We were at peace.
I came to lying on the floor beside the piano. The first thing I was aware of was the pain in my hands; my knuckles bloodied and torn. But my own pain was forgotten at the sight of Roger.
He lay in the centre of the room on his back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling, a broad smile on his face.
It is only now, more than fifteen years later, that I can bring myself to write about these events. In all that time Roger has never awakened. He is alive, but no longer seeing, borne away, somewhere where the green twilight flickers and the slumbering god dreams.
He is at peace.
And now, as the war drums of Europe beat once again in a quickening rhythm, I dearly wish I had gone with him.
William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with eighteen novels published in the genre press and over 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has appeared in a number of professional anthologies and magazines. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he plays guitar, drinks beer and dreams of fortune and glory. Check out his site at http://www.williammeikle.com
Story illustration by Mike Dominic
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The Moon’s Architecture
by Graham Lowther
Someone walked up to me while I stood in the gray dampness, waiting for the public transport, and asked me if I had the time, with a peculiar emphasis on “time”. “What Time do you have?” What made this particularly strange was that I had been asked this same question, with the same peculiar emphasis, several times that day, by different strangers. After I glanced at my watch and supplied the answer, this person immediately asked the same question of the person standing next to me. “What Time do you have?”
My fellow public transport user said straightaway, “It will be tomorrow.”
The questioner seemed satisfied with this reply, and walked off down the street. I studied the man who had supplied the inexplicably satisfactory answer through the corner of my eye. I was conscious of a senseless impression I was missing something important in my observation of him, something malign that was not conveyed by the blob of expressionless flesh that was his face, or even through the gray, cloudy eyes.
That evening, ascending to my apartment, I stopped on a landing and looked back down the stairs. I was not in the habit of counting steps, but there did appear to be fewer of them than I had thought there were. Did each step seem to be higher than it had been? But no, the stairway was the same worn, stained stairway it had always been for as long as I had used it. I was not in the habit of counting steps, but I counted them then, for future reference.
Sitting at my cluttered kitchen table, sipping from a mug of cocoa, I gazed through a window at the lights outside, trying to relax. My gaze ran absentmindedly over patterns of squares of light that were the windows of buildings on the other side of the street. I noted that there seemed to be fewer lights in those buildings than usual.
Sitting at my cluttered kitchen table, sipping from a mug of coffee, I gazed through the window at the day outside, trying to bring myself out of sleepy stupor to something resembling alertness. My gaze ran thoughtfully over the surfaces of the buildings across the street. There seemed to be more blank wall and fewer windows than there had been. There was a featureless surface of stone just above the doorway of the building directly opposite me which I remembered always as containing a window. My hand shook and coffee sloshed onto the table.
I did my best to count the steps as I hurried down the stairway, without curbing my downward momentum. There seemed to be the same number, give or take one or two… Emerging from the dim interior into the bright sunlight, I saw a figure moving by in the brightness, and heard it ask of another brightness-obscured figure, this one sitting on a bench, “What Time do you have?”
“It is today,” came the reply.
The questioner moved away down the street before my eyes adjusted to the surprisingly intense brightness of the day. The person on the bench, the assembly of expressionless flesh on the bench, was looking at me. Though apparently only sitting and looking at me, I was conscious of a senseless impression this person was occupied with some other, immense activity; something that caused me to stumble, disconcerted as I backed away.
I hurried along the sidewalk, unobtrusively studying the passersby. There was something unidentifiable about every one of them that disturbed me far beyond their uncanny expressionlessness and dead-seeming eyes.
Every car I saw was parked and silent. Some of the buildings seemed unfamiliar to me, though I had traversed this street innumerable times. There was a side-street I did not recall ever having noticed before. I thought perhaps I would explore it some other day, when my mind was more at ease. I recognized the name of the next side-street, but the buildings on it appeared unfamiliar and oddly designed. I thought there should be more windows, particularly in street-facing walls. This seemed also a valid criticism of some of the buildings on the street I was on, which was something I did not remember thinking before.
I came upon a building I was certain I had never seen before. I walked back and forth in front of it. This brick building had a doorway without a door, and notably few other features. There was not one window in any of the walls visible from the street. These great surfaces of brick seemed to have an ominous quality about them. The interior was dark; I could see nothing but the rectangle of sunlight on the floor just inside the doorway. The few passersby seemed to take no notice of this building. A man walked up to me and asked if I had the Time. I said, “It is Today.” He widened his mouth into a poor facsimile of a smile; something that expressed nothing; it was a widening of the mouth that seemed meant to convey to me that he saw behind my mask, saw that I did not understand the meaning of my answer, saw that I was terrified of him. He entered the doorway of the windowless building. He stopped where the sunlight through the doorway became weak. He was perfectly still, deathly still. I watched for some long minutes. His fingers did not twitch. His weight did not shift. An image came to mind of a wind-up toy run down and placed on a shelf. I turned and walked quickly away in the direction of my apartment. I did my best to ignore my surroundings, but this was difficult as the day became increasingly and unnaturally bright. Things around me glittered and shimmered and distorted into distinctive eye-catching forms.
Sipping from a bottle of vodka, I gazed at the clutter on my kitchen table, at the crumpled receipts, the empty cans, the mold on the grimy plates. I had turned on all the lights in the apartment. I had knocked on the doors of all the other apartments in the building that still had doors. No one had responded.
I picked my hand up off the table, scattering some of the crumbs that littered its surface, and placed it against the uninterrupted white plaster of the wall next to me.
I stumbled outside, and squinted in the intense sunlight. There was someone on the bench. I hurried over and sat down. Her eyes were uncommonly large and round and the pupils remained perfectly centered even when she turned her head to look at me. The rest of the face was rigidly inanimate, like a plastic mask. It was the owlish eyes that seemed the dominant feature.
“What is happening today?” I asked.
She spoke with an accent I could not identify. “You are being relocated.”
“I’m not planning on going anywhere.”
“You are being relocated, gradually. The distance is too long for it to happen any faster. As you can see, many things still appear familiar to you. I, for instance, doubtless still appear somewhat like a human being… Your accompanying us on our trip back is apparently by accident. None of us knows how it happened.”
I stood up and walked quickly away, repelled by and fleeing from her words, back into the apartment building.
Now each step in the stairway was at about the height of my knees.
There were no longer any apartment doors. Where some had been, now was only featureless wall. Where other
s had been, low arched corridors led into darkness. The corridors emitted distant warbling sounds, like metallic automaton opera. Where my own apartment door had been was a low arched opening like those of the corridors, but beyond that my apartment was still there.
Or it was at least very similar to my apartment. I sat in an armchair. The fabric I expected to be soft was not, and was slightly sticky. The metal legs had feet that branched and merged with the wooden floor. I waited uneasily to see my surroundings depart further from those that were familiar.
I noticed a group of forms in a dim corner of the room that nothing had previously occupied. I saw many round eyes there, trained on me, and many ears, presumably listening. It was not at all apparent how many creatures there were, or which ears belonged to the same creature as any given set of eyes. In folds of gray papery material an opening formed and spread into what I somehow knew was a grin of welcome.
This “accident” eventually occurred a second time. I was drawn along again with those beings on one of their journeys, and saw remembered earthly things gradually emerge, taking the place of grotesque forms that were animated by vitality I was uncertain was life.
Of course it came into my mind that an accident that could happen twice could happen a third time. After my return, my attention moved constantly among many otherwise inconsequential aspects of my surroundings.
Graham Lowther lives in Maine. He sometimes carves strange and surreal wood sculptures. A story of his appeared on Phantasmagorium Horror Literary Journal's online "Story of the Week", and a flash fiction of his appeared in The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities.
Story illustration by Lee Copeland
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The Arkham Terror
by Pete Rawlik
For the record, my name is Stuart Asa Hartwell. I reside and work at Number Twenty-Nine Crane Street. The expansive three-story house with its basement and sub-basement has served the Hartwell family as both home and storefront for generations, though not always in a medical capacity. My father, like my grandfather and his father before him were butchers and it was through his hard work that I was able to attend nearby Miskatonic University from which I obtained a degree in medicine and became a doctor. Given the heinous acts of which I am accused, it is perhaps better that my parents were lost in the summer of 1905, victims of the madness and typhoid fever that had enveloped Arkham. Shortly before that dreaded year my sister married a man named Kramer and moved to Boston. I have not heard from her or her family in more than fifteen years. Once again, perhaps it is better this way.
My involvement with the creeping horror would begin in that dread summer when even the lowliest of medical students were pressed into public service. The typhoid fever that had come to the city had grown to such an epidemic that both physicians and morticians were overwhelmed. The practice of embalming was forgone and services for the deceased were held en masse. In some cases, a single oversized grave and a hastily erected stone were the only niceties that could be mustered to mark the passing of entire families. Miskatonic University itself had shut its doors. Every member of the medical faculty was in service battling the plague, while non-medical faculty and staff were likewise pressed into carrying out the most menial but necessary tasks. It was not uncommon to see freshly graduated medical students or even nurses directing seasoned professors of literature in the fine sciences of sterilizing medical instruments or changing linens. It is my understanding that in a precedent-setting coup, the entirety of the Miskatonic’s science faculty commandeered the kitchen facilities of the student cafeteria and through the careful rationing of stores and application of modern manufacturing was able to supply not only the university but both the staff and patients of St. Mary’s Hospital for more than a month on a supply that was estimated to meet the needs of less than two weeks. Of all the acts of sacrifice that occurred during those sick days, those of Dr. Allan Halsey, the dean of medicine, were particularly distinguished. A skilled physician, Halsey walked where others feared to tread, taking on cases that appeared hopeless or that had overwhelmed lesser men. Driven to near physical and mental exhaustion, Dr. Halsey recruited me apparently at random, to serve as his driver and assistant. For the whole of July and the beginning of August the two of us crisscrossed the city to treat victims of all stations from the lowest of dockworkers to the daughter of the mayor. Dr. Halsey refused no one, and no act, whether administering injections or cleaning bed pans, was beneath him. That summer I am proud to say I learned much about being a doctor, and I am even prouder to have learned it from Dr. Halsey.
It was on the twelfth of August that Halsey, complaining of exhaustion and a migraine, promptly collapsed into the passenger seat of our commandeered Pierce Arrow automobile. We had spent the last sixteen hours administering to the thirty or so occupants of a rundown tenement on the south side of town, so the fact that he quickly fell into a deep sleep was to be expected. At his home on Derby Street, I could not rouse him from his slumber, and was forced to carry him from the Arrow to his bed. After a brief repast of water and bread, I took up my usual position on the couch in the parlor and quickly fell into a dreamless state of exhausted sleep. It was only the next morning, when I found Dr. Halsey unmoved from the position in which I had left him, that my concern was raised. Unresponsive to my verbal or physical attempts to rouse him, I quickly discovered his breath to be shallow and his heart rate dangerously low. I sent his houseboy, a young lad named Soames, to fetch help, but Doctor Waldron could do nothing but confirm my own diagnosis. Dr. Halsey had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, apparently brought on from the stress of the last several weeks. He lay silent and immobile for the whole of the day, and in the wee hours of the fourteenth his body succumbed to the injury and the great Dr. Allan Halsey passed away.
A funeral service was hastily assembled for the next morning and the entirety of the medical school faculty and remaining students attended. Flower wreaths and other tributes were sent by a number of Arkham’s elite as well as by the city administration. Following the service, the body was allowed to rest within the receiving vault, while the attendees tromped morosely through the streets to the Commercial House and held an impromptu wake that lasted through the afternoon and well into the evening. It was a somber, respectful affair punctuated by bouts of drunken melancholy that served only to drive our mood deeper into depression.
Most vociferous was the newly graduated Herbert West. Over the last two years, as the young West carried out the final phase of his education, years in which the student determines his own course of independent study, research and specialization, he and Halsey had clashed vehemently. West had become an adherent of certain theories, gleaned from the writings of certain European researchers, most notably Gruber and Muñoz, but not widely credited beyond a small circle of eccentrics. Halsey had attempted to counsel West on the futility of such radical theories, and when such warnings went unheeded, had banned West from carrying out experiments involving the administration of various reagents into the bodies of recently deceased animals. At the time West had called Halsey overly sentimental, but the entire campus understood that Halsey was by no means an anti-vivisectionist, but had prohibited West’s experiments on the grounds that his voracious use of subjects as outlined in his experimental design would have quickly devoured the entirety of available subjects, leaving none for use by other students.
West was a charismatic figure and had attracted a small cohort of similarly minded researchers including the weak-willed Daniel Cain, the flamboyant and adventurous Canadian Eric Moreland Clapham-Lee, and the diminutive Geoffrey Darrow, who despite his tendency to spend his days sketching anatomical details revealed during autopsies, was considered by many to be one of school’s most eligible bachelors, being the sole heir to the prestigious Darrow Chemical Company. Also present were Paul Rigas, Henryk Savaard, Richard Cardigan and Maurice Xavier. Like West, this band of miscreants had all come into conflict with Halsey or with Arthur Hillstrom, the
president of the Miskatonic Valley Medical Society, but in a series of magnanimous gestures, all proposed toasts to the good doctor, and none denigrated his good name. Even West took time to praise the man, though in the same breath he espoused a course of action which hinted at blasphemy and spawned a low and uneasy murmur throughout the room. It was then that I and my sometimes companion Chester Armwright, finding the atmosphere of the room suddenly unsavory, bade our farewells and departed for the evening. Given events to come, our departure was perhaps the most prudent of actions.
The next morning I slept in, the last several days having apparently taken their toll on me, and it was only the smell of my mother’s hash brown casserole that stirred my weary mind and body into action. Over breakfast my father and I listened as the radio announcer reported on two tragic events that had transpired in the night. The first detailed a gruesome discovery. Sometime after midnight the watchman of Christchurch Cemetery had been viciously assaulted and dismembered; a trail of blood led from the body to the gate of the receiving vault where it formed a small pool. A fainter trail led away from the tomb and into the woods where neither man nor dog could follow it. Police had questioned the proprietor of a traveling circus currently in Bolton, but all of the exhibits were quickly accounted for.
The second news report, while not as ominous, struck closer to home. At approximately three in the morning, the police had been summoned to a disturbance at a Water Street boarding house. After forcing a door, the police discovered Herbert West and Daniel Cain unconscious, the victims of a brutal attack from an unidentified stranger that the two claimed to have met in a downtown bar. After an hour, the stranger had suddenly turned violent and began pummeling, clawing and biting his two hosts before vandalizing the contents of the room. While West and Cain had sustained minor injuries, the police wondered how their assailant had fared after leaping from the second-story window to the lawn below.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2013 Page 49