by Neil Gaiman
The lockbox was where the man had promised and it contained a princely sum. Miller stuffed the money in a sack as the sun went down and darkness fell. When he’d finished packing the money he buried his head in his arms and groaned.
“By the way, there are two minor conditions,” Dr. Kalamov said, leering from behind a stump. The flesh of his face hung loose as if it were a badly slipping mask. His eyes were misaligned, his mouth a bleeding black slash that extended to his ears. He had no teeth. “You’re a virile lad. Be certain to spawn oodles and oodles of babies—I must insist on that point. We’ll be observing, so do your best, my boy. There is also the matter of your firstborn…”
Miller had nearly pissed himself at Dr. Kalamov’s reappearance. He forced his throat to work. “You’re asking for my child.”
Dr. Kalamov chuckled and drummed his claws on the wood. “No, Mr. Miller. I jest. Although, those wicked old fairytales are jolly good fun, speaking such primordial truths as they do. Be well, be fruitful.” He scuttled backward and then lifted vertically into the shadows, a spider ascending its thread, and was gone.
∇
Years later, Miller married a girl from California and settled in a small farming town. He worked as a gunsmith. His wife gave birth to a boy. After the baby arrived he’d often lie awake at night and listen to the house settle and the mice scratch in the cupboards. When the baby cried, Miller’s wife would go into the nursery and soothe him with a lullaby. Miller strained to hear the words, for it was the deep silences that unnerved him and caused his heart to race.
There was a willow tree in the yard. It cast a shadow through the window. As his wife crooned to the baby in the nursery, Miller watched the shadow branches ripple upon the dull white oval of wall. On the bad nights, the branches twitched and narrowed and writhed like tendrils worming their way through fissures in the plaster toward the bed and his sweating, paralyzed form.
One morning he went to the shed and fetched an axe and chopped the tree down. The first tree he’d felled since his youth. The willow was very old and very large and the job lasted until lunchtime.
The center was semi-rotten and hollow, and when the tree crashed to earth the bole partially split and gushed pulp. Something heavy and multi-segmented shifted and retracted inside the trunk. Water gurgled from the wound with a wheeze that almost sounded like someone muttering his name. He dumped kerosene over everything and struck a match. The neighbors gathered and watched the blaze, and though they gossiped amongst themselves, no one said a word to him. There’d been rumors.
His wife came to the door with the baby in her arms. Her expression was that of a person who’d witnessed a dark miracle and knew not how to reconcile the fear and wonder of the revelation.
Miller stood in the billowing smoke, leaning on his axe, eyes reflecting the lights of hell.
∇
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the hard work, support, and encouragement of the entire Night Shade Books team: Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, Tomra Palmer, Dave Palumbo, Amy Popovich, Allison Stumpf, and Liz Upson. Thanks, I couldn’t have picked a better bunch of folks to work with.
To the editors and anthologists I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with over the last few years—John Joseph Adams, Scott Connors, Ellen Datlow, Marty Halpern, Ron Hilger, John Klima, Tim Pratt, Jonathan Strahan, and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer—Thanks, it’s been a Master Class. Thanks to all of those who helped out, made story suggestions, or offered advice while I was putting this anthology together, particularly John Betancourt, Matthew Carpenter, Stephanie Hartman, Jill Henderson, Michael Lee, Barbara Roden, Mike Roth, and Jerad Walters. Thanks as well to Obrotowy, for his outstanding cover art (Iä! Cthulhu!), Claudia Noble, for her breathtaking design, and Allan Kausch, for his copyediting prowess. Thanks also to all the authors whose work appears within these pages, and to Grandpa Theobald—Howard Phillips Lovecraft—for inspiring those authors.
Special thanks to my wife, Jennifer, for her patience as this anthology drove me to the brink of madness… and beyond! To my parents, for raising me in a house filled with books. And to Maddie the Shih-Tzu, the best listener an editor could have.
Copyright Acknowledgments
“Calamari Curls” by Kage Baker. © 2006 by Kage Baker. Originally published in Dark Mondays, a collection (Night Shade Books). Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“The Men from Porlock” by Laird Barron. © 2011 by Laird Barron. Originally published in The Book of Cthulhu. Printed by permission of the author.
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear. © 2008 by Elizabeth Bear. Originally published in Asimov’s, March 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Tugging” by Ramsey Campbell © 1976 Ramsey Campbell. Originally published in The Disciples of Cthulhu. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Than Curse the Darkness” by David Drake. © 1980 David Drake. Originally published in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Oram County Whoosit” by Steve Duffy. © 2008 by Steve Duffy. Originally published in Shades of Darkness. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” by John Hornor Jacobs. © 2011 John Hornor Jacobs. Originally published in The Book of Cthulhu. Printed by permission of the author.
“Andromeda Among the Stones” by Caitlín R. Kiernan. © 2002 Caitlín R. Kiernan. Originally published as a chapbook by Subterranean Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Black Man with a Horn” © 1980 by T.E.D. Klein. Originally published in New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Shallows” by John Langan. © 2010 John Langan. Originally published in Cthulhu’s Reign. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Crawling Sky” by Joe R. Lansdale. © 2009 Joe R. Lansdale. Originally published in Son of Retro Pulp Tales (Subterranean). Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Nethescurial” by Thomas Ligotti. © 1991 Thomas Ligotti. Originally published in Weird Tales, Winter 1991/1992. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Fairground Horror” by Brian Lumley © 2011 Brian Lumley. Originally published in The Disciples of Cthulhu, Daw Books, 1976. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Doom that Came to Innsmouth” by Brian McNaughton. © 1999 by Brian McNaughton. Originally published in Tales Out of Innsmouth. Reprinted by permission of Wildside Press LLC.
“Flash Frame” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. © 2010 Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Originally published in Cthulhurotica (Dagan Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Jihad over Innsmouth” by Edward Morris. © 2008 Edward Morris. Originally published in Pseudopod. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Cinderlands” by Tim Pratt. © 2010 Tim Pratt. Originally published in Drabblecast. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Bad Sushi” by Cherie Priest. © 2006, 2011 Cherie Priest. Originally published in Apex Digest, Issue #10. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Some Buried Memory” by W. H. Pugmire. © 2011 W. H. Pugmire. Originally published in The Tangled Muse (Centipede Press). Reprinted by permission of the author.
“To Live and Die in Arkham” by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. © 2010 Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. Originally published in SIN & Ashes (Hippocampus Press). Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Jeroboam Henley’s Debt” by Charles R. Saunders. © 2010 Charles R. Saunders. Originally published in Innsmouth Free Press (2010), Potboiler (1982). Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Lost Stars” by Ann K. Schwader. © 2003 Ann K. Schwader. Originally published in Strange Stars & Alien Shadows. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Unthinkable” by Bruce Sterling. © 1991 Bruce Sterling. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1991. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Fat Face” by Michael Shea. © 1987 Michael Shea. Originally published as a chapbook by Axolotl Press. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” by Molly Tanzer. © 2011 Molly Tanzer. Originally published in Historical Lovecraft, ed. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“A Colder War” by Charles Stross. © 2000 Charles Stross. Originally published in Spectrum SF #3. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Lord of the Land” by Gene Wolfe. © 1995 by Gene Wolfe; first appeared in Cthulhu 2000; from Starwater Strains; reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agents, the Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
About the Editor
Ross E. Lockhart is the managing editor of Night Shade Books. A lifelong fan of supernatural, fantastic, speculative, and weird fiction, he holds degrees in English from Sonoma State University (BA) and San Francisco State University (MA). He lives in an old church in Petaluma, CA, with his wife Jennifer, hundreds of books, and a small, ravenous dog that he believes may be one of the Elder Gods. The Book of Cthulhu is his first anthology.
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