Shadows Bend

by David Barbour

  Howard had no quick reply to offer in defense of his accusation. Lovecraft took the silence as victory and stepped back toward Sam and Glory; Howard followed grudgingly, close behind.

  “Bob and I would be glad to provide Miss McKenna with transportation to Vernon if she so desires,” Lovecraft said to Sam.

  Sam gave a broad, toothy smile. “That’s just dandy. Thank you both.”

  “Yes, I really appreciate it,” said Glory. “I can pay you for your trouble.”

  “Nonsense. That will not be necessary. We would not endeavor to assist you for pecuniary gain.” When he turned to gesture politely toward the car, he saw that Howard had already popped the trunk to load the suitcase.

  A few quick good-byes, and they were ready to leave. Glory sat somewhat forlornly in the backseat and gave Thalia one last look. It was hardly a place to feel nostalgic about, but the sight of Sam’s cafe still touched something in her. Just as she turned away, as Howard put the car Into gear and started out onto the road, Sam leaped out of the cafe.

  “Hold on up there a minute!” Sam roared.

  Glory smiled.

  Sam stalked up to the car with a large jar of beef jerky and several cold bottles of Coca-Cola in his hands. He leaned through the passenger window and droppred the items into Lovecraft’s lap. “Something for the road.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” said Howard.

  “Yes…” said Lovecraft, trying to figure out what was in the jar.

  “You are much too kind.”

  “You fellas have a safe trip.” Sam looked back at Glory. An unspoken communication passed between them.

  “Good-bye, Sam,” Glory said with a smile. “I want to thank you again for being a true friend.”

  “Good luck in Las Vegas. Be sure to send me a postcard, now. Let me know how you’re doin’. I’d be lyin’ if I said I won’t worry about you.”

  “I will.”

  As the Chevy pulled away and Thalia disappeared behind them in a cloud of dust, Glory’s last vision was of Sam’s face, the wind blowing his shaggy mane of hair across his eyes.

  6

  GLORY McKENNA SQUINTED in the backseat where the wind from both front windows buffeted her already-unruly hair against her eyes, tangling it into a mass she knew would be agony to comb through. The two men seemed to be holding their annoyance behind a silence so thick she could almost see it-sealing her off in the back behind a layer of soundproof emotional glass as if she were some dignitary in a posh limousine. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and leaned against the seat back, between Howard’s and Lovecraft’s heads, placing her chin over the interlaced fingers of her hands.

  “So,” she said, “where are you fellas going, anyway?”

  Lovecraft continued to stare out of the window. Howard, his neck slick with sweat, swiveled his head to give her a quick sideswipe of a glance.

  “What’s it to ya, anyway? If I was you, I’d be happy to have this ride, Miss.”

  “That was a very chivalrous thing you did back there. What’s your name again? I’m terrible with names.”

  “Robert. Robert E. Howard, the greatest pulp writer that ever lived or will live,” he said, glancing sideways again, but this time at his pale companion.

  “Indeed,” said Lovecraft.

  “Why, I’m sure you are,” said Glory. “What have you written that I might have read?”

  “I doubt you’ve read any of my work,” said Howard. “It ain’t exactly written to the tastes of womenfolk.”

  “I see.”

  “Indeed, some would say that the pulp genre is hardly written even for the tastes of menfolk,” said Lovecraft, “but we who labor in the genre are part of a heroic and mythic tradition that hearkens hack to the earliest epic narratives.”

  “And what’s your name again, honey?”

  “Ahem—” During his momentary pause, Glory could see the back of his left ear begin to turn a bright red. “My name is Howard Phillips Lovecraft. At your service, ma’am.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Glory. “You boys are writers? Do you make it a habit of driving around the country picking fights and rescuing damsels in distress?”

  “Beggin’ your pardon,” said Howard. “But you hardly look like a damsel to me, Miss.”

  “I believe she was being figurative,” said Lovecraft. “It’s hardly appropriate to demean her after our expenditure of energy in her aid.”

  “Well, ain’t you a donkey,” said Howard.

  Lovecraft was silent for a moment, obviously puzzled. “Donkey?” he said.

  “Donkey Oatey.”

  “Donkey Oatey?”

  “That’s right,” said Howard. “Or ain’t you as literate as you say?”

  “Donkey Oatey,” Lovecraft repeated.

  Glory laughed as much at the two peevish men as at the wit “You know that’s what I thought the first time I heard it too.”

  “Excuse me, but what?” said Lovecraft.

  “Slow,” said Howard. “That’s how lizards get when they’re cold. She means Don Quixote, HP. When I was a kid that’s how I heard his name.”

  “This has become a rather circuitous insult,” said Lovecraft.

  “And I don’t need you defending my honor or chastity-or whatever it is you think you’re defending,” said Glory. “And you, Robert E. Howard, greatest living pulp writer, just watch what you insinuate.”

  “Well, Glory is,” said Howard. His foot seemed to grow suddenly heavy on the accelerator pedal, and the brief lurch threw Glory backward into her seat.

  “Insinuate. Sinuous. Sssss. Snake,” said Lovecraft.

  “What did you say, HP?”

  Lovecraft was silent.

  “Robert E. Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” said Glory, looking out of the side window at the dusty landscape blurring by. “You boys are joined at the hip, aren’t you?”

  “What?” they said in unison.

  “Nothing,” said Glory. “Nothing.” It was hardly an auspicious start, even if the ride was only to Vernon. Glory remained silent, and the interior of the car lapsed into the dull, surging roar of the wind. When Lovecraft opened the bottles of cold Coca-Cola and passed them around, he did it without a word.

  LOVECRAFT ROTATED THE stub of his pencil to keep the point from wearing down on one side. He told himself, mentally, that he must remember to buy another pencil at their next stop. A fresh pencil smelling of cedar, the wood resistant to rot and insects. In his cramped script, he was jotting down his most current thoughts, and though he was still on edge from his recent adventure, he felt a calm satisfaction of knowing he had done a good deed. “On detour with Howard,” he wrote. “He continues to steal surreptitious glances at our not-unattractive, or perhaps she is better described as most subtly voluptuous and sensuous, temporary companion. Howard does not believe I notice him, and he continues this transparent charade, though our companion, G, herself, can hardly fail to notice. Perhaps she is encouraging him with her sidelong attentions.”

  “What you writin’ there, HP?”

  “I beg your pardon but it is none of your concern,” said Lovecraft. “You writin’ about me?”

  “It is my journal. An account of my day’s thoughts and activities. You are part of such activity, as you must surely know.”

  “You writin’ about her?”

  Lovecraft closed the pages of his journal quickly over the pencil stub and looked over his shoulder at Glory’s smile.

  “What are you writing about me, HP?” she asked, batting her eye lashes and coyly shrugging her shoulders.

  “Yeah, HP, what are you writin’ about her? Anythin’ you’d care to share with us?”

  “Certainly nothing you’d like to hear,” Lovecraft replied, his voice even more nasal than its usual pitch. He turned back to his journal and, perching on his seat, trying like some peevish child to put himself into the farthest possible front and right corner of the car, he absorbed himself once again in his writing until, after nearly half an hour of silence, he fo
und his eyes growing tired.

  They must be approaching Vernon by now. Perhaps he should take a nap until they arrived. He saw the sign blur by outside the half-open window-VERNON-too fast to make out the number of miles. We must be getting close to Vernon, he thought again; his attention was lapsing with drowsiness, and he found himself reviewing that same thought yet again as if he were trying to make sense of an abstruse passage in some philosophy text. Vernon, he said to himself. Vernon. NoVern. Ca-vern. Cave. He closed his eyes to think more clearly and was suddenly enfolded into the warm comfort of sleep.

  RED STREAMERS OF finest Cathay silk billowing in the wind. A banshee howl over the vast desert, the breath of a god so fierce the flying sand could flay a camel down to its bones in no time. What is this unholy place? Red streamers quieting in the muting breath and now they are no longer silk but hair, human hair, passionately red-glorious. Glory’s hair. She is facing the wind with her arms outstretched, and in her hands she holds the Artifact as if she were offering it to a lover. The wind is still fierce, and yet some irresistible attraction draws her forward, something like the power of scent over an animal in must. Her nostrils flared, her expression intense, her radiant green eyes even more beautiful in their squint, she sniffs at the air and strides forward, her mouth slightly open, her full lips warm with the force of her breath. There is a romantic, almost ethereal, quality to the tableau, and Glory recalls, though it hardly seems possible, the delicate, smooth-skinned models of the Pre-Raphaelites, their soft, creamy innocence, the willowy curve of their naked shoulders, the youthful budding of their half-clothed breasts. But all that innocence waiting to be stripped. Dark potential longing, with full, red lips, to be bared, exposed. Calumnious emotions ready to slip out of their civilized pretenses. Unseemly underbelly, slick and wet with a prurient perspiration. Naked, corpulent pink flesh burning to be touched. Touched by infernal heat.

  Lovecraft’s consciousness could not penetrate this tableau. He tried to push his way into Glory’s thoughts, to insert his own mind into hers, to somehow push her uncontrolled impulses aside with the force of his own will; but it was for naught. Round and round went his consciousness, in and out of touch with Glory’s. He pressed against her, his will rigid with power, until he felt her begin to yield. She let out a yelp of surprise, a cry of pain, and then, suddenly, Lovecraft felt a stab of agony shooting down the ridgepole of his spine, a clawing pain like the sensation of nails raking across his flesh, and the pain moved up and down, faster and faster, pulsing ever more rapidly until it grew white-hot and exploded through his head, leaving him hollow and powerless, full of shame at his failure to stop her. Glory continued to walk forward to that unseen thing, her arms reaching out, beckoning, it seemed, and Lovecraft watched with disgust, though avidly, as she advanced, step by step, toward that unclean and unholy thing just beyond the range of his imagination. To give it the Artifact would be the most unpardonable sin. To surrender to its will would be to demean all of humankind, a sin no one could repent. A sin with no penance, for there would no longer be a God of man to make penance to.

  Her body was wet with perspiration. He could feel its slick, sticky texture in his mind. Unpleasant. Pungent. He felt the odor seep into his olfactory canals, into the caverns of his sinuses, where it clung to the vulnerable tissues, which he knew, with an odd certainty, were a small fragment of his brain making direct contact with the outside world. Suddenly he was preoccupied with this idea-that it was only in smelling something that his brain actually touched the world. Odors, infinitesimal molecular fragments of the thing itself, filling the air like an aura, and the brain poking itself tentatively forth inside the protection of the sinus cavity, most cautiously touching the world. And here, the world, most unpleasant and horrific, and the thought caused his head to fill, rapidly, with a protective mucus. He must eject this intrusion out of his brain, out of his mind, out of his thoughts. The mucus began to flow copiously from his nose, and then, in the fringes of his consciousness, Lovecraft heard Howard’s distant voice say something about Vernon, and he felt himself convulse with a violent sneeze.

  “WHY, BLESS YOU,” said Glory.

  Lovecraft opened his eyes wide and drew back in alarm. The off-white of his jacket was covered with a large yellowish white glob of mucus which he had just ejected from his nose. It was still dripping, but moving as if it were stretching a hesitant tendril down his jacket. He fished for his handkerchief to clean himself, but then he sniffed the air in the car. He was more alert now, the last webs of sleep wiped aside, and it was not dust as he expected. It was something else-the unspeakable fishy odor of Dagon’s degenerate spawn.

  EVEN BY THE TIME they reached Vernon, Lovecraft was ill at ease, and the Artifact felt like a bruise on his side. The images from his dream still lingered with him. He knew they were strong portents to be ignored at his own peril, and yet he was loath to say anything to Glory and Howard because he knew that now, especially with the presence of the woman, Howard would merely ridicule him. He would wait until she was gone to tell him, but then what about her role in the dream? Was it merely symbolic? He wished he had been more attentive in his reading of the dream book by Dr. Freud-it had contained useful insights into the dreaming mind-but he had found the old Jew’s fixation on sex and genitals and bodily functions so distasteful he had put the book aside.

  VERNON. VERNAL. VENEREAL. Veneration. They were there, just past the outskirts of town, and Howard, after Glory’s offer to ask directions for him, had grudgingly pulled over to the curb. Through the open back window, Glory was talking to a passing man, reviewing the turns they would have to make to get to the bus station.

  “Ain’t it a shame,” said Howard, his voice low.

  “And what is this shame?” Lovecraft asked.

  “We’re done with her so soon, HP. She’s a purty woman as you can see.”

  “What are we done with, Bob? Are you imagining what your Conan would do with her? Or perhaps one of your two-fisted Texian roughnecks? Are you so close to confusing fantasy and reality that you’re unable to control your own baser instincts?” Howard widened his eyes at this, and Lovecraft drew back, shocked by his own vehemence.

  “Just pullin’ your leg there, but now I’d say you’re a jealous man, HP. Jealous and righteous like many a red-blooded minister, huh?”

  “I beg to differ.”

  Glory pulled her head back into the car, waving a friendly good-bye to the pedestrian. “A left, a right, a left, and a right,” she said. “I’ll call out the turns when I see the streets. You just drive, okay?”

  Howard tipped his hat and lurched forward, pushing her against the backseat. He followed Glory’s directions without a word, and within a few minutes they had made their way down Juniper Street and Eleventh Street, over the railroad tracks and through the dilapidated part of town to the bus terminal.

  “Well,” said Glory, “I’m so very glad you boys came to my rescue. I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

  “We coulda got here with just one turn,” said Howard, not meeting her eyes. “That bum gave you a runaround.”

  “Well, we’re here, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, I reckon so.”

  “Thank you, boys.” Glory leaned forward and planted a quick kiss on each of their cheeks, and before Lovecraft could offer to unload her bag, she was out, the door shut. And before he could say even a cursory good-bye, Howard gunned the engine and pulled a violent U-turn and accelerated away. Lovecraft craned his neck to look out of the back window. He could sense Howard’s dark mood, and he was loath to say anything at the moment, but something caught his attention, and he waved his left arm at his companion to slow down.

  “Why you flailin’ like a chicken, HP? I can’t hardly see the road.”

  “Slow down or stop.”

  “We’re losin’ time. Gotta get back to the highway.”

  “Stop!”

  Perhaps it was the shrill note in his voice-Howard pulled over and smoothed the car i
nto a halt at the end of a block. “What’s got your goat now, huh?”

  “Look, Bob. See that sedan?”

  Howard could see many sedans, all black, but the one Lovecraft indicated was unmistakable. At first he thought it might be his eyes, and yet any amount of squinting or blinking made no difference there was something about the blackness of the car that made it seem to be devouring the light around it, leaving a subtle aura in its periphery where all colors collided into that unnatural blackness.

  “You see it,” said Lovecraft.

  “Yeah. And you don’t have to say nothin’.”

  In the black sedan sat two figures. Howard found it impossible to think of them as men although they had human silhouettes. The figure in the driver’s seat was more visible than the other; it wore a black suit with tight lapels and, underneath, a white shirt with a black tie. Its face, by all measures, should have been visible, but what Howard saw there was a mask of strangely unfocused features; the only things that stood out, with an ominous clarity, were the two eyes. Odd, Howard thought. He wouldn’t have been surprised if there had been several. Even without corroboration from Lovecraft, he knew that this was the odd man on the bus. There was no mistaking it, no way to confuse these creatures with people, even if they had precisely the same outward appearance.

  The second figure in the car seemed more human for some reason. Howard intuitively knew this was because it had been among people for a longer time, gathering experience, doing the bidding of some ungodly power. The thing sat in the passenger seat exuding a palpable authority, and as Howard’s gaze touched it, it turned its head without seeming to move. Suddenly the shifting features were where the back of its head had been, and it was staring at him through those ghastly clear eyes. Why hadn’t Lovecraft mentioned the eyes?

  “Lovecraft…” Howard began.