“You’re doing the right thing,” said Glory.
Smith looked at her. “I’m sorry, Glory.”
“You’re doing the sensible thing, too,” she added. “Look what happened to my sister-and she wasn’t even involved in this escapade.”
Lovecraft and Howard were silent, and neither tried to urge Smith any further.
“I’m hittin’ the sack,” said Howard. “Somebody’s gotta rest up to drive y’all.”
* * *
THEY WERE SPOOKED by the house now, or perhaps it was that they were afraid of what the proximity of the Necronomicon might do to Glory if they slept inside, as was their first impulse after her possession, but it took only a few moments of debate before they decided to go back out to the compound under the trees. Lovecraft seemed to have no trouble getting back to sleep now that the Artifact was back in his possession, in that now habitual spot in his watch pocket. Howard strode about for a little while until Smith assured him that he would keep watch if necessary.
“Bob, I’m a light sleeper. And I live here, so I’ll do the honors of staying awake for a while and keeping an eye on her.”
“You didn’t sleep so light before.”
“I have forewarning now.”
“Well, I suppose I gotta do what’s sensible, huh?”
“Go on and sleep,” said Glory. “I don’t feel any demons coming on for a while at least.”
Howard gave a sheepish grin that made his face grotesque in the flickering light of the campfire. “Well, good night, y’all.”
“Good night.”
Howard crawled into the sleeping bag on his cot, tossed and turned a few times, and was still.
“You might as well get some sleep, too,” said Glory. “I don’t think I’m going to do too well after what just happened.”
Smith took a blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders. When he sat in one of the camp chairs, he reminded Glory of the old Indian whose story had moved her so deeply. “One could argue that you’re simply trying to get me to sleep because you’re still possessed,” he said.
“Oh, come on, Clark.”
“Well, in any case, I’ll keep you company. We can chat until you get tired. ”
“What I want to do right now is smoke a whole pack of cigarettes, but then when I think about it, it makes me sick to my stomach. I feel like I’m wearing a glove all over my body that’s the wrong size, and it’s full of cotton or something.”
“I’ve never seen a real case of demonic possession before, Glory, but I must say it’s everything I imagined it to be.”
“And you say that so casually, like you see it all the time.”
“I’m tired.”
Glory pulled a chair closer to the fire and sat down, following Smith’s example of covering herself with a blanket. She leaned forward until she could feel the heat of the dying flames on her face.
“Throw in more wood if you like.”
“No, that’s okay. It just makes me feel more solid to feel something against my skin.” She heard a rustling sound, a scraping sound, and then Smith was at her side with his chair. He took the blanket from around her shoulders and then enfolded the two of them with a single blanket, his arm around her shoulder. She leaned her head against the side of his neck.
“Does that feel better?” he asked. “Much.”
“Someone like Madame Blavatsky would say that your auric field was disrupted by the possession. Being in the healing presence of my intact auric field will make you feel more secure. I shall think repairing thoughts to activate the appropriate colors of my auric spectrum. And perhaps I should hum also. ‘Aum’? Or is it ‘Om’?”
“Oh, shut up,” said Glory. “It’s just nice to be hugged.” They laughed quietly, afraid to wake the others.
“Clark?”
“Yes?”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I’m afraid I’m as lost as you are,” he said. “For the longest time, I’ve tried to maintain a Buddhist kind of detachment to the problems of the world, believing everything to be some layer of illusion. But I never would have imagined that imagination and reality would collide like this.”
“If you were me, would you go with them?” ,
“I suppose I’d have little choice.. I can predict what would happen if you went to the authorities with a story of what you’ve been through.”
“I’ve never liked the authorities anyway,” said Glory. She closed her eyes for a moment to feel the faint heat of the fire against her eyelids. “Clark, would you mind if I asked you to touch my skin? With your skin?”
Smith was quiet for a moment, and then he moved his other hand up to stroke her cheek. “How’s that?”
“Mmm. It feels like my body again where you touch me,” she said drowsily. “Touch me all over, Clark.”
“Glory?”
“I know what I said.”
“We can hardly do that here with Bob and HP.”
“How about that moonlight stroll you mentioned earlier?” Glory stood up, leading Smith by the hand. She kept both of them enfolded in the blanket as she walked out of the compound into the clearing, toward the tree line in the east. Away from the fire, their eyes adjusting to the dark, they realized it was later than they had imagined. The sky was already the flat gray of false dawn, and they could see the silhouettes of the trees ahead. Glory took the blanket, folded it in half, and laid it flat on the dew-covered grass. She shivered as she unbuttoned her blouse.
“Glory, are you sure you want to do this?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said. “I’m possessed, Clark.” She laughed sweetly when she saw the look of alarm in his eyes, and she threw her blouse down as she embraced him, to feel the touch of his flesh against hers, to make her feel real again.
Had they been listening attentively, they might have heard a sharp intake of breath, a hard clench of the jaw. From the edge of the compound, Howard crouched behind the trunk of a blue oak, watching them. When he was sure they could not see him, he knelt and crawled to get closer. Birds were already chirping in the still air. Howard drew as close as he dared, and then he parted the blades of grass in front of his eyes and peered through. He was angry, excited, and embarrassed, all in equal measure as he watched their bodies join and unjoin in the cold. He heard the little noises that made him bite his tongue in jealousy.
Their silhouettes were nearly black against the rising sun, and to Howard, still carrying the touch of sleep, Glory’s shape above Smith’s seemed to transform into a sleek sea creature. As she moved up and down to the increasingly intense rhythm of some invisible ocean, she arched backwards and flung her head, cascading her hair behind her like the shadow of spraying water, and the shape of her breasts, as she moved again, arching farther backward, merged together until they formed a single conical triangle like the dorsal fin of a leaping dolphin.
Howard heard the roaring sound of the surf beating against the shore.
His breath caught momentarily, and then he suddenly realized it was only the rush of blood behind his own ears. He shook his head to clear himself of this vision and crawled slowly backward in the wet grass until he was sure they couldn’t see him. Shivering with cold and emotion, he walked quickly back to camp and bundled himself back into his sleeping bag on the cot, pretending he had never left. It was hard, because he was soaked with the cold dew of morning, and he could not get the images he had just seen to leave his mind.
On the other cot, Lovecraft turned over and closed his own eyes to reenter his own pretense of sleep.
AFTER A HASTY BREAKFAST, Howard loaded up the Chevy with a sense of urgency that caused Lovecraft to make a few sharp noises of annoyance. While the two of them argued about what should go in the trunk and what should remain in the backseat, Glory stepped back to Smith. “Clark,” she whispered, “I want to come back. After this is all over and I’ve seen to my sister, I want to come back.”
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Smith replied. “As ever a poet wa
ited for a nymph.”
They only exchanged the briefest of hugs and a lingering friendly kiss, but the air between them held a charge of intense affect. Howard, looking up from the car, did not fail to notice.
“Good-bye,” Glory whispered as she walked back to the car under Howard’s watchful eye.
“Good-bye and Godspeed!” Smith called. He waved at the sedan as it tumbled down the dusty drive back toward the road. Glory waved back through the rear window which glimmered like clear water in the sunlight, and through the passenger’s front window, Lovecraft’s arm flapped a few times like a featherless bird’s wing as the Chevy traversed the ruts and bumps.
It was a clear day, the sky a milky sort of blue. White puffs of cumulus floated like giant, tom cotton balls above the horizon toward the west. But when Smith looked in the direction his friends would be going, he had a certain premonition of foul weather.
As Smith stepped back in through the front door, remembering Glory all voluptuous in the soft moonlight, he sensed something in his. study. He hesitated, wondering if he should run out and try to call back the others, but by then he was at the threshold, and he could see the two dark shapes silhouetted against the window. For a split second, he thought his parents had returned, but then he knew exactly who they were. They were dressed in black, or at least appeared to be on the surface. Their features were indistinct-not obscured in shadow, but shadow itself. To a typical man they might have maintained the illusion of humanness, but to Smith, absorbed in the arcane, they leaked their true and terrible forms: claws, not hands; creased and fleshy wings, not suit lapels. He was struck momentarily by a strong vertigo as he entered their inhuman aura; he expected ill intention, hostility, evil, but what he felt, instead, was an unexpected diplomacy and a distant sense of reverence. It must be the proximity of the book, he thought. They could kill me or do things far worse, and yet they are behaving as if they are in some holy place. He did not know what to do or what to say, so he forced himself to be calm and rational.
“Hello, gentlemen,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
The figures were silent for a long moment, then the one on the left, the one whose black aura extended farther into the alien dimension, replied: “Hello. Gentle. Man. I. Have. Heard. A. Lot. About. You.”
“Really?” said Smith, forcing a smile. Behind him, the door swung shut in a gust of cold wind.
16
WHILE GLORY AND LOVECRAFT DROWSED, Howard drove without a word down from the foothills of Auburn into Sacramento, joining Highway 99 southbound through the Central Valley. He tried to keep his mind focused on the task at hand, a favor that had somehow escalated into an unbelievable quest, but he couldn’t help flashing back, again and again, to the image of Glory and Smith in the meadow. He had to relax his grip on the wheel periodically when he noticed the fingertips of his injured hand turning white.
By noon, as they passed through Fresno, the heat of afternoon had: turned the Chevy into a hotbox. Howard blinked away the stinging , sweat that kept trickling into his eyes and stubbornly drove on, awake only with the strength of his anger and annoyance.
“Bob,” said Lovecraft, unfurling his wrinkled handkerchief, “I myself enjoy this sort of heat, which I imagine is salutory to my cold blood, but perhaps we should pause for some liquid refreshment?”
Howard only glared at the road ahead. “It’ll have to wait.”
Glory roused herself from her semiconscious state and lit a cigarette. In a moment the interior of the car was swirling with smoke blown about from the single open window.
“Put your window down, HP,” Howard said.
Lovecraft grimaced as if it were the smoke that annoyed him, but the wince he gave as he turned the crank was of a different sort of pain. “The heat is pleasant, but I must complain that the smoke causes me to imagine the Inferno.”
“If I can’t have something to drink, I might as well smoke myself totally dry,” said Glory, blowing another large plume. She was quiet for a few moments before she leaned forward and said over Howard’s right shoulder, “I’m guessing you didn’t get my hint. I’m about to mess the backseat here, if you know what I mean.”
Howard said nothing.
Lovecraft looked at Glory, who merely shrugged her shoulders. He turned his gaze back to Howard. “Bob, I believe Miss McKenna is in dire need of a ladies’ room.”
Still, Howard failed to respond. He merely adjusted his grip on the steering wheel and clenched his jaw with a bit more force as the scabs under his bandage broke. Just ahead was a Mohawk gas station with the usual placards and a sign that advertised the cleanliness of their bathrooms. Lovecraft glanced at the gas gauge which, from his angle, read just shy of empty.
“Bob, unless you are operating this automobile on some miracle fuel unbeknownst to the rest of us, I believe we are in dire need of gasoline. From the pressure in my bladder, I wager we will attain an equilibrium of fluids as I dispose of the number of gallons we are likely to need.”
Without a word, Howard suddenly hit the brakes and twisted the wheel, skidding across a patch of gravel, just missing the Mohawk Indian signpost as they slid into the gas station and stopped in a cloud of dust. They were some fifty feet from the pumps. Howard opened his door and got out.
“Then get some gas, dammit,” he said through the open door. He stalked off toward the rest rooms.
Lovecraft slid over into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut, and managed to make it to the pumps after a few alarming grinds from the gearbox. “Hello, there, my fine fellow,” he called to the attendant.
“Honor us with a full tank, if you please. And do not spare your efforts on the various windows.”
“I wasn’t kidding. I’m about ready to burst,” said Glory. “Excuse me.” She stepped out of the car and stretched, brushing her hair back with her fingers, and then she walked in the same direction Howard had taken a few moments earlier.
Lovecraft shut off the ignition and drummed his fingers along the top of the steering wheel. He noticed a dark crust along the top ridge and absentmindedly began to pick at it until he realized it was the blood from the cut on Howard’s hand.
“WOULD YOU MIND terribly explaining to me the purpose of this juvenile behavior? Bob?”
Howard finally erupted. “Damn it, HP. She-She…” He was so upset his words sputtered before he regained enough composure to continue. “She had-she was with him!”
“With whom? To what are you referring?”
“Smith. She-with-had-was with him last night.”
“I see. And for what particular reason does this trouble you so terribly much?”
“Any man worth his salt should be offended by this-this… It’s immoral!”
“Indeed,” said Lovecraft. “Fine words coming from a man who makes his living hawking salacious tales of a thieving barbarian who , frequently beds a bevy of women to whom he is hardly betrothed.”
“Now that ain’t fair, HP! This is the real world we’re in.”
“Indeed. And is it not in this real world that Miss McKenna’s past was known to us? We were well aware of her past… indiscretions long before we arrived at Klarkash-Ton’s cabin, were we not? And if you were gallant enough to offer her the privilege of our company, knowing her moral character, is it not hypocritical of you to be thus offended when her behavior is merely in keeping with what you assumed of her to begin with?”
Howard frowned. “Now you’re soundin’ like a damn lawyer,” he said, markedly calmer. “But I guess you’re right, ain’t ya? If she’s a whore to begin with, why should I get all fired up if she acts like one with Smith?”
“I can safely venture to say that I find her and Clark’s amorous activities even more distasteful than you do, but we have matters far more serious to attend to at present. Agreed?”
Howard had to admit that with all of the incredible happenings they had endured in the past few days, his jealousy was the very least of the problems confronting them. He was suddenly emb
arrassed by the thought, because, until that moment, it would not have occurred to him to think of himself as jealous of Smith and Glory. It would have been easier to keep his feelings in the realm of anger, but now that the idea had become conscious, he was left with an awkwardness he did not enjoy. “You’re right, HP,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Lovecraft tapped the inside of the passenger door twice in an odd gesture of triumph. “Good. Then let me welcome you back to the world of the sane. And I assure you, that as far as I am concerned, there is nothing more to be said about this issue.” He grinned and pantomimed a parched throat. “Now, I believe we could all do with a round of Dr Pepper.”
Howard reached for his wallet but Lovecraft waved his hand, gesturing for him to put it away. “Don’t trouble yourself, Bob. If you see to the automobile’s refreshment, I shall see to ours.”
Howard was at first surprised by his penny-pinching friend’s generosity, but then he realized how much more the gas was costing him. As Lovecraft walked over to the ice box full of sodas by the garage, he called after him, “Hey, HP! You sure you ain’t been possessed?”
Lovecraft looked back in mock indignation as he fished through his trouser pockets for change.
WHEN GLORY RETURNED from the rest room and defiantly opened the passenger door to return to her seat, she found Lovecraft and Howard loitering together at the back bumper, enjoying their bottles of Dr Pepper. She sensed that something had passed; the atmosphere was suddenly relaxed once again between the two men. While the attendant was rather ineffectively squeegeeing the dirty windows’ she joined them.
“Here, Glory,” said Howard, holding an open bottle for her as if it were a peace offering. “We saved you one.”
She hesitated, but then decided to take it in good faith. “Why, thank you kindly, Bob.”
Shadows Bend Page 23