Letters to Lovecraft

by Jesse Bullington

  Unlike many of the others Edward maintained a stolid composure. “They’re not women. They’re trees.”

  Veasey gestured to Will’s trunk. “Want me to?”

  Will couldn’t answer, which Veasey took as a request for help. He easily lifted the idol and threw it onto the growing pile.

  The last of the trees to join the pyre was Wearn’s. Sobs wracked him; snot trickled from his nostrils into his mouth.

  This time there was no ritual. “Thank you, girls,” Lynas said. He threw the first torch onto the pyre of carven trunks.

  The idols screamed. Before, Will had heard only whispers in his mind. This though was a real sound, keening and angry. With a whoosh flames enveloped the stacked trunks. Their shrieks reached a crescendo. Most of the idols burnt where they were. But in a handful of instances, wooden arms and legs cracked forth to separate themselves from the wooden trunks. These trees, perhaps the most loved, crawled toward the circle of men, waving flaming appendages. Veasey and others stepped up with axes, chopping them apart. Will did not see a man who wasn’t yelling or wailing. Even his uncle had dropped to his knees and cried out some unintelligible apology.

  Yellow flames wreathed Will’s idol, Nancy. Her mouth worked up and down as she howled to him for rescue. He stood paralyzed, watching as she burned. Her trunk toppled from the rest and rolled toward the water. Now Will regained his volition and ran to her. He picked up the log, searing the skin of his hands. Vaguely aware of a chorus of shouts, he cried out her name. His fingers blackened. “Nancy,” he said, and hurled her back into the fire. “I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t help it.”

  Lynas pulled him from the circle to treat his hands. His rashness would cost him a month in bandages.

  When all of the logs had been reduced to ashes and charcoal, the group turned for the boats. Dazed, Will followed his uncle.

  “They weren’t persons,” Edward said, not to Will but to himself. “Not persons.”

  The rest of the voyage gave Will ample time to imagine punishments for what they had done, all of them imminent. In every creak of the ship, he heard the coming vengeance of the wood spirits. Or whatever those beings were. At any moment the Dido might come to life and choose to shake itself apart. Or merely steer itself for a shoal, so that all would drown at sea.

  North of Australia, his stomach began to bother him, and he understood that the girls had all placed seeds inside each of them. When they finished germinating, they would burst forth in a shower of viscera and torn flesh, the bodies of the transgressing men their food and soil. From their too-deserving carcasses, a breed of bark-clad demon would emerge.

  Then his gut ailment cleared up.

  Whenever the surveyors left the ship for shore, Will feared that they would not return. The women, migrated into fresh wooden bodies, would be there as ambushing sirens, ready to kill as they had been killed.

  Twenty-three months after its original departure, the Dido docked safely in Portsmouth. Unusually for such a lengthy voyage, only two who left did not come back — both taken by fever long before the island and the sins performed there.

  Will now realized that the wood nymphs had waited till they reached England. The crew would go their separate ways, and then, one night, a letter would arrive telling him that Dr. Lynas had died coughing up leaves, or been found as a patch of viscera in a forest, surrounded by fresh roots. He would contact Wearn, but he would be dead too, and race to find Edward, only to arrive too late. It would start happening at the next new moon. Equally likely, the terror would come for them years later, a decade hence or even more. All that was certain was that the men of the Dido had cursed themselves on that nameless isle, and that a price would sooner or later be exacted from them.

  But none of that ever happened.

  Food from the Clouds

  Molly Tanzer

  “[M]uch of the choicest weird work is unconscious; appearing in memorable fragments scattered through material whose massed effect may be of a very different cast,” wrote H.P. Lovecraft in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature.” How true; after all, when I think of times I’ve been creeped out while reading, Christopher Priest’s The Prestige comes to mind. What so frightened me was a scene absent from the film version, where one of the narrators recollects an encounter with a curious and horrible machine one dark night. Priest’s transmission of the sense of remembered fear experienced by a child was superb, and extremely affecting, especially being so unexpectedly located in a science fantasy novel about rival stage magicians feuding.

  Similarly, I was also unsettled by something I ran across while reading the introduction to Richard Jefferies’s two most famous sentimental pastoral works, The Gamekeeper at Home / The Amateur Poacher, though the quote in question was from another piece of his nature writing, “My Old Village”:

  “No one seems to understand how I got food from the clouds, nor what there was in the night, nor why it is not so good to look at it from out of the window. They turn their faces away from me… perhaps after all I was mistaken, and there never was any such place… and I was never there.”

  For Jefferies, the above terror was over the prospect of being the only man alive who truly appreciated the natural world. Even so, I think his remarks resonate as easily in that context as in that of any number of “Lovecraftian” narrators — and is perhaps all the uncannier for being a dark moment of dread evoked while perusing a nature lover’s remarks on beechnuts and duck hunting…

  ♦

  I never used ferrets until I teamed up with Burderop. Always preferred the snare. When you use a snare, it’s all on you. If you misjudge the width of your loop, or set the wire at the wrong height, it’s your fault — yours alone. If you don’t come home with something for the pot, if those what rely on you are left wanting… carrying that burden by yourself, it makes you strong.

  With a ferret, finicky things, the blame for an empty sack can just as easily lie with them. They’re not obedient like a dog; in fact, they’re more particular than a cat, and without that feline charm that makes you willing to forgive their quirks. Not being pets, really, it’s hard to justify keeping ferrets without tipping your neighbors or landlord to what you do in your hours off — and then there’s the process of getting them to a likely spot for a night’s taking. Stuffing what are essentially half-domesticated weasels into a sack has never been my idea of fun. And while Burderop never minded muzzling them, I found the process of looping twine around their fangs and knotting it behind their ears completely terrifying. I always ended up bitten and scratched, and somehow worrying I’d hurt them.

  But once I’d decided to throw in my lot with Burderop, well, I was already putting my faith in another, wasn’t I? Ferrets seemed like the last thing I should be worried about when I considered everything that could possibly go wrong during the shift from self-reliant entrepreneur to being half of a pair. And wouldn’t you know, that ended up being the case — though to be fair, what happened… it wasn’t her fault.

  ♦

  Before our alliance, Burderop stuck mainly to the ruins of Southwark and the Borough, where the silt washed up by the Thames during the flooding from the comet’s impact all those decades back had helped the trees grow tall and the thick grasses thrive. Those areas by right belonged to the governor of the Old City, but were so diverse, and so overtaken with the kind of wilderness beloved of leveret, culver, and hedgehog, that a legion of game wardens could hardly have kept it secure. Not being a sportsman, the governor employed two.

  Burderop made a fine living selling easily caught game, creatures that lived their lives in peace before they saw the shining red eyes; felt fangs at their neck. Totally respectable. But as for me… I don’t know. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of rabbit. It wasn’t that. And it wasn’t that I was braver. Stupider, maybe. I liked to poach the game what belonged to the families who were wealthy enough to still own private land, but couldn’t afford the move to New London. Something about helping myself to whatever
was being stocked in the sprawling estates built around the once-public green spaces gave me a thrill. But it wasn’t all about brashness. If you knew where to go — and were good at not getting caught — you used to be able to trap practically anything nice to eat inside the Old City. Pheasant, hare, partridge, and peacock thrived alongside all the pigeons and rats. And why shouldn’t they, being cared for more thoughtfully than most people?

  Anyways. It was late November or early December. Cold, nasty, wet, windy, utterly miserable, of course. By then, Burderop and I had been poaching together for… on to ten months, I think, and even with having to handle ferrets, I was enjoying myself. Enjoying how lucrative our partnership had proven, is what I mean. We’d had different beats, as I said, so combining our understanding of what was to be had, and where, and when, vastly increased our take. That spring we’d gathered more eggs than we could sell or easily eat ourselves, which meant pickled eggs, a rare treat. In the summer, we delighted our clientele with young rabbit and all kinds of fish — proper fish, not the scary ones like what come out of the Thames; in the fall, acorn-fed partridge and fat squirrel. I swear, the faces of our district’s public-house regulars looked plumper from the good meals they were getting. They looked… happier. Not having rat ’n’ neeps for your Sunday roast does that for a body. Warmed the heart, like doing charity work. Well, charity work that lines your pockets in the process. So, better, even.

  I looked happier too, I saw, when I came across the odd mirror. I’d lost a bit of the pinched, nervous look one acquires, being alone in the world. Having Burderop around to give me a boost over a wall; a second set of eyes and ears for spotting trouble — it was lovely. More than that, Burderop was fine company, and not hard to look at. I don’t know where she found that country squire’s tailcoat, but she looked well in it, with her hair cropped short as a boy’s, the mismatched Doc Martens, and those tight pants with the subtle clingy stretchiness to them that you can’t find anymore. Those pants… it’s not just that I liked to look. They were clever. A decoy. Even with my wealth of experience with moochers, when I heard from a friend that Burderop and I shared “a mutual interest in the natural world,” I said I couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t hide a thing in those trousers of hers.

  Turns out she’d sewed pockets into the lining of her coat. An old-fashioned trick, but it worked great.

  You really never can tell, can you? After all, when I knew her well enough to relate the story, she laughed and said she’d felt the same about me—save that for her, it had been the assumption I wore far too much tailored tweed to get up to anything illicit.

  “Shows what you know,” I’d replied. We were roasting pigeon wings in the nave of some ruined cathedral to pass the time during a sudden downpour. “It’s the tweedy ones you have to watch out for. The only point to cultivating a proper appearance is deflecting suspicion of villainy.”

  Idyllic, I know. Two young scamps with vim and wit in equal measure, dedicated to the same purpose! We were great. We were better than great. We were unstoppable. The Robin Hood and Little John of poaching. The Burke and Hare of, well, hares. The Plunkett and MacLaine of mooching.

  It couldn’t last.

  I’d picked my favorite beats due to their tricksiness, you see, so, after multiple nearly perfect raids on the urban estates of the Old City’s elite, things, well, they got to feeling too easy. Together, me and Burderop robbed the best game from within St. Pancras, where the Earl of Somers Town employed an unknown number of reputedly ruthless groundskeepers to protect what was his; stolen what we wanted from sprawling, unkempt Ranelagh Gardens, where Lady Walters hosted dinner parties in the ruins of the old Royal Hospital, the highlight of which were allegedly her cook’s famous Fricassee of Poacher. We’d taken from Russell Square Wilds while lights blazed in the Museum Palace, and from the Wreckage of Lincoln’s Inn, close to where the Royal Courts of Justice would try rascals like us, had we been caught.

  And as if we hadn’t already enough feathers in our caps (and in our pockets), we staged a coup, hitting Holland Park and Ladbroke Square in one night, despite it being known that Sir Mark of Newton had trespassers brought before him so he could shoot them himself. Our bravery was rewarded: I came away with pockets full of mushrooms, three ducks, and a goose; Jeffries with a hare in each tail of her tailcoat, as well as what we surmised was an escaped chicken shoved down the front of her shirt. And her sack full of ferrets, sated on blood and sleeping nicely. Yet, as we ambled our way down Hornton to the High Street station (the District line was still working back then), I felt the familiar itch. I was restless. Dissatisfied. Bored.

  I needed something more. Some hint of the former danger. And it wasn’t like I didn’t know what I wanted… I just couldn’t see a way to mention it. Not without starting a row.

  “What?” asked Burderop. I flinched. I’d been thinking too hard. She could always tell when I was thinking. “Surely you’re not disappointed?”

  “Hardly,” I replied, trying to sound jolly.

  “Then what?”

  I shrugged. Carefully. Lots to balance.

  “Out with it, Bottleton.” A quick sidelong glance at her face, all shadowed and sickly under the green light cast by comet-shards stuck into what had been gas lamps showed that she was not going to let me off with a shrug.

  I chose my words carefully, so as not to give offense.

  “Working with you has made this almost too easy,” I said, lightly I hoped. “Where’s the fun in life without a challenge?”

  She sucked her teeth. “Pure privilege, that’s what that is.”

  “Eh?”

  “Eating’s not “fun” when you eat well all the time, maybe. Try subsisting for a few weeks on what you can scare up at the markets. Then tell me if easy takings are boring.”

  I’d bungled it from the start, as usual. Now she looked sour as those little apples we’d gleaned from some nobleman’s orchard a month or so back.

  “I didn’t mean —”

  “Then say what you mean.”

  “Fine.” I inhaled deeply. “Look. We’ve properly sacked this city, haven’t we? Sacked it like… Crusaders. Turks. Whatever you like.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Every spot worth beating, we’ve beaten.”

  “I know one we’ve missed.”

  My spirits rose until she slapped me on the back of the head. Hard.

  “Hey!”

  “What? It’s a spot worth beating.”

  “You’re very clever.” I couldn’t rub where it throbbed due to being so laden down. “All right. Fine. There were two unbeaten sites worth a beating in this city. Now there’s one.”

  I took a few steps before I realized she wasn’t beside me. Turning, I saw her, hands on hips, sack of ferrets gently banging against one thigh.

  “Where,” she said.

  I swallowed. Decided to go for it.

  “There’s one place we haven’t been, and you know it.”

  Realization dawned. I could tell, because she looked like she was about to hit me a second time.

  “You’re a fool,” she said. “There’s no way. No one’s been in there since they walled it in. We’d know!”

  “Come on,” I urged. “Let’s hit Hyde Park.”

  She opened her mouth to speak. I couldn’t tell what she was about to say, and, before she could say it, we heard the distant rumble of an automobile. We’d already tarried too long in an unsafe place, with far too much contraband on our persons should we be rumbled, so we left the matter unsettled. Burderop tugged on the brim of the tweed flat cap she always wore and scurried off into the night. I made haste to our former goal, the Kensington tube stop, alone, as was our usual method when some trouble seemed likely.

  My heart was beating with the exhilaration I so missed as I fled down the steps, tipped the gatekeeper before jumping the jammed turnstile, and slid down the balustrade to the right platform. I knew I had to hit Hyde Park or die of longing. I can’t explain it except… well, it
felt like when you’ve a serious letch for someone. You can fuck around as much as you like and still feel unsatisfied. And I knew that, unlike the times I’d felt like that — all right, I admit it, like with Burderop — I couldn’t just wait this one out.

  ♦

  Turned out I needn’t have worried. Once she realized the depth of my determination, she agreed to come along. Grudgingly. Made me wonder how things might have gone had I been brave enough to bring up the other… though that’s not the kind of thing one wants to experience grudgingly. Anyways, I got an earful of how this adventure was the stupidest idea in the universe, but I was used to getting an earful from her by then, and was too excited about getting my way to really listen.

  I can’t remember when they walled in Hyde Park, just that it’d been done long ago at the behest of its owner. Except that unlike nearly every other estate, which had signs warning about trespassing and family crests plastered all over the place, no one knew who owned Hyde Park.

  And it wasn’t just what had been Hyde Park proper, I should say — the wall encircled a huge area in the center of the city, stretching from the former edge of Kensington Gardens nearly to the Thames, narrowing like a wasp’s waist at Duke of Wellington Place to expand around St. James’s and the Green Park. We just called it Hyde Park for the ease of it.

  It was the single largest private space in the Old City, as well as being the best fortified. And yet, despite this obvious challenge to rogues and mischief makers, I’d never met a soul who’d been inside… or even tried to get in there. Maybe it was the height of the razor wire–topped walls. Or maybe it was the sheer volume of creepy stories about the place. Haunted, infested, that sort of thing. Personally, I suspected it was nothing more than the richest hunting (or poaching) in the city, but I’d heard everything from it being a den of cannibal cultists, mutated from eating comet-dust, to a portal to another world.

  Burderop told me yet another rumor as we crept through the moonlit streets around to what had been Hyde Park Corner, the just-visible ruin of the Apsley House looking like some nobleman’s folly beyond the wall, jutting out perpendicularly from the western corner of the great gate. She said she’d heard a huge chunk of the comet had splintered off during the impact and landed in the center of the Serpentine. The king was keeping it hidden just in case some international tribunal ever successfully challenged England’s exclusive mining contract over what had become the world’s only decent source of renewable energy.