa had cut himself just the year before, before Edgar’s sister had died. David went to the window, rubbed the condensation off, and stared out into the night. He was scared. Edgar couldn’t blame him, but what he couldn’t make out was if the boy really thought that he was the devil.

  The wind hit the old wooden shack hard, rattling the whole thing, breaking through the door, and engulfing
the whole room with its power. Momma ran to the door, trying to close it as the rain rushed inside. It covered Edgar’s feet, but he didn’t mind. He relished the coolness of it.

  Late August in Eddyville, Kentucky, often brought thunderstorms and wild winds. Eddyville was a prison town. The Kentucky State Penitentiary dominated everything, and the town completely revolved around the massive stone structure that oversaw the township. Although the prison could be seen from every corner of the city, the stench of town never managed to leave the muddy grounds of the prison. But now Edgar smelled it, the rot of street funk that fed from the normal hardworking people. It was overpowering. It had taken over the room within a few dog seconds. And that was fast because everyone knew that dogs didn’t live as long as people did. The smell was kinda like dead things — lots of dead things — as if they had gotten in under the floorboard and taken up there. Like that coon had back two summers ago. It just lay under there and died. Papa had the hardest time getting that thing out of there.

  But this was worse. Much worse.

  Another seizure overtook him, and he got this feeling all over him. Like something wasn’t right. Like something wasn’t never going to be right, not ever again. He closed his eyes and felt cold; not like the rain had been, but like the coldest night of the coldest winter. Kinda like that, but not really. This was something else, something bad.

  Inside his head something broke. He lay there just knowing Momma had been right, God was coming for him. Somehow, he was all right with that. Sometimes, as Momma said, people weren’t long for this world, which is what she had said to herself about Cilia, his little sister. Maybe this was true for him, too.

  Just then Papa appeared, Doc Warner right behind him. He helped Momma with the door — it took both of them to close it. The wind fought them, but Papa was strong.

  Inside the room, the smell itself seemed to resonate from Edgar, and the doc checked him for wounds that may have gone ’grene. His mother assured the man that he had not been injured.

  “That smell,” the old man said, “it’s not right. Something died.” The doc looked around.