“Beatrice?” Glory ran forward with Archie and pulled her sister back. They quickly moved back into the living room.
“Oh, God,” said Beatrice. “What-who was that?” She was trembling violently.
Glory had an idea, but didn’t say anything.
“Momma, I’m scared.”
“I know, darling. Momma is, too.”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Glory. “Make a run for one of the neighbors’ houses.”
“But there’s someone out there!”
“I know, but—” Glory stopped in mid-sentence when she saw the dark shadow on the cheap white living room curtains. It was the silhouette of a large winged creature.
“What is it?” said Beatrice. She turned, and she and Archie could see what Glory saw. “Oh, my G—”
Just then another flash of lightning cast the black shadow starkly against the curtains, and in the deafening peal of thunder that followed, the living-room window exploded into a million pieces, scattering splinters of glass and wood. They all shielded their eyes and turned away, so it was only in the afterimages, at first, that they saw the thing that leaped in through the yawning hole in the wall. The wind dashed the curtains left and right, obscuring the thing’s face, and it ripped the fabric away from itself with a black claw, revealing not a face, but the eerie absence of one.
Glory stood there wide-eyed, like a stunned animal. No, she thought, no, never, could such a thing exist. If the earth had ended by some calamity that had produced the most horrid abominations, if the gods had played a game of chance to see which of them could most cruelly insult nature, then perhaps this thing could be. He stood there, looking like some huge, freshly killed thing, his coloring an odd, flat, lamp black, and yet his fur gleamed with the sheen of the bestgroomed Angus cattle. There was something oddly noble about him; she could not explain it, but he exuded authority. His bloodred tongue lolled down as he noticed her, undulating like an eel. He hissed at her and slowly approached.
The thing towered over Glory, even at that distance, and he radiated a cloud of foul odor-his hiss, as he stepped closer, sounded like a snake with the throaty undertone of a lion. The sound and the odor overwhelmed her, and Glory felt as if she were falling-she did fall. Down on her knees, she grabbed for the edge of an end table to raise herself and knocked over another one of Beatrice’s overflowing ashtrays. She knew, with an odd certainty, that she was going to die, and the tranquility of this knowledge soothed her. Death awaited her like a safe refuge that the creature could not enter, and a flood of memories from her past began to flash before her as if she were drowning. When she was ten, still a little girl, she’d had nightmares of standing on a high precipice. She would stand there and consider, too rationally, the cost of living versus the cost of dying. She must have been a philosophically minded girl, rather high-minded for a ten-year-old. She knew this to be true, even through the fog of confusion that overwhelmed her at the moment. On that precipice, she had decided to jump because, after all, there was no God, and if she were dead, she would simply cease to be conscious, and she would feel no pain and know no regret-know, in fact, absolutely nothing, as if she had never existed. But just before she stretched her arms out like wings of flesh, she had looked out into the distance—it was the east, and the faint rosy colors of the dawn were touching the horizon. And it was so breathtakingly beautiful, like nothing that could have come from the mind or the hand of man, and she had suddenly felt the kindness of some creative force. Suddenly she had remembered the beauty of the total eclipse of the sun she had seen in Nova Scotia, the calm quiet of the craters of the moon, the myriad colors of the stars that come out at night. She had decided to live then, if only to experience such beauty in order to divine whether some extrahuman power must have created it all. And she had awakened in a cold sweat in her bed, shaking with the lingering terror—not of having nearly leaped to her death, but of having compromised her faith in the absence of God. And now she was on this weird quest with two men who were little more than strangers to her; she had nearly been devoured, in the night, by desert animals that had surrounded their laughable one-wagon train. How the mighty are fallen, she thought. If she hadn’t fallen into hard times, she might have been someone like her sister, but after she lost Gabriel her heart had solidified into rock.
Glory snapped back into herself, too frightened even to scream, the fear frozen like something caught in her throat. She thought she must have drifted off for a while, but the creature had hardly moved. She heard a whimpering sound beside her-Archie. She grabbed him, pulling so hard he lost his balance and tore the candle from her hand as he tried to right himself.
Glory ignored the candle sputtering on the floor and raced blindly down the hallway. Beatrice followed just behind them, the fear moving her though she had no volition of her own.
They crowded into the small bathroom and locked the door behind them. In the flickering darkness, Beatrice finally began sobbing-great gulps of air and loud exhalations that made it impossible to hear anything else. She moved the candle away from her face before she blew it out inadvertently, and she shoved a hamper up under the doorknob and pushed it, jamming it there to barricade them in. Glory glanced around, left and right, undecided, and then she put Archie in the bathtub and began frantically rifling through the drawers. She yelped in pain and quickly drew back her hand—blood was welling up in the long cut along the palm, just beginning to drip. She saw a half-open straight razor in the drawer; she grabbed it with her other hand, unfolded the blade all the way, and turned toward the door.
Everything was dead silent outside. Not a rustle, not a scrape. Glory suddenly felt compelled to open the door to peek out. It was quiet, after all. The thing they saw couldn’t possibly be what she remembered—it was probably some wild dog or something, and it had probably run out of the house by now. She took a tentative step forward and reached for the hamper to pull it away.
Beatrice pulled her back. “Glory!”
As Glory turned to look behind her, a huge, gnarled fist smashed though the bathroom door as if the wood were mere veneer. A long scaly arm thrust through the jagged hole in the door, grabbing for Beatrice as if it could see her. Beatrice pressed herself as far back as she could go, shielding Archie in the bathtub with her back.
Through the hole and just behind the silhouetted creature, Glory saw flames crawling along the wall in the corridor. The candle, she thought. The house is burning down. She had to wrench her eyes away from the flames with an act of will, just in time to see the creature dig its talons into Beatrice’s shoulder and jerk her forward. Beatrice was too frightened even to make a sound; her mouth merely twisted open in a horrible expression. Glory scrambled to her, but there was nothing she could do. Beatrice was pulled up against the door, and the black talons were so forceful there was a sickening sound, and then her clothing and flesh tore away from her shoulder and the pain made her scream.
Glory wedged herself in between her sister and the battered door, and she brought the razor down hard on the creature’s forearm, cutting a deep gash into its reptilian flesh. There was an earsplitting shriek that drowned out Beatrice’s own cries of pain, and the claws opened, letting her fall to the floor in a trail of blood.
Beatrice was already in shock. Glory tried to help her up, but she was a deadweight, and Glory had to struggle with all her might to lift , her sister enough to push her into the tub with Archie.
With the flames growing in intensity behind it, the enraged demon began pounding at the door with its other hand, splintering what wood remained. Glory pushed at the tiny window above the showerhead—it would only swing out partway. “Archie, listen to me. I’m going to put you out the window, and I want you to run as fast as you can to the neighbors and get help, okay?”
Archie sobbed a barely intelligible, “Okay.”
Glory lifted him up and tried to shove him headfirst through the crack just as the creature reduced the last of the door into splinters with one final
blow from its uninjured arm. It was all going to end momentarily. Glory struggled in vain, and she realized that Archie was stuck halfway through the window. Exhausted and in tears, she let his legs go and turned defiantly, razor extended, to face the creature one last time. But to her surprise, it was gone.
She heard a window shattering in the bedroom. Already she could feel the blast of heat coming from the burning house. If they couldn’t get through the bathroom window, they’d have to run down the hallway now, before the flames grew any worse. How was she going to drag Beatrice and make it through the fire? She turned to pull Archie back in, but even as she touched him, he was suddenly yanked out of the window by an unseen force on the outside.
“Archie!” Glory dropped the razor and lifted herself up to the tiny window, expecting to see the hellish, winged creature spiriting her nephew away, but what she saw instead, against the windswept night sky, was Lovecraft awkwardly holding the sobbing boy in his arms. Glory screamed again, this time in relief. She saw Lovecraft cringe.
“Calm yourself, boy,” said Lovecraft, and then to Glory in the matter-of-fact tone she had grown to love, “The cavalry has arrived.”
Still braced in the window frame, Glory turned her head and saw Howard’s form silhouetted heroically in the bathroom doorway, gun in hand, his back to the flames. At that moment he could have been one of his own swashbuckling heroes.
“Come on, Glory. We’ve got to go,” said Howard.
“My sister’s hurt.” Glory gave a quick wave to comfort Archie out side and dropped from the window into the tub.
Howard tucked his pistol in his belt, lifted Beatrice, and threw her over his shoulder. “Follow me now.” He led Glory into the bedroom and out the shattered window into the night, illuminated by the rippling light of the flames that consumed the house.
12
BEATRICE LAY SEDATED and bandaged in a metal-frame bed, her breath heaving regularly, a little wheeze issuing from her nose with each exhalation. Her face appeared drawn, tired, and relaxed the way faces look after a long ordeal. In the cushioned seat at the side of the bed her neighbor, old Mrs. Appleton, sat drowsing, with Archie asleep in her arms.
Glory had just had her cuts and scrapes bandaged downstairs. As she handed Mrs. Appleton the envelope containing the note she had written to Beatrice, she noticed, for some reason, that the paper she had thought white at first was actually a subtle cream color when juxtaposed next. to the bleached white bandages on her hand. “Please give this to Beatrice when she wakes up,” she said. “It explains why I had to leave so suddenly.”
“You really should stay, you know.”
“I know, Mrs. Appleton. I’m very sorry to have appeared out of nowhere like this just to leave her life in a shambles. But I don’t have much choice at the moment, especially if I want her and Archie to be safe.”
“You called the police?”
“It’s better this way, Mrs. Appleton.”
“If you say so, dear.” She took the envelope and slipped it between the two flower vases on the bedside table. “If you say so.”
Glory gently kissed her sleeping sister and her nephew. At the door she paused to look back. White on white on white. Everything white, but no shade was the same as another. A cacophony of white. She turned away and walked slowly down the hall to where Lovecraft and Howard were waiting for her. “Let’s go,” she said. “I’ll be less ready if we wait any longer.”
They took the stairs down to the parking lot in silence and got into the car.
“This may sound rather unfeeling,” Lovecraft said, as Howard pulled out into the street, “but I have been wondering why the Night Gaunt only toyed with you instead of simply killing you outright when it had the opportunity.”
“I don’t know,” Glory answered flatly. “And you’re right—it’s an unfeeling question, you bastard.”
“Then I beg your pardon.”
“You’ve got a lot of pardon to beg. You’re the one who’s gotten all of us into this.”
Lovecraft was silent.
“But I wanted to know, anyway,” Glory said in a moment. “How did you know I was in danger?”
Lovecraft didn’t reply, so it was Howard who answered. “HP had one of them weird visions. I wouldn’t have believed him, but he insisted.”
“Thank you,” said Glory. “You have my pardon.” She leaned forward and kissed Lovecraft on the cheek as Howard watched in the rearview mirror.
Lovecraft quickly turned red, simultaneously embarrassed and touched by Glory’s sincere and natural display of affection and gratitude. He mumbled a reply and turned his face toward the window. “Bob,” he said finally, “it is absolutely urgent that we reach Klarkash-Ton as soon as possible. I have the terrible presentiment that things will go very ill otherwise.”
“Yeah, HP. You and Glory just keep me awake, even if ya have to take turns pinchin’ me. I think we can hit his place in one long shot.”
“Thank you, Bob.”
THE TRAFFIC WAS LIGHT that evening, and by the time they had left the outskirts of Vegas and entered the empty desert, hardly a car was to be seen on the road. They drove on, making small talk, each of them not wanting to bring up the topics that would cause them to ‘ remember their fear or dwell on things unpleasant. Hours passed, and they began to climb the foothills of the range that separated the desert from the California Central Valley.
Howard checked the rearview mirror frequently, anxious that they , were being followed. He was relieved not to see the telltale headlights behind them, but then again, he knew that the odd men would hardly need to use headlights at night. For all he knew, their automobile was as weirdly constructed as the fabric of their suits. Did it even have an engine? Did it roll? Or was it some sort of organic monster that slithered its tire like belly across the pavement in mockery of a car?
Each time he thought of the black-clad men-and they appeared to him unbidden now-what came to Howard’s mind was the image of undertakers in a hearse. But these undertakers did not deal with the mortal bodily remains of a man; they had some greater sinister purpose behind them; they were probably the stealers of the human soul, waiting within a breath’s reach to snatch away a man’s spirit with a puff of air from his lungs. What was the word? The one that meant a sound with a puff of breath? The one that connected the air with speech and the soul? Lovecraft would know it-probably used it in a story recently.
Howard began tapping rhythmically at the wheel, blinking hard to keep awake. Soul, he thought. That’s a synonym for spirit. His father had told him again and again that what Ma needed was to keep her spirits up. The clogging in her lungs wasn’t getting any better, all that fluid and mucus building up. She could hardly breathe at night, and she had to sleep sitting up so high he didn’t see how she could get any rest. She had to stay happy, keep her spirits up, not give up her spirit. His mind was beginning to wander. A spirit was like a soul. A spirit. Aspirate. Aspiration-that was it! What a great word, full of lots of meanings. He had aspirations; he talked with aspirated sounds about his aspirations. He aspired to being the greatest writer of pulp fiction ever to live. A spire, like a tower. A tall, dark, spiral tower reaching up into the stars; a needlethin minaret scraping the belly of heaven. That was an image worth remembering for a Moorish story. A needlethin… and the image of the tower dissolved into a quick glimpse of a long, steel needle protruding from the shaft of what looked like a bicycle pump. An aspirator. That’s what it was-the horrible thing his father was using in his nightmare. His mother lying in bed with that needle jammed through her breast, shriveling as the stuff got sucked out of her clogged lung.
Howard coughed involuntarily and brought himself back to his senses, jerking the wheel quickly back before he swerved. The car was drifting and Lovecraft-damn him-wasn’t doing his job. Howard looked at his companion, who had his head turned outward to gaze out the window at the dim landscape under the moon. He saw the bald dome of a mountain in the distance. “Hey, HP,” he said.
&n
bsp; Lovecraft turned, surprised, blinking those fishy eyes of his. Howard’s momentary anger dissolved. “Now here’s a bit of cheery place-naming,” he said. “We’re passin’ through the Specter Range at the moment, and that hill over there is called Skull Mountain.”
Out in the distance, under patchy clouds through which the blue white light of the moon shone down, Skull Mountain glowed like a bald dome on a thinly haired head. The light above the mountain had an eerie quality to it; it was palpable, hanging over the dome like a mist or a pall of pale smoke. Glory and Lovecraft were both watching the mountain when they heard a dull explosion from the back of the car.
“Bob?”
“Shit!” said Howard, grabbing the wheel more firmly to keep control of the steering. “We just blew out a back tire.”
“Do you have a spare?” said Glory.
“You kiddin’ me?”
“Well, do you?”
“Course I do. What Idiot would go on a road trip Without a spare?” Howard eased the car off to the shoulder and came to a slow stop where the road was at a shallow grade.
“One might have expected Mr. Imanito to have anticipated this and prepared us for it, as well as for other things,” Lovecraft said with mild sarcasm. “I find myself disillusioned with his acute auguries of the future.”
“Pipe down, HP. This ain’t gonna be no fun.” He opened the door and stepped out into the cold night air. “Hey, you two get out. Can’t jack up a car with a passenger inside.”
While Howard popped the trunk and got the spare and the jack out, Lovecraft occupied himself with the other flashlight, making a journal entry with his new pen. “Skull Mountain in the Spectre Range,” he wrote, enjoying the way the nib of his new pen glided over the surface of the paper.
What an appropriate appellation for a domed patch of barren rock in a forsaken landscape! Had I seen this region in the stylized shadings of a relief map, I wager the shapes of the parallel ridges in this range would take on the appearance of ribs jutting out under the wasted flesh
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