Shadows Bend

by David Barbour

  With unsteady fingers, Lovecraft cautiously removed the blinding Artifact from his watch pocket and placed it against the indentation in the stone. The grit of erosion impeded it, so he leaned forward and blew forcefully, clearing the dust. After a fit of sneezing, he tried again, turning it slightly, and it snapped right in, drawn by a magnetic force. Instantly, the sounds of the howling wind above them halted, and their eardrums popped painfully as if they were suddenly transported, for the most fleeting of instants, into the vacuum of deep space. An absolute, deafening silence enveloped them-the true sound of the grave, Lovecraft thought grimly to himself.

  Though Lovecraft held the only source of light perfectly still in his hands the pointed shadow from the outcropping of rock began to tremble. They watched in amazement as it began to stir and then slowly bend, snaking its way across the ceiling over their heads, writhing like a living thing until it finally halted its path near a wall of jagged stone. They had just examined the area minutes before and found nothing, but now, where the shadow rested on the wall, there appeared the mouth of a narrow passageway as if the shadow itself were a hole in the stone.

  They did not wait. They stepped into the tight crevasse and squeezed their way between the walls of stone until they emerged on the other side.

  It was a stone chamber the likes of which they had never seen. Rising above them was a giant vaulted dome covered in swatches of multicolored stone that looked uncannily like Spanish moss. They were standing at the entrance of what could have been the most magnificent cathedral, but this one was underground and everything in it, each and every thing, was stone. In the light of the Artifact, they could see most of the chamber and the odd formations of stalagmites that stood like clusters of giant red and white mushrooms roughly textured like the side of a sperm whale’s head. They were struck silent in their awe, and they began slowly to navigate a path through the stalagmites, following the Artifact’s bright pulse.

  “How will we get back?” Howard whispered when they got to the far side of the chamber. He pointed in the direction they had come to show that there was no sign of how they had entered.

  “The only trick I know is what Theseus used in the Labyrinth,” said Glory.

  Lovecraft opened his satchel and produced a ball of twine and Howard stifled a laugh. “That won’t do us much good, HP. Anyhow, those two odd fellas behind us ain’t likely to leave any string on the ground for our convenience. It’ll just lead them to us.”

  “Only a bit of humor,” said Lovecraft. “The mention of Theseus bodes well for us, though what we face is hardly the Minotaur. I always wondered how large a ball of string he had.”

  “You have another idea?”

  “We will not need to resort to physical measures,” said Lovecraft, putting the twine back. “I will remember the path out, no matter how far in we are likely to go.”

  “Since when were you a caveman, HP?”

  “I cannot explain it now, but I am able to see the cave and our path through it as if I were looking at a map.”

  “Imanito’s sand painting,” said Howard.

  “Yes. I see it clearly in my mind.”

  “Well, then let’s not wait around,” said Glory. “I don’t want to meet our friends down here.”

  Lovecraft moved toward a jagged aperture in the wall of the chamber, and Glory followed.

  “Not so fast,” said Howard.

  “What’s the matter?” Glory asked.

  “I ain’t meanin’ no disrespect here, but what if HP don’t make it back with us?”

  Glory stopped dead in her tracks and gave Howard a cold look. “I can’t believe you just said that.”

  “Well, it’s the truth, Glory.”

  “Don’t you trust your best friend? Or is it different for men?” Howard said nothing, and the tension grew until Lovecraft intervened. “It is the truth,” he said with a sense of resignation. “I have obviously not devoted my energies to thinking through the various outcomes of our scenarios. What do you suggest, Bob?”

  “I’m gonna mark our trail, if ya don’t mind.”

  “And wouldn’t that give the odd men something by which to follow us, as you have rightly pointed out yourself?”

  “I just thought about it again, and I don’t hardly think it makes a difference to them. I’d worry more that they’d erase the markers. We’re in their neck of the woods now. Anyhow, the markers wouldn’t take them right to us ‘cause they’d mark the way back, not forward. ”

  “All right then,” said Lovecraft.

  Howard found a piece of crystal and scratched a directional arrow onto the wall. “Let’s go.”

  From the vaulted chamber, the narrow passage led steeply downward, its walls coated with what looked precisely like the slime that covered the walls of sewers. It looked smooth, as if it would come off in one’s hands, but the slime was petrified, and it was the wrong color. As they descended, the passage became narrower until they had to squeeze through an opening and then climb downward in a giant tube spiked with stalactites the size of broadsword blades.

  Lovecraft had once seen the mouth parts of a snail-the circle of teeth not so much chewing as piercing by constriction, and now the image brought on a wash of claustrophobia. He imagined himself crawling down the gullet of a giant, petrified sea snail, and his limbs would no longer obey his brain. He stood there, trembling, in a cold sweat, until Glory put her arms around him and calmed him with soothing words as Howard waited. When Lovecraft’s fit passed, they continued; the tunnel leveled out and wound left and right in irregular zigzags until it opened into another chamber.

  This one was so large its dimensions were lost in blackness. They wouldn’t have been surprised to see stars in the distance. Before them, towering higher than a five-story building, loomed a formation that looked like a gluttonous head wearing a peaked hat; only this head appeared to have been sculpted of layer upon layer of filth, from its corpulent bugging eyes to its flared nostrils to its repulsive overlapping chins. And high above, barely visible even by the ever-brightening glow of the Artifact, dangled tree-sized stalactites like ten thousand swords of Damocles ready to spoil the glutton’s feast.

  The three of them wound their way among the phallic stalagmites that stood in clusters around the giant head as if they were there in worship. Some of the stone phalluses were seven feet tall, others just forming and startlingly anthropomorphic. Even in the overwhelmingly weird atmosphere, Glory had to stifle her giggles when she inadvertently stepped on some of the smaller ones, breaking them, each time causing Lovecraft or Howard to wince.

  The next chamber was less grand, with a flat roof spiked with smaller stalactites that resembled freshly dipped wax candles. Under them, almost surreal, stood pillars with tops that had somehow been sculpted into perfect birdbath shapes. Hundreds of them stretched left and right as if they were pedestals in a stone museum awaiting the treasures to be displayed on their tops. In some places the stalactites extended farther downward, a few so far they grazed the tops of the pedestals like strands of thick rope. Along the far wall, almost lost in the blackness, stretched formations that looked like a forest of trees whose branches had all melded above, but whose trunks were absolutely distinct below. It was a forest the dead color of dried mud.

  The next chamber’s pure white floor rippled in delicate patterns like windblown dunes seen from high above. As they took their tentative steps they saw stone eggs of varying sizes—the smallest no larger than marbles, the largest the size of a man’s head—strewn in random configurations. As they stepped carefully to avoid treading on them, the eggs began to change colors—subtly off-white, then creamy, then yellow—and by the time they reached the far side, more than fifty yards across, the large flattened yellow shapes lay all over the white surface like giant egg yolks.

  “I swear one of these things is about to hatch,” Glory whispered.

  Lovecraft shook his head. “I would rather not witness such an abomination of nature,” he said.

&n
bsp; Howard said nothing. He was suddenly hungry for a good breakfast of eggs and sausage, hoping his stomach wouldn’t rumble audibly.

  The wall to the next chamber was translucent in the Artifact’s intense light. Inside, the floor remained unchanged, but now the eggs appeared partially submerged, some of them open on top, partially formed, in various stages of completion. In the circular space Lovecraft had the odd feeling that he was in the middle of a giant cauldron of milk that had petrified in the midst of a furious boil, the egg shapes constituting the bubbles. He stepped even more cautiously, not knowing if the surface was a film, like the skim of milk, that they could break with their weight.

  The colors changed in the next chamber, and they stood at the lip of a deep pit that stretched downward and coiled to the left. There was no way they could climb down, but along the rim of the pit, only a few feet down, a ledge wound its way to the other side, more than a hundred yards distant, where they could make out a dark aperture. Lovecraft pointed, holding the Artifact out for confirmation. It pulsed even more brightly, hurting their eyes.

  “Well,” said Howard. “I guess we got some clamberin’ to do.” He squinted and casually leaped off the rim, aiming for the ledge below.

  The sudden splash took them all aback. Howard yelled, Glory screamed, and Lovecraft found himself hunching protectively over the Artifact.

  Howard was flailing in water—so absolutely clear it was entirely invisible except where the ripples and splashes distorted the light. The entire chamber was a lake.

  “Don’t just stand there! Help me out!” said Howard. And now they realized the sound carried differently-the echoes coming far too quickly for a chamber of its apparent size. The sound had that distinct tone of carrying over water.

  “I’ll be God damned,” Howard said when they had pulled him back up. “At least it ain’t as cold as you’d expect.”

  “Look,” said Glory.

  Now that Howard was out, the water level had become invisible once again. Instead, the ripples made it appear that the submerged rock formations were trembling and swaying. Glory had to remind herself that it was a trick of the light and that everything was under water.

  “How do we get across?” said Howard, emptying a boot. “I ain’t the best swimmer. How about y’aIl?”

  Lovecraft looked somber. “I must confess, I cannot swim,” he said. “I was a lifeguard in college at the old Kenyon swimming pool,” said Glory. “I suppose I’ll just have to tow you boys then.”

  “That seems neither possible nor desirable to me,” said Lovecraft. “Since Imanito drew us the diagram and prophesied our activities here, there must be some other way across.”

  “Someone musta been down here before us,” said Howard. “How else could the Injun know the layout of the cave?” He removed his shirt and did his best to wring it out. “Look, we could go back and get them ladders we pulled down.”

  “But that would entail a long delay. And perhaps an unwanted confrontation with the odd men.”

  “You’re assuming they followed us down,” said Glory.

  Howard produced his pistols to dry them, making both Glory and Lovecraft cringe at the thought of what they might do were they to go off. “I know,” said Howard. “Wouldn’t hardly want to shoot down here, huh? I can just see this whole place comin’ down on us. Look, I can go back by myself with a flashlight.”

  “We may need their full charge on our way out,” said Lovecraft.

  THEY ARGUED THE VARIOUS MERITS and pitfalls of going back together, or singly, or trying to swim the lake. In the end, after a quick examination of the lake’s periphery, they all went back together to fetch one of the ladders. The light of the Artifact diminished sharply as they backtracked, but Howard’s markers passed their test of reliability, and they were able to save the flashlight batteries. When they reached the base of the kiva, they first checked for signs that they had been followed. There was no evidence of the odd men.

  Howard’s idea was to break one of the ladders into two pieces, but Lovecraft stopped him.

  “How will we get back up?”

  Howard’s jaw dropped. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  Glory suggested a practical solution. “Don’t break it,” she said.

  “Just take it apart. You could tie it together again later, couldn’t you?” She looked at Lovecraft. “With your ball of string?”

  “Our hats are off to you,” said Lovecraft, producing the twine once again from his satchel. “I knew it would prove useful someday.”

  Howard disassembled the ladder and the two men lashed the crossbars into three small rafts, which they were able to carry back with ease. When Glory objected that she didn’t need one, Howard was quick to point out that she might want something on which to float her shoes and clothes.

  “You ain’t plannin’ to swim all that ways all decked out, are ya?” he said. “Not that your takin’ your clothes off is the first thing on my mind or nothin.’ ” He laughed, and the sound echoed loudly, changing tone and pitch in eerie ways.

  “I’m not ashamed of my body, if that’s what you’re thinking,” said Glory. “Men have paid to see me naked.”

  “Enough talk of nakedness,” said Lovecraft. “We have far more important matters upon which to concentrate our attentions.”

  The swim across might have been pleasant in other circumstances. In the fantastical setting, knowing that they might be the first humans ever to enter the water, feeling the pristine liquid like cool, thick air around them, they might have been enjoying the pure novelty of the situation. But now they could not keep the dark thoughts and anxieties from their minds as they slowly made their way across that span of water that suddenly seemed so utterly wide. What monsters lurked in the wet reaches beyond the power of the Artifact’s illumination? What awaited on the other bank? Each of them was lost in thought for those few minutes that seemed to prolong themselves into hours, and finally, they clambered onto the other side and pulled up their makeshift rafts, having had no leisure to consider their nakedness.

  Glory had just finished dressing when she heard the sound of splashing. It echoed across the water from the black recesses which they had just navigated for the second time. She glanced at Lovecraft, then at Howard. No one had to say anything. They simply waited to hear the regularity of the noise to confirm that someone-or some thing-was following them.

  “Come on,” said Howard. “We ain’t got all day.”

  They moved on, walking as quickly as possible until Lovecraft interrupted to remove a shoe and pour the water out of it. “Bob, Glory, would you both be so kind as to drain the excess water from your shoes also?” he asked.

  “What for?” said Howard, annoyed. Then he turned to see that Lovecraft’s pale face bore an expression of barely contained panic.

  “You okay, HP?”,

  “It’s the wet squishing sounds,” said Lovecraft. “I cannot fathom’ the reason, but for some reason it reminds me of my pursuit by the Night Gaunts in the Providence cemetery. Please, if only to humor me. ”

  “What we heard back there in the water,” said Howard, “it was probably just one of them blind cave lizards or somethin’.”

  Lovecraft appeared unconvinced, with a pained look of disbelief as the contents of his second shoe splashed onto the stone floor. “I con- , cur with your last hypothesis, Bob. It was indeed some thing. Now, if you please?”

  Glory and Howard begrudgingly acceded to Lovecraft’s request, and they moved on through the next chamber. The diminished squishing offered only a little security as they wound deeper into the stifling blackness of the cathedral-sized cave, a chamber so large the Artifact’s light seemed not even to matter. What they could see clearly were the stone walls that appeared on either side of them, carved with the now familiar symbols from the Necronomicon. They said nothing as they stepped cautiously forward toward the place where the walls flared,’ outward. When they reached the spot, the Artifact’s light seemed suddenly to diminish, causing their
vision to dim momentarily. But then they realized that the light had somehow equalized, and they gaped in awe at what stood before them.

  It was a gate of monumental proportions, obviously the product of something other than purely human artifice. Its style was ancient and mysterious. To Lovecraft it looked like some disrespectful or blasphemous hybrid of sacred architecture borrowed from old Egypt and the more ancient Babylon. Its facade bore the earmarks of motifs that had come to florescence among the Hellenics and then in the obscure and secret motifs of the Byzantines, but he knew that what he saw was the most ancient architecture of all—one whose unholy geometries tugged at some instinctive horror and repulsion in man. The inscriptions around the portal itself were familiar now—many of them identical to those in the Necronomicon, including the strange H-shaped symbol that seemed almost to haunt him. They were etched into the polished stone surface, not like normal inscriptions chiseled in or cut in relief, but as if they had been branded there, melting the rock.

  As they approached closer, they saw something else that shocked them almost as much as the sight of the gate itself. Flanking the hideous architecture, on the natural rock surface, were layers upon layers of petroglyphs—geometric shapes, humanoid forms, even palm prints-obviously put there by humans over the millennia. This place had been visited before-many times.

  “My God,” exclaimed Lovecraft, “it is no wonder Imanito knew the route so well. His people must have been the protectors of this place since they came to the Americas. I commend you for being right, Bob, though now I am certain he must belong to the lost Anasazi tribe.”

  Howard grunted at the backhanded compliment.

  The decorations around the portal all sprang from a central axis that highlighted a single spot, an indentation designed to receive the Artifact. The patterns that radiated outward from that focal point all shimmered now, all except in one small area that had been defaced, apparently with great effort. A small spot a few palms’ width from the Artifact’s slot had been manually chiseled into approximately the same size and shape. Around that, someone had labored hard to apply alternate designs to the portal, but over the years the pigments and scratches on the surface of the stone had all worn away, leaving only some subtle discolorations.