Shadows Bend

by David Barbour

  “No,” said Glory. “I’m pleasantly surprised, actually.”

  “So what do you think?” asked Smith, feeling slightly uncomfortable despite himself. “Do you know that you happen to be in the same house as the Three Musketeers of Weird Tales? Three of the finest writers of the pulp genre ever to live? I’m only being partially facetious.”

  “I’ve seen the magazine, but I could never get past the lurid covers,” said Glory.

  “Then how do you know my work?” He rose and poured two glasses of sherry from the decanter he had left on his desk that morning and handed one to Glory, who took it gracefully between her fingertips.

  “English 300,” said Glory. “My Romantic and Lake Poets course junior year. Professor Brismann had us read Coleridge, De Quincey, and then you.”

  “‘Kubla Khan,’ Confessions of an English Opium Eater, and obviously my ‘Hashish Eater’? That’s quite an honor to be placed in such fine company. I’ll have to thank your Professor Brismann.”

  “She didn’t like ‘The Hashish Eater’ all that much. She called it an enjambment of Keats and Coleridge. Her point was that the tradition was getting watered down, but I disagreed. Always thought De Quincey was a windbag and Coleridge… well, I guess ‘Kubla Khan’ was his best mostly because he never finished it.”

  “Or so the story goes.”

  “You’re not an opium addict, are you?”

  In answer to that, Smith took a gulp of sherry. “Should I be taken aback? Or should I explain the long trajectory of poetry dedicated to the idea of dreams and hallucinations? I see myself as growing out of the British influence on Americans like Hawthorne and Poe. I’ve had my sips of absinthe and laudanum, but they could never rule my life the way imagination has.”

  “I envy you.” She quoted a few lines from “The Hashish Eater,” but then recalled something more immediate. “I kiss thy mouth, which has the savour and perfume of fruit made moist with spray from a magic fountain,” she recited, “in the secret paradise that we alone shall find; a paradise whence they that come shall nevermore depart, for the waters thereof are Lethe, and the fruit is the fruit of the tree of Life.”

  She paused. “That’s how the world seems to me sometimes on the brighter days.”

  “For me, at all times. Here’s to the milk of paradise.” He threw back the rest of his sherry, spilling a little on his collar, where it stained the fabric like lipstick. “Tell me,” he said. “How is it that you joined this party?”

  Glory swirled her sherry around in her glass before taking another sip. “Bob rescued me from some ruffians, and then the two of them offered me a ride to Vegas to my sister’s place,” she began. It took a while and a few more glasses of sherry to give Smith all the details of the trip and answer his sometimes pointed questions. “And what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” she asked when she was done. “I would have expected someone like you to be living in San Francisco or Chicago or New York.”

  “This is where I belong,” said Smith. “I find the seclusion does me good, and I would never think of leaving my parents in their old age. The quiet and the physical work suit me, and it allows me to enjoy company like yours.”

  “Oh, you are so shameless.”

  “And you?”

  “I lost my shame a long time ago,” said Glory. When she turned to give him her femme fatale look, Smith was standing behind her on her right side. All she had to do was lean her head back and open her lips to his warm, sherry-soaked kiss.

  The Necronomicon still lay open on the desk.

  IT WASN’T UNTIL nearly dinnertime that Howard and Lovecraft woke from their thick sleep. Each had had restless nightmares, and their rise into consciousness seemed instant and simultaneous, accompanied by an odd thumping sound like the slamming of a door. Fortunately, they recalled nothing of their dreams, their senses overwhelmed by the smell of cooking from Smith’s rustic woodstove.

  By the time they had taken their turns outside in the bathroom and managed, as well as they could, to make themselves presentable, Glory and Smith had prepared dinner in the kitchen. They all sat down to a meal that was unexpectedly formal. Lovecraft couldn’t help but notice the truly awful condition of his rumpled suit, and Howard, accustomed to eating his own improvised meals with his father, felt distinctly awkward. But there were no complaints. The dinner was a simple fare of steak and mashed potatoes with vegetables and garnish, and both Lovecraft and Howard ate ravenously, hardly pausing to make conversation through their full mouths.

  It was after he had eaten that Lovecraft realized that if it were not for him and Howard, the meal might have been a romantic candlelit dinner between Smith and Glory. He had not commented on her change of clothes, but he had hardly failed to notice. Howard was a little less observant, but he, too, could feel the chemistry between Glory and Smith in the air, and he often glowered at Smith from under his brooding brow.

  They all complimented Glory for the meal, and while she prepared coffee, they got down to the business at hand. Lovecraft and Howard, took turns relating the details of their journey, interrupting each other to add details, embellishments, insights. Often they did not fully agree with each other, arguing a point of fact or adding something the other should have noticed. Smith found it a little confusing, particularly because Howard’s style was to narrate the gist of the action while Lovecraft had a tendency to take his time laying the background for the events, often not getting to the point until Howard expressed his impatience. It was altogether unbelievable.

  “If the both of you didn’t look so wretched, I’d believe you were out to hoax me,” said Smith. “I know you’re both storytellers, and I know you have no reason to be making all this up, but it all exceeds the realm of plausibility.”

  “I can corroborate some of what they said,” Glory replied for them. “Half the things I’ve seen I wouldn’t believe, either.”

  Lovecraft added more sugar to his coffee-so much that Smith wondered why his spoon didn’t simply stand upright in the cup. “Since you are suddenly such a skeptic, Clark, let me reveal to you a piece of physical evidence that might sway your opinion in our favor.” He produced his satchel and opened it on the table, and from one of its compartments, he withdrew the Kachina doll.

  Smith held the doll and turned it back and forth in his hands before he passed it to Glory. “Quite interesting,” he said. “I don’t know much about Southwestern Indian lore, so I can’t say much about this doll. Wait a moment.” He left them for a few moments and returned from his study with a small carving, which he placed on the table. It was one that Glory had not seen with the others; she put the Kachina next to it for comparison and heard a sharp intake of breath from both Lovecraft and Howard.

  “My God,” said Howard. “Did HP describe it to you before we came?”

  “No. The image came to me in a dream.” Smith’s carving was only half the size of the Kachina-it was only a bust-but the face bore a startling resemblance to the odd features of the doll. “It’s been my experience that coincidences like this one are meaningful,” he said.

  Lovecraft gulped his coffee. “Bring the book, Clark. I want to see that page you copied for me earlier.”

  Smith excused himself again, and this time he returned with the black-wrapped bundle and unfolded it in the middle of the table, revealing the book, simultaneously filling the entire kitchen with a dank, musty odor they had not noticed earlier. He turned the pages until he reached the symbols he had copied.

  Lovecraft reached gingerly into his watch pocket, producing the Artifact with a slight wince of pain. He placed it on top of the of the open page and there, juxtaposed next to the pictogram, the Artifact began to pulse with its sinister glow. It was bright enough to see even in the diffuse sunlight that illuminated the room.

  “My God,” whispered Glory, involuntarily drawing back.

  Smith did the opposite, reaching for the Artifact until his fingers hovered just above it. There, he changed his mind and let his hand r
est on the open pages of the book instead. “Tell me, HP, what do you suppose all this means? My impulse is to take this as corroboration of the Cthulhu Mythos—to some significant degree.”

  “That is what I also fear. And I wish it were not so. What have you gathered from the Necronomicon, Clark?”

  “I’m afraid my Latin isn’t as good as it should be. I should have studied it more intensely instead of branching off into French and Spanish. It’s written in some odd Latin cipher, and I’ve only managed to unravel little bits and pieces.” He paused to pour himself some more wine, gesturing to Glory to ask if she wanted her glass refilled also, but then, noticing the disapproving glances from the other men, he sat back. “It’s getting rather close in here,” he said. “Why don’t we retire outside to my study, where we can sit under the sky and breathe some fresh air? It’ll be light for a while yet.”

  “Let’s,” said Lovecraft. He reached over and retrieved the Artifact. He was surprised at how warm it felt in his hand-the same temperature as human flesh, he thought.

  Part Two

  KIVA

  14

  Friday 23 August, 1935

  LOADED WITH THEIR SLEEPING BAGS and other gear, they went out of the back door of the cabin. It was only a few dozen yards to the edge of the property, where a fallen blue oak, still tenaciously alive, marked the boundary between the tree line and Smith’s pleasant outdoor compound.

  “I work out here most of the time. Until winter,” said Smith, gesturing toward the small camp he had set up.

  They expected to see the other campers returning any minute to their chairs and their cots. The fire pit was small and cold, but obviously well used, with a coffeepot still perched over the coals. “This is where we’ll be sleeping,” said Smith. “Unless, of course, it happens to rain.”

  The camp chairs were quite comfortable, as Lovecraft immediately ascertained for himself. He glanced around at the table, which Smith had placed strategically so it would be in shade for most of the day; it held a few writing supplies and a couple of books held open and weighed down with small stones. Lovecraft found it difficult to imagine this was the spot from which Smith wrote his stories for Weird Tales.

  Howard put down the sleeping bags. He rattled the box of matches at the rim of the fire pit and poked in the dead coals. “Let’s stoke up some coffee and get on with it,” he said. “What we need is a nice coupl’a jackrabbits drippin’ fat over this. Now that’s my idea of a study.”

  “In true barbarian style, no doubt,” said Smith, laughing.

  “Not a side of beef or the whole carcass of some wild boar?” asked Glory.

  “That would be a tad much for the four of us,” Howard replied, not detecting her sarcasm. “Unless you have an appetite like Red Sonja?”

  Glory frowned.

  “The female counterpart of Conan the barbarian,” said Lovecraft. “Bob, if you’d allow me the cot that isn’t downwind from the fire. I find the odor of smoke on my clothes to be quite annoying.”

  “Sure, HP.”

  Smith put the Necronomicon down on the weathered table. “Now if a couple of you will accompany me to the pantry to bring back some supplies, we’ll be set up for the night before it’s dark.”

  “Y’all go ahead,” said Howard. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “That’s hardly—” Smith began out of habit, but he interrupted himself. “We’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

  “Don’t worry, Clark, I ain’t aimin’ to run off nowhere.”

  As the three headed back toward the cabin, Howard laid his sleeping bag on top of the cot nearest the fire pit. He untied it, rolled it open, and took up the .45 that emerged from its folds. Quickly, like someone being watched, he glanced around before opening the chamber to be sure the bullets were still inside. When he could no longer see the others, he walked the perimeter of the compound, counting his paces for some reason he could not explain to himself. Once, then twice, he quickly spun around to face the tree line as if to surprise someone peeking from behind a tree trunk. He saw nothing, but he could still feel something brooding from the slowly darkening shade in the woods.

  Howard stuck the pistol in his waistband and gathered up some wood for the fire. In a few minutes he had a small but cheery flame going, and even in the daylight, it made him feel more secure. “Damn it,” he said to himself. “I’m spooked like an oldmare.”

  NOT TEN YARDS from the cabin was a shoulder-high mound of earth with rough planks for a roof. Smith led Glory and Lovecraft over and gestured into the pit inside. “It’s our all-purpose pantry,” he said. “One of those mine shafts I was telling you about.” He took hold of the small ladder that slanted into the hole and took the first steps down. He paused. “Aren’t you coming? The ladders don’t look like much, but they’re sturdy, I assure you.”

  Lovecraft felt a sudden sense of vertigo wash over him, and he shivered as it passed. It was a powerful deja vu he felt, accompanied by images of fantastic caverns full of gigantic alien shapes. “Clark, why don’t you and Glory go on down. I shall remain up here if you don’t mind.”

  “What’s the matter, HP?” Glory saw that his complexion had grown even paler than usual, if that was possible.

  “It’s nothing. I simply have a distaste, at the moment, for dark and conclosed spaces.”

  “‘Conclosed?’ “repeated Smith.

  “Did I say that? ‘Conclosed.’ Hmm. I must have enjambed ‘enclosed’ and ‘confined.’ Obviously the workings of my unconscious mood.”

  “I’ll call up if we run into our friend Nyarlathotep,” said Smith. Lovecraft did not look the least bit amused, but he forced a smile.

  Glory waited until Smith was down the ladder and below on the other side of the shaft before she followed. Another ladder went down from the small ledge, zagging the other way, and she suddenly found herself in a chamber ventilated by the chilly air of the mines. She rubbed her arms and shivered despite herself.

  “It stays remarkably cold through the summer,” said Smith. “Here, take some of these.” He handed her an egg and pointed to the remainder on the rough-hewn shelf. “We’ll need some butter, an onion. Whatever else you think we’ll need for omelets in the morning. I’ll get the water.”

  Glory could hear it trickling somewhere, and when her eyes were finally adjusted, she saw the black-surfaced pool. She shivered again. “Does that go all the way down?” she asked.

  “Holds quite a bit, but that part there is only thirty or forty feet deep. We diverted the stream, and I only have to fill it once in a long while.” Smith dipped two tin pails into the pool and lifted them out, each threequarters full. “I’ve already compensated for what gets spilled from the walk back,” he said. He found another pail and handed it to Glory.

  “More water?”

  “No, for the other supplies. You need something in which to carry them. ”

  “Thanks.” Glory put the eggs, the butter, the onion, into the pail.

  She smiled. “Suddenly, I thought of jack and Jill,” she said.

  “The nursery rhyme?”

  ” ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.’ ”

  “Hardly relevant to us,” Smith surmised. “I have two pails here. And we’ve hardly gone up a hill.”

  “I was thinking of the irony of doing the opposite.”

  “And what’s the ironic opposite of losing one’s crown and tumbling after?”

  Glory let out an involuntary giggle.

  “Hullo?” Lovecraft called from above. “What is transpiring down there?”

  “We’re trying to imagine the inversion of broken crowns and tumbling,” Smith called up. “Help the lady up, why don’t you?”

  Glory went up the ladder first, holding her pail out for Lovecraft to take. Smith made two trips with the heavier water pails.

  “I thought I heard voices other than yours,” said Lovecraft, when they were assembled to go back.

  “Just the wind, HP.”

  “That is
also my sincerest hope, Clark.”

  As she started back to the camp, Glory felt compelled to look down into the pit once more. She shivered again before she followed the two men.

  * * *

  FOR HOWARD THE TEXT was utterly unintelligible, and Lovecraft, though Latin had been one of his best subjects in high school, could do no more than make intelligent guesses at the meaning of the ciphers on the pages. So they hovered over Smith’s shoulders like a pair of birds as he ran his fingertips lightly over the text as if to make meaning of it by sensation alone. Watching this procedure from the other side of the table, Glory paced back and forth in boredom until finally she paused to make a suggestion.

  “Wouldn’t this be easier if we read it out loud and tried to figure out the meaning together?”

  “I’m afraid HP and Bob here wouldn’t be much help,” said Smith. “That’s why we came here in the first place,” Howard added. Glory gave a smile that Howard took to be a smirk. “I haven’t been out of college all that long,” she said. “My Latin’s only a bit rusty. Why don’t you let me help?”

  Howard and Lovecraft exchanged a glance over Smith’s head. “Perhaps you could be of service to us by reading the text,” Lovecraft offered. “But even if you had the rudiments to offer us the phonics of the text, I doubt you have the depth of learning to make much of its meaning.”

  “Oh, come on, HP,” said Smith. “My Latin isn’t much better than a good Catholic high-school boy’s. I could use all the help I can get.”

  At this, Howard and Lovecraft shrugged and moved aside, letting Glory take her place at Smith’s side. There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then Howard cleared his throat, and said, “Hey, Smith, ain’t you gonna offer the lady your seat?”

  “I’m sorry. Where are my manners?” Smith stood up and pulled the chair out for Glory with a flourish, and when she had seated herself, he went to the other side of the camp, where he produced a rough-hewn stool from behind a tree.

  Glory began to read: “Nh’we n’it eh! Csu’r oe f’o! Hm-nau tves’ne’ti b’cme oes c’nees yras! F’ro p’noe ple-oe t’dios slvoet’eh p’lta! C’iilo b’ndas ch’hiw ave’hc: non ctede h’tem h’twi t’ran! Hoe dna’to sasu em n’ga om! T’hep r’wo sefo eh’te h’rat t’hes par! Eeta!” And then: