Urban Temples of Cthulhu - Modern Mythos Anthology

by Khurt Khave

  Marsh piloted the big car onto Federal Street. He appeared to be thinking hard. “Okay,” he said at length. “Since you’re not a real Gilman, not of the blood in other words, you’re not going to get to have sex with the Deep Ones.”

  Aubs shook her head and winced in pain. Her hair was clotted with blood and she was too pale. I was worried she might have a concussion. “Am I supposed to be disappointed?” she said. “Who are the Deep Ones?”

  According to Marsh, they lived under the sea. “Just like SpongeBob SquarePants!” the red-haired guy said with a laugh.

  “Shut up,” Marsh told him. “You really are an idiot, you know that?” He said the Deep Ones were an ancient, immortal race who live deep in the oceans. They don’t get old, or sick, and they can’t die, except through violence. They give the people of Innsmouth gold artifacts and plentiful fishing in return for being allowed to mate with them.

  “And human sacrifices. They like those, too,” the red-haired guy said.

  Marsh said his ancestor, Obed Marsh, learned about the Deep Ones on one of his voyages to the South Pacific. He got to be friendly with the chief of one of the islands. The chief, Walakea by name, told him his people had struck a deal with the Deep Ones. They got fabulously ornate bracelets and tiaras and knick-knacks made of gold and other precious metals from the Deep Ones’ undersea trove, and all the fish they wanted in exchange for the islanders giving them some of their young people twice a year, on May Eve and Halloween.

  “Some of them the Deep Ones screwed and some they sacrificed to their gods: Father Dagon and Mother Hydra,” Marsh said. “After a while, there were what you’d call hybrids living on that island, people who started out looking human but later on began to change. Some of them changed so much they became amphibious. They lived in the ocean some of the time and some of the time they lived on land.”

  “Like I’m gonna do,” Gilman put in.

  I thought of the drawing on the bathroom wall of our room at the Gilman House, the one that said WORSHIP MOTHER HYDRA!!! I wasn’t convinced the Deep Ones existed, despite Orrin Gilman’s hideous appearance, but I didn’t like this talk about human sacrifice.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Marsh said. “There used to be thousands of Deep Ones, millions maybe, but the government found out about them somehow during World War II and tried to wipe them out. Those nuclear tests they conducted in the nineteen-fifties and sixties at Bikini Atoll and Enewetak? They set off thirty-five nukes out there in ‘58 alone. Operation Fishbowl in ‘62? That was to get rid of the Deep Ones. The Department of Defense can’t resist using cute names like that, the bastards. A lot of them died but they didn’t get them all. Their numbers diminished but they survived, just like they always have.”

  He looked in the rear view mirror again. His unblinking eyes had a crazed glint. “The ocean gets deep out beyond Devil Reef. Some of the Deep Ones live out there. Others swim up from Milwaukee Deep, north of Puerto Rico. It goes down more than eight miles, would you believe it? They’re all going to gather on Devil Reef for the festivities tonight.”

  That sounded absolutely insane to me. We turned onto Water Street. I sat up straighter and watched for the lights of the convenience store. It was open 24 hours. Surely somebody would be in the parking lot, somebody to whom I could call out for help?

  The parking lot was deserted save for a dark green Ford Windstar, its back windows plastered with stickers. There was nobody inside but the cashier, the van’s owner, an indolent girl from Arkham with pink hair and tattoos. She lounged behind the counter under the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights, reading a magazine. She didn’t look up as we drove past.

  “Here we are,” said Marsh, pulling into the parking lot at the harbor with a splatter of gravel. Gilman opened his door and hopped out. He literally hopped, like a frog. Peeling off his clothes and tossing them aside, he made for the water on all fours. “I’m gonna swim. See you at the dock,” he called over one misshapen shoulder. Then he plunged in. It was a chilly night, threatening to rain, with a stiff east wind blowing. The water temperature couldn’t have been much above fifty-five degrees, but he didn’t seem to care. His big webbed feet rose as he dove under a wave and was gone.

  The red-haired man gathered Marsh's clothes and watched enviously. “Look at him go,” he said. “I can’t wait until I change.”

  There were a gaggle of Innsmouth people, both men and women, standing around by the dock where a motorboat was moored. “Come on,” Marsh said to me and Aubs. “Get in the boat.”

  A woman with a pointed head and bulging frog eyes shuffled toward us. “Hello dear,” she said to Aubs. “We’re so glad you’re here. You must be so excited.”

  “Change of plans,” Marsh told her, curtly. “Turns out she’s not really a Gilman.”

  The woman’s thick lips turned down in a frown. “She’s not of the blood? Darn it! We were hoping to increase our numbers. The Deep Ones will be disappointed. Oh well, they’ll find another use for her, her and her heathen friend, and the blabbermouth.”

  They converged on us and marched us onto the boards of the dock and over to the motorboat. This can’t be happening, I thought. The strong fishy odor, always noticeable around the harbor, was more pungent than ever. Aubs leaned over and threw up.

  “My head really hurts,” she moaned.

  “She’s got a concussion,” I said, alarmed. “She needs to go to the hospital.”

  They ignored me. Strong hands, some with webbed fingers, pushed us into the boat. Donny Allen was lying on the bottom on a pile of nets, his hands and feet bound with rope. One of his eyes was swollen shut and blood leaked from his nose, now bent at a ninety-degree angle.

  “I tried to warn you,” he said.

  “Shame on you, you naughty boy,” the frog-woman scolded him.

  Marsh got in the boat and started the outboard motor. He pulled a flask from a pocket of his down jacket, unscrewed the top and took a drink. He proffered the flask to Allen. “Want some?”

  “Yes, please,” Allen said. He was crying, the tears ran down his face to mix with the blood from his broken nose.

  “Nope. That would be irresponsible of me. What would your sponsor say?” Marsh told him mockingly, pocketing the flask. We pulled away from the dock. The others watched us go and then dove into the water. “Meet you at the reef!” the frog-woman cried gaily, splashing away with strong strokes.

  Allen was weeping great, shuddering sobs. “Please don’t do this,” he begged Marsh, and the red-headed man who was perched on the seat beside me.

  “I don’t like doing it,” Marsh told him, although he certainly looked as if he was enjoying himself. “We thought you were one of us, Donny, but you went and talked to outsiders. Now the Deep Ones will deal with you. They’re going to be disappointed that they don’t get to make whoopee with Miss Gilman here, but they’ll enjoy sacrificing you three, so all is not lost.”

  No! I thought as we putt-putted through the choppy water, the smell of gasoline from the outboard’s engine mixing with the fish stink until I thought I’d vomit. No! Please! I’m not a strong swimmer and I dreaded the thought of being tossed overboard into deep water, if that’s what they were planning on doing. Devil Reef is at least a mile from the harbor and the tide was running out to sea. There was no way I’d be able to swim to shore. Aubs swims at the pool at the Arkham Y, but doing laps in a heated pool isn’t like swimming in the Atlantic on the cusp of November, with the tide running the wrong way. And she was hurt. She wouldn’t make it either. I took her hand and squeezed it.

  “I love you,” I told her.

  She squeezed back, “I love you too.”

  When I saw what was waiting for us on the reef, I screamed. I couldn’t help it. They were horrible. Dozens of nightmare figures, scaly skin gleaming in the moonlight, leaped and capered. Some plunged into the water and began swimming toward us, emitting eager croaks. Webbed hands reached into the boat and pulled Allen, shrieking, into the water. Mother! I though
t wildly, Mother help us, please help us!

  And she did.

  Imagine a woman as tall as the green woman who stands in New York Harbor holding up a torch. This woman was not green but black, darker than the night sky and proudly naked. She appeared from out of nowhere, standing poised on the waves, her four arms waving gracefully, one delicate foot forward, like a lady about to step onto a dance floor.

  She looked down and she saw me. She saw me! For a long, long moment she took me in, her eyes glittering brighter than the stars that surrounded her head like a crown. Humans aren’t meant to withstand the scrutiny of gods. I felt the weight of her regard like a physical force and bowed my head.

  “What’s that?” Aubs whispered.

  I squeezed her hand harder. “Don’t look,” I said. “I love you.” Kali reached down with a hand with fingers that had to have been eight feet long and plucked Marsh from the boat as daintily as if she was choosing a chocolate from a beribboned box. She crushed him negligently in one fist, let his broken body drop into the water, and did the same to the red-haired man. I could hear a voice in my head, booming like a bronze bell, Go! Go now!

  Screams and croaking cries came from the water as she destroyed them with a joyous ferocity that made me shudder. I scrambled behind the wheel, turned the boat around and headed toward what I hoped was the harbor.

  “Lee, I didn’t know you could drive a boat,” Aubs said, dazedly.

  “Neither did I,” I told her. “Hang on.”

  We made it to the beach, despite the waves that were growing in power beneath the hull, causing the boat to slam up and down, threatening to swamp us. We were soaking wet when we waded ashore at the harbor. The keys were in the ignition of the Caddy. We got in and peeled out of Innsmouth, making it to the Rowley Road before the tidal wave hit. I saw a wall of water rise up in the rear view mirror, gritted my teeth, and put the pedal to the metal. The big engine responded with a roar. We didn’t stop until we got to Ipswich.

  That’s about all there is to it. Innsmouth was destroyed, as you probably remember if you watched the news reports about a freak wave that appeared out of nowhere and totaled a New England fishing village. The Red Cross came in, and FEMA, but there were few survivors, and those reportedly refused outside help.

  Aubs and I live in the Adirondack Mountains of New York now, in a pleasant little town called Keane Valley. The people here are friendly, for the most part. We own a coffee shop called The Mountain Beanery. We never go to the coast. We saw enough of the ocean to last us a lifetime.

  We’re married and are very happy. We have two children, a boy and a girl, ages twelve and fourteen. They came to us courtesy of an anonymous donor at a sperm bank in Medford, Massachusetts. They’re great kids, Elizabeth and Matthew. Sweet, thoughtful, good grades, the usual sass and back talk that comes with adolescence, but nothing to get alarmed about. We’re lucky. One thing bothers us, although it’s probably nothing. Lately we’ve noticed that Liz and Matt don’t seem to blink very often. They’re also unusually good swimmers, really uncannily good, since they’ve never had lessons. Still, it’s probably nothing.

  Jill Hand is the author of The Blue Horse, a hilariously funny science fiction/fantasy novella based on a true story from Kellan Publishing. Her work has appeared recently in Another Realm, Frostfire Worlds, Heater, Jersey Devil Press, Nebula Rift, and T. Gene Davis' Speculative Fiction. She has visited H. P. Lovecraft's grave in Providence, RI, although she suspects that he's not really in there.

  City of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels, Virgin Mother of a Thousand Young Kevin Wetmore

  Traffic on the Five was particularly slow this morning; the sickly pale sun’s light barely pushing through the February fog and smog as it hung in the sky to the south. “Fog’s for the Westside,” Rafael absently thought. “Must be bad if we’re getting it here.”

  He slowed his car and slid off the exit to Downey Street in East Los Angeles, leaving the river of the highway for the swamp of surface streets. He had been coming here from his home in Pasadena every day for a week to research. A month into his sabbatical and he felt he was going nowhere. The file on the seat next to him was filled with photos and notes, but he still felt it was not really a worthwhile project. He had already taken photos of and notes on every image of La Virgen de Guadalupe he could find in this neighborhood, from depictions in churches to paintings on the sides of bars to small shrines on burnt out lawns behind chain link fences in front of houses that had seen better days.

  Had this been a regular semester, he would have probably been in his freshman Introduction to Theological Studies lecture right now. “Let’s see,” he thought, “second week of February and we would be just hitting the Gospel of Luke and really going to town on the Magnificat. Maybe that’s a good sign for today.”

  He turned off Downey onto Whittier. Rafael liked this part of town, not just because of his heritage (his abuela still lived about a mile from here), or his research, but because it was such a fascinating tapestry of humanity, Los Angeles history, and many cultures side-by-side. He slid past apartment buildings from the seventies, their shadows darkening the single family house built in the twenties right next door. He passed churches, boarded up strip malls, a bodega with several cholos just standing in front. While most of his research focused on religious imagery in churches, he also looked at homes and cemeteries, and this triangle between the Five, the Ten and the Seven-Ten contained many, many cemeteries: Mount Zion, Beth Israel, Odd Fellows, Serbian Orthodox and, of course, Calvary Catholic, where he did most of his research. Before he passed away, Rafael’s abuelo would joke that the neighborhood had more dead residents than living ones. Rafael never thought it was that funny.

  He was not heading to any cemeteries today. He needed something new, something different. If he was going to get tenure, the book this sabbatical produced had to be something amazing. Professor Reeves had already made it clear during their pre-sabbatical meeting that his articles were not enough to guarantee tenure. Rafael needed this book to cement his position at the university, and it was going nowhere. He could picture Reeves, behind his huge desk, in a chair that sat higher than those on the other side of the desk (he thinks he’s some sort of bishop of the academy, Rafael decided at the time), droning on, “We need to ensure our students are taught by only the best scholars, those who publish their research to the acclaim of their peers. Are you one of those scholars, Dr. Gutierez?” Rafael decided to look for more residential images of La Virgen. Maybe interviewing people about what she meant to them would open up some new avenues of research, finish this book so he could shove it in Reeve’s bearded, condescending face.

  He began driving down side streets, dead-ends, under highway overpasses with tenements under them. Frustrated by a lack of imagery, he was just about to quit for the morning and get lunch when he saw a small church he had never seen before.

  To call it a church was charitable. It was more of a chapel, but attached to a complex of larger buildings situated in between tenement housing. As he drove past, he saw a flash of a painting on the side of the chapel, facing the sidewalk to the entry door. The greens, reds and yellows leapt out to his eye, the familiar figure from so many paintings, but as he slid past he also noticed it was different from those paintings as well.

  There were no spaces left on the street, so he drove down to the end of the block, turned down an alley and found what he hoped was a legal parking spot. Half seriously whispering a prayer to La Virgen that nobody break in to or steal his car or some overzealous parking cop ticket him, since he was on a mission to bring her images to la gente, he grabbed his notebook and his camera, locked the doors and strolled back to the chapel.

  The painting that caught his eye had been on a wall of the chapel that led to what Rafael presumed was the front door. The wall was fairly standard for the neighborhood, stucco over what he presumed was brick. But painted on the stucco was a fascinating image of La Virgen, with elements he had never seen before. He was lifting
his camera to photograph it but when he really looked at the image for the first time seeing the details, he froze in midgesture.

  Above La Virgen at the top of the painting was a black sky (it was usually blue) and the stars formed strange constellations above her. In the background below the sky were the hills surrounding Tepeyac, but these seemed to be covered in snow and ice, almost suggesting Antarctic mountains rather than the hills of central Mexico. La Virgen also seemed, well, wrong. She wore the traditional red robe and blue cloak with stars, but the pattern of stars was somehow disturbing, as if they were slightly out of focus but shone with a certain cruelty. Her expression seemed to change depending on the angle one viewed the image, switching from sadness to malevolence verging on hatred - something he had never seen on any image of Maria’s face. She stood on a crescent moon, but Juan Diaz, who always held her up underneath, was missing a face. Instead, a single black tentacle grew out of his neck where his head would have been.

  She was surrounded by orange beams, and beyond that were thirteen roses, six on one side, seven on the other. The roses were odd, though. The thorns were prevalent, the blossoms already decaying slightly. Some of the blossoms appeared to suggest open mouths, frozen in mid-scream, the folds of the petals seemingly holding hidden teeth. It was an unnerving representation altogether, and Rafael slowly lowered the camera, unaware that he had taken a step or two back, away from the image, until he bumped into someone and let out a shout.

  “My apologies for startling you, my son,” came a calm assurance. Rafael’s breathing and heart began to slow as he realized he had accidentally backed into a priest who had come up behind him. A smiling face, receding hairline, and Roman collar sat atop a figure draped in a black cassock with a red stole and belt. “Are you all right?”

  Rafael’s pounding heart began to slow and he breathed deeply a few times. “Sorry, yes, sorry,” he fumbled, checking the camera and looking to see if he dropped anything, then suddenly realizing whom he had backed into, shifted gears.