Letters to Lovecraft

by Jesse Bullington

  “Musta got under the house again,” Papa said, “Them damn coons.”

  Lightning struck somewhere outside, which was followed by a loud boom. It was close, too close. It was coming for him. They’ll come for you, the voice in his head said. Some people just are not long for this world.

  His daddy was still pointing toward the floor, as if he were illustrating his point, and, as Edgar looked down, he saw a shadow move across the floor. It was small and almost unnoticeable at first, but, as he watched, it grew bigger, climbing the wall to within a foot from the ceiling. It stood there, still, unmoving, watching. It was only a shadow, but he knew there was something unnatural about it, something wrong. The dark shape grew even larger, getting its strength from the people within the room. From him, Edgar knew. No one else in the room seemed to notice the shadow. This scared him more than anything. There was something there, watching them, but only he knew it. Only he saw it.

  Maybe it had always been there. Maybe he was the one changing. As he thought it, he knew this to be true. He knew somehow that the thing there, above their heads, was somehow eternal, not unnatural at all, but that it was hiding away, in the shadows, watching them, always. It was inevitable. He saw something wild and longing, something deep, a knowledge not afforded to man. He felt like this thing had been there longer than any man, and would be there well after every man had gone. He knew he was getting a glimpse of something forbidden, and, for his part, it would cost him his life.

  He lay back accepting this, the one gift given to the dying, the one truth. He lay there taking that knowledge to what he thought was his death.

  The book beneath his head grew harder with each moment, as if the thick pages were on his head instead of beneath it. He sensed knowledge of not only the being above him, but of other things as well. Big things. Smart things.

  It was the book, it was too heavy. Too big. Too many words; too much knowledge.

  He wiggled his body until his head was no longer on the book, but beside it. He touched it, closing his eyes to finally allow the inevitable to come, but wanting to know the Good Book was near him. In the distance somewhere, he heard his mother gasp, as the doctor told them he didn’t think Edgar would make it too much longer.

  “Not another child of mine,” the woman said to no one but God — or the devil. She said she had given Him all she had to offer, but her son was not for sale. That was how she had put it, “My boy is not for sale.”

  Just at that moment, another great gust pounded on the house, blowing open the doors as they rocked back and forth on their hinges, the house shaking and rattling as if it were coming apart around them. His brother screamed and rolled himself up into a ball right on the floor, holding his knees to his chest. Almost simultaneously, the dark thing dodged at Edgar, and before he could even move, it had seized him. Grabbing a hold of him, mind and soul. Edgar couldn’t see or hear anything going on around him.

  The boy felt a longing so old and deep he couldn’t control his emotions. Inside, he cried and screamed and pleaded, as things he didn’t know or understand fought to control him. It was knowledge too great for any man to bear, he realized. And still yet, he was no man. He tried to move, but his body was no longer his own.

  Suddenly a bright light blinded him, and he could feel it engulfing his heart and soul. It seeped from his pores and into his humble room, in the small shack that he shared with his family. If Edgar had been aware, he would have seen the doc, his father, brother, and even his mother, repel from his dead body as if it were diseased.

  Finally Edgar knew.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, he opened his eyes and fully expected to be sitting at the gates of heaven, surrounded by thousands of Good Books as far as the eyes could see. Instead, he awoke with his mother and father and brother staring at him. His mother’s eyes were red and stained with tears.

  “Woman,” he said, “why are you crying?”

  His papa had always called his momma quick, and this was no different. She looked at him and at the Bible he clutched in his hands — the one she said she couldn’t get him to read within a month of Sundays. “Rabboni?” she asked, quoting what Mary said to Jesus after he had risen. It meant teacher.

  “I have seen the Lord,” Edgar answered. It was the same answer her Savior had given in her precious book.

  ♦

  Edgar hated going into town with his mother anymore. He thought he must hate it almost as much as the woman did herself. She said that it stank from the unclean denizens that roamed the streets where they didn’t belong. There were too many people, too many that did not worship Christ as they should, or not at all. Instead they littered the streets, speaking in dozens of strange tongues, begging for food, needing things that they wanted others to give them after a hard day’s work. Too many people had relocated to Eddyville to be closer to their pathetic family members, criminals serving out long sentences for offences that ranged from petty theft to murder, and everything in between. It was said that a life sentence there was no different from a death sentence. And that sat just fine for most people in those parts, considering they were talking about convicts.

  Edgar, however, had begun to see other things, too. It had been two whole weeks since he had died and come back to life in his humble home while his mother cried on her knees beside him, and now Edgar had changed. The shadows that had appeared that night had not gone away … they had multiplied. The vestiges of the unclean masses of Mongoloid people who walked the streets during the day only fueled the impure nocturnal worshipers feeding from their obscenity and misery, unseen, unknown. They watched him, darting from dark corner to dark corner, mocking him. He’d tried to look away, pretend he hadn’t been awakened to their presence. But he couldn’t; he saw them. And what’s more, he was sure that they knew he saw them, too.

  Edgar was glad that they didn’t have to go into town very often. Most anything they needed they got from the farm, a mule, chickens for eggs and meat, and Betsy the cow for milk. Momma even made lye soap at home, by pouring water over wood ashes. Edgar and his father hunted, rabbits and some deer, but not too often, gunpowder not being something they could grow in the stubbly fields. Tobacco brought in the money, what little there was of it. They’d barter some things. Anything else, they just did without, mostly. Once or twice a year, Momma would shop at the store for a big bag of flour and cornmeal, which would last them half a year or so. She brought him along so that he could carry it for her.

  The dry goods store, Charlie’s, sat just off the main street, opposite the courthouse. Compared to that grand building, the goods store looked like a shack house with one door and one large window, which sat oddly in the frame. It had been broken more times than most people could count, and so Charlie, the owner, had stopped spending extra money on fitted panes, and he’d just tell them to give him whatever they had cheap. Behind the store, the dirt road led to a loading dock of sorts for wagons and dark folk who saw fit to shop there.

  Inside, the store was dark and smelled liked smoked meat. The shadows moved oddly in the corners. They shimmered, getting lighter and darker as Edgar moved through the door of the store, following dutifully behind his mother who fondled her apron too much and carried three dozen brown eggs. His mother walked up to Charlie, who stood behind the counter counting coins. She smiled, but her lips were cracked, dry. She looked too old, too worn.

  “How you do, Mr. Charlie?”

  The man didn’t look up, but nodded toward her direction.

  “I have some eggs for fair trade, sir.”

  “How many?” The man stood up, looked at the woman.

  “Three dozen.”

  He sighed. “The price of flour and cornmeal has gone up to two dollars, that’s not a fair trade.”

  “I…” His mother looked around the store for a moment. “I… I will need a little time to come up with the money, you see.”

  The man looked at her coldly, “Your credit is not as good here as it once was. I cain’t extend y
ou more credit.”

  “I’ll pay it back, Mr. Charlie. I always pay it back.”

  The man looked to the ceiling and then to the floor, sighed again. “Okay. But just the flour and cornmeal. Nothing else.”

  His mother thanked the man and walked toward the back of the store. Edgar watched her go, her back more bent than it had been when she entered.

  A short, muddy colored man and little girl slid open the back barn-like door and stepped inside. The man was dirty, his nails and shoes caked with filth. His daughter was just as grimy, her dull eyes darting back and forth, not focusing on anything or anyone. She had a useless lazy eye.

  They looked wrong. Didn’t belong.

  “What you wont, boy?” Charlie noticed them as soon as they came inside.

  “New shirt.” The man’s English was broken. Wrong.

  “Ain’t got none.”

  The man looked around the store, then pointed to a few white men’s shirts on the shelf toward the back of the store. “One of those. Just fine.”

  “Ain’t got no shirts. Do you have money?” Edgar moved so that he could better see the pair. His mother was somewhere in the back of the store.

  The man stared at Charlie for a while, moved his lips to speak, thought better of it, and grabbed his child’s arm. “Good day.”

  “Oh, no you don’t. I asked you a question. You got money? What you doin’ with money? Where you get it, boy? From me? You stole my money, boy?” The white man was screaming while he grabbed his would-be customer’s grimy overcoat. Several of the people in the store ducked around shelves of canned foods and bagged goods, staring at the wretched man and his plaintive offspring.

  The shop owner began rubbing his hands along the man’s body, searching him. “What you do with it?”

  “Nothing,” the man said calmly, reached, again, for his child.

  People were watching. A white man with a big wide-brim hat walked over and grabbed the dark man, helping Charlie search him. He pulled a few dollar bills from the accused’s pocket and held it up for everyone to see. Then the white man in the hat reached out and slapped the dark one, hard. He almost fell to the floor before he caught himself; his daughter never let go of his hand, and helped him to his feet when his legs wobbled too much for him to stand on his own.

  The girl clutched her father. “Stop it!” Her voice seemed so tiny in that room of shouting men. Suddenly a woman walked up and pushed the little girl to the floor. Her dress flew over her head as she fell, her bloomers showing for everyone to see, and her butt hit the floor hard. She was, it seemed, as pathetic as her father. “Where the rest of my money, boy? Where’s my money?”

  It all happened so quickly. Several people rushed in and stopped Charlie and the other man from hitting the poor slob any more, but his face was already swollen and bloody. The sheriff broke through the crowd, stared at the scene, and sighed, “What happened? What’s going on?”

  Burly white arms were holding on to the beaten man, keeping him on his feet.

  The whole time, the poor fool didn’t say a word. Edgar wondered why he didn’t just offer Charlie the little bit of money he had, and maybe the shopkeeper would let them go.

  The sheriff asked again. “What’s going on here?

  Finally the man spoke, his lip broken in two places: “Just misunderstanding,” he said simply. The shadows scurried around the man’s feet, feeding from his misery.

  His daughter wiped the dirt from her butt and made her way over to him, trailing dots of blood behind her. She was the only movement in the whole store, and it seemed as if everyone was frozen in their spots. Her eyes darted back and forth between the men and her father.

  “I saw him take it,” a voice from the back spoke up. A familiar voice. Edgar’s mother. The woman walked up slowly. He had never noticed how slight she had become, how her limp had worsened since last he noticed, her back a bit more hunched. “I was watchin’ him close when they come in. He took money right off the counter there. I saw it.”

  “There was money right there on the counter, is true.” A small woman from the back ducked around the canned corn. “I’m…I’m sure of it.”

  Edgar thought back to the moment he entered the store. He remembered… There had been coins, no bills… He was sure, they had been on the counter, just as the woman said. And his mother wouldn’t lie. She had been in the back of the store, but maybe she had come back up without him noticing. Why hadn’t he noticed? He had been so busy watching those damn shadows, which had now gathered around the grubby, beaten man and his little girl’s feet. Perhaps, Edgar had been wrong. Perhaps the creatures were not feeding from this man at all. Perhaps, they were a part of him. Perhaps they were a part of them all.

  Edgar nodded. He’d seen them take the money all along. He just hadn’t realized it.

  The sheriff was a big beefy man who didn’t carry a gun — said he didn’t need one — but he carried a wooden ax handle. The hickory was polished to a shine, and smooth and yellow like churned butter. “Y’all sure? You saw these two take that money?”

  Nobody said anything at first.

  “Yes.” Edgar’s mother was sure.

  “Yes.” The small woman was sure.

  “… Yes.” Edgar was sure.

  The thief rubbed the sweat and dirt from his face, reached for his daughter’s hand. The girl grabbed it, clung to her father while the darkness clung just as tightly to their souls.

  The sheriff carted them away, two fewer leeches sucking the lifeblood of natural society.

  ♦

  He began to hear them after that. The treacherous songs of a fallen, squat race of Mongoloids who had once roved the Earth. He knew them now. He heard every formerly muted whisper, every foul threat against humanity within their painful cries.

  Whispers. Whispers.

  He heard them all the time now. They called to him. Filling his head with foul thoughts. Putting doubts in his mind. Making him question all of the things that he knew to be true.

  Rabboni. He was the teacher. The one who could lead others. His mother assured him of this. She knew. He knew.

  But, dear God, the voices. They mocked him.

  He lay in the bed in which he had first died only weeks before, again writhing in pain, again lost to all around him. His mother placed a wet cloth on his forehead, assuring him that “this too shall pass, son.”

  She was so sincere. But the voices in his head made him doubt her, challenge every word. Did it matter if it’d pass, when his pain was so great now? Was this the excuse that you give when you have no answers?

  She touched him again, her hands feeling like rusty nails over his skin. He moved away from her touch. She looked at him, hurt. “Everything happens for a reason. Everything.”

  Yes, mother, but whose reason? Edgar’s thoughts had long been out of his control. His body ached, a painful reminder that he was to suffer as Christ had suffered. Or, he reasoned, a reminder that every word from his mother’s treasured book, every word that lingered in his head like a heavy burden, was written, forged, just like his schoolbooks. And just like his schoolbooks, they taught a specific knowledge.

  The aches in his body would not let up. They had taken over, and it no longer mattered that he could not feel his mother’s touch, that he did not want to feel her hands further corrupt his flesh, and his mind. She had lied to him, deposited secret messages into his head that could not easily be removed. He was not taught to love, as her precious book demanded. He hated. With all of the power that he had within him. He feared. Feared things that he could not see or understand. Knowledge was the enemy of his mother’s teachings, and so she had kept him stupid. Accepted nothing less than his acquiescence.

  “No!” He screamed out in pain. Not the pain of his body, but that of his thoughts that were betraying everything that he had ever known, ever understood. What was there in life if not his understanding of the Good Book?

  And, yet, he knew the Bible now. The words swam around in his brain, mixin
g with the memories of what he had been always been taught.

  Edgar, like the Lord he knew, had been put here to suffer — and suffer, he did. His body twisted and contorted in a way that would never have been possible if he’d had full control over his limbs. Seeing this, his mother said a silent prayer, asking Jesus to protect Edgar, beseeching the Son of God instead of the Lord himself. But somehow they had become one and the same in his head. Or, had they always been so? He could not remember any longer. Could not distinguish his old memories with his new ones, his old understanding of things with these new corrupted thoughts.

  The shadows, they taught him. Who are the least of these? The Mongoloids, the hordes of dark flesh that seek to undermine good society. Where can they be found? He knew the answer. Right outside, in the sewers and gutters where all trash can be found, with the least of these.

  For God shows no partiality. Unless of course man is White — pure.

  Pain gripped him, and he rolled off the hard lumpy mattress onto the harder cold floor. Edgar’s brother David, who had watched on silently, made no move to help him. The boy now scorned Edgar as he did others. His mother rose laboriously to her feet, stared down on her fallen son. He feared for a moment that she could read his mind, see his corrupted thoughts. But she could not. No one knew his vile memories.

  Edgar pulled himself up to his knees, staring into the woman’s eyes, reached out to her. She touched him, and his skin burned under her fingers. He did not pull away, did not reject her. He could not; she was all he had known. How do you reject that which is engrained?

  Edgar turned and looked to the ceiling, imagined white clouds, fluffy, pure. “Why have you forsaken me?”

  The Lord did not answer.

  ♦

  They decided to hang the pair of thieves in the public square outside of the penitentiary the following Saturday, reasoning the daughter was accomplice to her father’s crime. Edgar’s mother got herself dolled up in her best Sunday clothes to attend. She had Edgar and his brother wear their Sundays too. Everyone who had been in the store was to testify before the town; presumably the crooks would confess, but, even if not, they were to be hanged by the neck until dead.