by Paula Guran
The Canticle of the Hunter is intended to be a missile, not an IED. The Church’s missionaries were shoved and beaten in the brawls that followed, and they returned home bruised and ashamed at what they perceived acutely to be their failure. But when they pushed open the doors of their church at midnight, they found Hyperon Talta smiling, cross-legged, at the pulpit.
“I am proud of you,” said Hyperon, and the missionaries wept.
V. I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN
At the midsummer inflection point of the year 1995, Hyperon Talta gathered the members of the Church of the Holy Star around him and made an exciting announcement. “You are finally ready to escort Azathoth into the world,” said Hyperon. A few congregants fainted. Just imagine their joy and pride! “But first we must find Azathoth a host.”
Azathoth the Ultimate would need the best athlete their little mudball planet had to offer. Several were considered: basketball player T. J. Folger, swimmer Lana Denali, figure skater Choi Ji-Yung. Luis Cabron would have been another strong candidate, with his unworldly ability to withstand assaults upon his person, but he was shackled on death row. Ji-Yung was so very like St. Sasha in her tiny build and steely demeanor that she was nearly chosen, but just as the Church attempted to enter her country, she retired from figure skating – she was getting old, at twenty-two – and shut herself up in her lonely penthouse with no desire for any more quadruple loops nor ice-flowers nor glory. So in the end, the Church elders with Hyperon’s approval selected Felix Nordlund, widely regarded as the best tennis player of all-time. Felix not only displayed effortless physical mastery of the court, but an unrivaled intelligence surrounding the game and indeed, motion itself. Other players had beautiful backhands, powerful forehands, unreturnable serves – Felix Nordlund had everything. He had won sixty-three major tournaments since he turned sixteen. He was number one in the world. His dominance was so thorough, and his fashion sense so rococo, that tennis fans were beginning to tire of him – but Azathoth would love him and his command of physics, of this the Church was sure.
Felix was due to play at Mercatilly, the nation’s premier tournament. The Church of the Holy Star decided it would meet him there. They waited all the way until the final round, in order to give Azathoth the most impressive entrance: Center Court in the half-light, tucked away in a perfectly-manicured artificial forest, the stadium a perfect serving bowl for Azathoth the Ultimate. It was good weather for a God’s landing. At the bottom of the bowl, two lonely gladiators spun their titanium rackets.
Felix was competing for his fifth title at Mercatilly against Drew Stephens, a national. Given the events that followed, we must remember that Drew Stephens, too, was a contender of high athletic caliber, one who had been enrolled in tennis lessons by his fierce mother-coach when he was four years old. Though he had won twelve major tournaments, Drew had never won Mercatilly. In fact it had been seventy years since any national won Mercatilly, much to the ache and angst of the screaming youth in painted flags and the elderly listening on the radio. But as the Church of the Holy Star had always known, patriotism does not assure athletic dominance. Of that there is no guarantor except for talent, labor, and the mystical touch of divine grace. Drew was the best tennis player his nation had spawned in decades, but he was also temperamental, spoiled, lacking in creative game strategy. Yet his greatest failing, the one that prevented him from bringing honor to his homeland, was to have been born a few years after Felix Nordlund. He had been cursed to toil in the shadow of another man’s golden era; that was not his fault.
The Canticle of the Hunter was performed at exactly 6.34 in the evening, at the beginning of the third set. Felix had won the first two sets and was calmly eating a banana, staring straight ahead at the scoreboard that clearly reflected his superiority. Drew was muttering to himself, occasionally yelling random words at his mother and coaches who sat biting their knuckles in his player’s box. After the players jogged to their respective ends so that Felix could prepare to serve, the members of the Church of the Holy Star stood and began their song. The chair umpire attempted to silence their devotional but could not – for how could this passion, inspired as it was by the height of human greatness, be denied?
It was their finest hour. The crowd was enraptured. With mouths agape, they rose in their seats as one and slipped their necks into the leash of the Church. The few who resisted – Felix’s wife, both players’ coaches – had their consciousness slammed into a metaphysical wall, and liquefied. The chair umpire made a foolish attempt to call for help through his radio, as if Hyperon Talta would not have blocked all such signals and protected Center Court from outside interference. The two players ran toward each other at the net; the Church assumed they had moved to greet Azathoth, though they looked extremely fragile, and extremely frightened. This is how the Church discovered that even Champions can be overwhelmed. The swarm poured onto the court, threw the chair umpire from his perch and trampled him flat, then took both players in hand. The Church held its breath, anxious to see Felix Nordlund lifted to the sky, to Azathoth.
But the crowd faltered in its mission. Through no fault of the Church, the masses succumbed to the throes of their animalistic and irrational nationalism, and tore Felix Nordlund apart instead. Professor Kettle and his fellow members of the Church of the Holy Star howled. How thoughtless the human heart, how mad! Even Drew Stephens seemed to know that the ritual had gone awry, for his cry of lamentation was sadder than all. He screamed Felix’s name, as if he knew that Azathoth’s first choice in human vessel had been so rashly destroyed. And then he fainted, for there was much blood and gore upon the court.
What could the Church do, but prepare Drew Stephens for the ritual? Only one among the entranced crowd could call Drew Stephens her flesh and blood, but on this day Mrs. Maggie Stephens was joined by ten thousand others who lifted the unconscious body of their little prince over their heads and passed him around, pawing affectionately at his hair. “Quickly!” said Hyperon Talta as the ashen half-light was overcome by the final dark. The Church commanded the crowd to place Drew in the umpire’s now-vacant throne, where Hyperon sent a firebolt into Drew’s cerebral cortex and awoke him, sweating and afraid.
“Drew Stephens, rejoice!” the Church sang. “For Azathoth wants to live inside you.”
Drew Stephens curled like a snail and refused the invitation. Words fail to describe the depth of the humiliation this brought to the Church. To keep Azathoth the Ultimate waiting just one mile overhead was sacrilegious enough, but to deny Azathoth entirely?
“Why are you crying? You are going to become a vessel for a God.”
He did not answer, but he did not have to. He wept, the Church realized, because Felix Nordlund was dead. This came as a great surprise to the Church, which having seen all things – dark things, light things, splendid crimson secret things – knew that Drew hated Felix. They had watched Drew smash nine rackets after losing to Felix in the semifinals of the 1994 Gondoi Open. They had heard Drew hiss, drunken and sloppy, that Felix was a “motherfucking fuck.” Yet the only recording that played in Drew’s head, now at the hour of Azathoth’s descent, was an inconsequential blip that had taken place two years ago, when he and Felix had filmed a watch commercial together. It was a dull, flat memory, nothing compared to the spikes of rage that contorted Drew’s face every time he lost to Felix and certainly nothing compared to the Church’s visions of golden crowns and laurel wreaths. Yet Drew’s mind had clenched like a fist around this episode, and as a result he saw nothing but Felix Nordlund juggling the ball and making childish puns, over and over and over again.
When the clouds began to cleave, Drew Stephens jumped from his throne and ran from his fate. He thrashed against the crowd when they tried to feed him little bits of Felix, and screamed for help after he threw open the back doors of Center Court. But all had been put to sleep to allow for Azathoth’s successful landing: the groundskeepers, the sponsors, the poor who could not afford tickets to the main event. Hyperon Talta
manifested in front of the still-gurgling Fountain of Champions, where all the names of Mercatilly’s titleholders had been laid under the water. Azathoth’s emissary released the full might of his interstellar strength as he shouted to the restless sinner, “Drew, why do you run?”
Hyperon was so overwhelming that Drew could not help but fall to his knees in reverence. “I don’t know who you people are,” said Drew, his voice muffled by guttural sobs, “but please just let me go.”
Was it shame that held Drew Stephens back, the knowledge that he with his 59-20 win-loss record was unworthy of Azathoth? Or was it simply cowardice, the same mental frailty that had prevented him from seizing victory at Falun-Re, at the Parkidi Olympics, at Gondoi? These are questions that the Church continues to debate today. One thing we know for sure, one thing for which there is no doubt, is that Drew Stephens was not a Champion. And when Azathoth the Ultimate descended from the heavens, immediately melting the walls of Center Court, Drew’s contemptible eyes and ears began to bleed. Greatness had been thrust upon the boy, and stopped the pitter-patter of his weak little human heart.
And so Azathoth the Ultimate, Lord of All Things, touched down upon planet Earth without a host to contain its splendor. PA systems across the grounds of Mercatilly ripped to life to announce the God’s arrival, but their crackly rendition of the Canticle of the Hunter was immediately trumped by the glorious sound emanating from the fires of Azathoth’s own eternal furnace – fishermen on trawling boats up to fifty miles away were stunned in their sleep, and altered.
Azathoth tucked Hyperon Talta between its many nests of luminous eyes and galloped northward into the night, leaving brilliant green aurorae burning in its wake.
The Church of the Holy Star wept, for we had been abandoned. But by the grace of St. Sasha we picked ourselves up, and just as she had chased the gold medallion we chased Azathoth the Ultimate, following the trail of skeletonized human wreckage. For glory and grandeur, we will chase forever.
We believe that we will win.
Lois H. Gresh’s inspiration for “In the Sacred Cave” came from a museum visit where she saw “thousands of Inca clay pots representing all realms of life, death, and whatever lies beyond death. To the ancients, these realms were intertwined, and one could communicate with and perform actions with beings in these other realms. What came before the ancient Incas? Could they have been unknown Old Ones, and their realms unknown times and spaces? Why would human life matter in such a vast multi-dimensional context? Lois pondered these ideas while in Peru, where she wrote “In the Sacred Cave.”
Gresh is the New York Times best-selling and USA Today best-selling author of twenty-nine books and sixty-five stories. Look for her trilogy of Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes thrillers coming soon from Titan Books. Her latest book is collection Cult of the Dead and Other Weird and Lovecraftian Tales (Hippocompus), and she recently edited Innsmouth Nightmare and Dark Fusions (both for PS Publishing). She has weird stories in eighteen recently released anthologies, including, Dreams From the Witch House, New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird, Black Wings III, Gothic Lovecraft, That is Not Dead, Dark Phantastique, Mountain Walked, Madness of Cthulhu, Searchers After Horror, Expiration Date, Black Wings IV, Eldritch Chrome, Summer of Lovecraft, Mark of the Beast, and more.
In the Sacred Cave
Lois H. Gresh
——
Sky so brown, like rusty iron. Tarnished clouds.
Never anything to do here, just listen to the insects buzz and the world groan.
Chicya can’t spend another day here, she just can’t.
Far below, the river thrashes as if trying to punch its way through the mountains. Nearby, her alpaca dips its head, and teeth rip the scabby ichu from the ground.
Chicya swishes lime around in her mouth, and it mingles with mashed coca leaves. The mountain seems to tremble with her.
The air vibrates slightly. A vehicle rattles.
She scrabbles to the edge of the terrace and cranes her neck over Orq’o Wichay, the sacred mountain of her ancestors. Wriggling down the opposite mountain to the river is the Owambaye pass, known only to the indigenous Inca, never to the Spanish or those of mixed heritage. A pickup truck rumbles around a boulder and totters on the edge of the Owambaye where it hangs a thousand meters over the water.
Chicya blinks to keep colors from swirling before her eyes. What’s a truck doing here? They never come this far into the Peruvian mountains.
Should she warn the elders?
No one will believe her. They always say she’s loco, born under a dark moon.
The truck vanishes around a bend, and perhaps she hallucinated the whole thing. Chicya hangs her head, and the black mood settles over her. If only I had enough nerve, she thinks, I’d throw myself off the mountain and hit bottom, crushed to dust, and let the river heave me downstream.
If only . . .
The birds cry. The flowers, once drenched in honey, smell stale. The clouds part, only for a moment, and exhale a strand of sunlight before closing again.
Time creeps into the distance.
Suddenly an animal screams, and Chicya’s alpaca freezes, head high, drip of vegetation hanging from its mouth. Screams rise and echo and expand in bands of air that puff up to where Chicya slumps on her terrace.
She leaps up, and a wave of dizziness hits. She almost falls but staggers back, careful not to slip off the ledge, for now is not her time. She doesn’t have enough nerve. Not yet.
The screams are odd. They’re not from any mountain creature she knows. Nor are they the shrieks of people, a sound she knows well from childhood. The Shining Path killers are long gone, sequestered in the Amazon now – and let them have their cocaine trade, for who needs it, not the pure Inca, no, not those of us who still chew the leaf.
Chicya scrambles up the grass to the plateau and stumbles through the woods. A chinchilla peeks from beneath yellow flowers that spread like stars across the boulders. The blood-colored bark of the paper tree exfoliates, and the twisted limbs grab at her and branches rake her hair. Roots crack through the earth and trip her, and she lurches but regains her footing and scuttles down the trail to the bottom of the mountain. She has to catch her breath, let her heart slow. She leans, hands on knees, and stares at the ground. It’s red from clay, red from blood.
The scent of grilled meat floats past, and she lifts her head. She hasn’t eaten in two days.
She scoots past the lapacho trees to the clearing by the village, then stops. What good will it do to go there? This is where she was found as a baby. Shining Path killed her parents, the villagers said. Sixteen years ago they died. They rescued her, but the villagers have always hated Chicya. “A drain on our resources,” they say, and “you eat our food and live nowhere, and all you do for us is nothing.”
Yes, that’s what she is, nothing, and she knows it. A freak of nature, alone, as adrift as the clouds.
In the clearing, a lopsided van crouches. Its rear lights are bashed, the tires deflated. Dents bruise the back and the side panel, where red letters spell TRUE SACRED VALLEY. The words look all drippy as if an idiot smeared them on with a brush.
Next to the van is the pickup truck. Up close, it doesn’t look so good. Rust scabs the body like a pox. The paint is a color that reminds Chicya of rat skin. Steam rises from three bowls on the open cargo bed. Stew. Grilled alpaca with tomato, cilantro, and lime.
Near the vehicles, dozens of villagers huddle in a tight knot. They’re all indigenous Inca, just like Chicya, but they’ve lost their way. They no longer follow the three main Inca laws. They lie and gossip about each other. They’re too lazy to rise up and fight the oppressive government. And every one of them would steal from his own mother if given half a chance.
Something squeals, and the villagers scream and pump the air with their fists. Chicya moves closer. Within the knot of villagers, animals scuffle and grunt.
A loud crack rings out, as if metal has cleaved skull, and the crowd goes wild. Another crack, a h
eavy blow no doubt, and an animal screeches, then whimpers and falls silent.
Chicya elbows her way to the center of the crowd. Those who recognize her scoff and try to shove her away. She retains her footing and glares back.
And then she sees them, the animals that are fighting: two men in loin cloths, squatting close to the ground, their round bodies smashed together. White fur forms patterns on their black skin, making them look faintly like the black-and-white pottery of the ancient Chimus of the Moche Valley. From their shoulders to their waists, blood mats the white fur into pink cotton. Stumps at the bottoms of their legs wobble in the dirt. Nearby is an Incan death club, gold and etched with serpents.
Slowly the men rise, their faces twisted in pain, and Chicya sees that neither man has a neck. They look like men, but there’s something off about them. Their bodies start sizzling where joined – and how can this be? – and the burned flesh crackles.
The villagers shriek and clap their hands.
Chicya turns to run, but her forehead slams against something hard. She reels back, vaguely sees a shovel and a laughing face.
Furry hands grab her. They lift her, and before she knows it, they throw her into the back of the pickup truck. She struggles but can’t break free.
Bizarre animals pin down her arms and sit on her legs. She can’t kick her legs loose, can’t ball her fists and punch the animals.
They might be women, but then again, they might not even be human. Like the fused men, they have no feet. Their bald heads are tattooed with Inca patterns: three stairs, a feline, a deer, a serpent. They wear rags and have no breasts, and in fact, their bodies are as round as urns. Chicya opens her mouth to scream, but several furry fingers jam into her mouth, and she wretches, the fur wet and dirty, the fingers gagging her. She sinks back, willing herself to go limp. Her torso convulses as she gags, and finally, the fingers slide from her mouth.