She barely heard his words, trembled with an even larger realization.
These weren’t a snake or even snakes, but tendrils, millions of them, pseudopods each connected to the next, all leading back to one great, black shape, a bloated, many-eyed thing that hung in the vastness of space, reaching across the universe, across time, across the dimensions, feeding on worlds.
Vesta staggered against this, nearly lost her footing.
But Shug reached out gently, caught her, cradled her as she opened her eyes, felt the horror of what she’d just seen fray and vanish against the grey light of the sun, like some terrible fug.
“We are his parents. We’ll be his doorway, finally, into this world.”
She was dimly aware of a line of drool trickling from her mouth as Shug carried her down the hill, down the path, back into the house.
Vesta didn’t resist him, though she might have, could have, as he took her upstairs, removed her clothes, placed her on the bed, atop the quilts.
Didn’t resist as he removed his own clothes, stood naked and tumescent before her in the wan afternoon light.
Didn’t resist as he climbed atop her, entered her, moved atop her.
Actually moved with him as she felt it inside her, his many-fronded thing blooming within her womb, sending her consciousness soaring on a wave of exploding stars and planets culminating in a shriek of passion, like the cries of a million-billion souls raging against the rending of their lives.
Shug collapsed, spent, rolled off her. They lay there for a while, sweaty and overwhelmed, before he pulled the quilts over their bodies, fell asleep.
Vesta, the fading ember of those dying worlds still curled like burnt paper at the edges of her mind, found sleep more difficult. All the more so because she felt Shug still inside her, or at least whatever it was he’d left there.
She felt his seed pooling, felt it move, swirling and eddying within like the crops in the field, like the tendrils of fire in the blackness of space. Perhaps it was just her imagination, perhaps not. But she sensed it questing, probing ever deeper.
She lay there for quite a while, the sunlight in the room ebbing, then fading completely, before exhaustion caught up with her, and she slept.
—
It was dark when she awoke, the room hidden in shadows. Something held her down, and she struggled momentarily against it. She thought back to those snakelike things twisting between the stars, and shuddered in disgust.
It was only Shug’s arm, though, and she pulled away from it, sat on the edge of the bed naked. He snorted heavily, but didn’t stir.
The room was cold and quiet, just the sound of the furnace in the cellar, ticking against the bones of the house.
She ran her hands through her hair, shivered in the chilly gloom.
Remembered the taste of that blue shug-thing, the visions it had caused, the simultaneous feelings of intense despair and… jubilation? Was that right? Did she really feel exalted by what she’d experienced? Had it parted the curtains, lifted her to some higher plane of existence where she could see everything clearly, as if for the first time?
No… no.
Something felt wrong about it all. She also remembered how the pattern in the crops, Shug’s singing had made her head hurt; how its notes had wavered on the air, profoundly wrong.
Whatever Shug was up to, whatever change he was trying to usher in, didn’t feel right. She hadn’t been raised by particularly religious parents, wasn’t a usual Sunday churchgoer. But she considered herself Christian in that vague, American way that was really more of a shrugging “Well, what else would I be?” reaction.
What Shug was trying to do sounded patently un-Christian, therefore un-American.
Which meant she couldn’t just sit there and let him do it… whatever it was.
But what could she do about it?
Burn the fields.
Yep. She could do that.
—
It was a lot easier than she had even supposed it might be.
There was a gas can in the barn that held fuel for the tractor. It was a big one, ten gallons, but it was only about half full.
Vesta found the book of matches she’d given Shug to light the lantern that first night he’d slept in the barn. She also saw the long knife Cyrus had once used to cut squash and other produce off the vines, hanging on a hook near the barn door.
Sliding these both into the pocket of her winter coat, she grabbed the gas can with both hands, lugged it out of the barn and down the path to the fields.
It was dark and clear, still and cold. The stars shivered over her head in the blue-black sky, the moon just a yellowed fingernail paring midway up the arch of the night. Her breath came in little, steamy blats as she hauled the gas can to the fields. Her footsteps in the dirt sounded surprisingly loud, and she paused several times to look behind, to check for Shug. But he was evidently still sprawled across the bed, naked and spent.
Pausing at the top of the hill, she looked out onto the fields.
It was like a reflection of the sky, and for a second, it was truly disorienting.
Black above and black below, with bluish stars winking in both.
All of the many pods emitted an eldritch blue glow, and she couldn’t tell where the fields ended and the sky began.
After a dizzying moment, the illusion broke, and she was able to take a deep breath and haul the gas can down the hill to the edges of the field.
Once she was there, she moved fast.
Vesta’s cold hands fumbled at the screw-on lid to the can, finally loosened it, removed it. The smell of gasoline floated from the container like a ghost. She gave the path behind her one last look to make sure no one was there, then she hefted the can, began splashing gas on the plants.
She’d half expected wailing from the blue pods, but maybe they were slumbering, since they remained quiet.
She knew that would probably change when she applied the match.
Going as quickly as she could, she went into the field 50 yards or so, sloshing gas everywhere. She zagged toward the river slightly, made her way back to the clearing where she’d started. She had neither the gas nor the stamina to cover the entire field, so she hoped that once it got started, it would spread on its own to engulf all the plants.
Dropping the gas can, she fumbled in her pocket, produced the box of wooden matches.
A hand shot from the darkness, enfolded hers.
“Don’t.”
Vesta sighed, and it congealed in the air like rime, floated into the darkness.
Shug pulled her to him, turned her around.
“What are you doing?” he asked, disappointment evident in his tone. He was fully dressed now, wearing Cyrus’s field coat. For some reason, that made her madder than anything else.
“I think you know what I’m doing,” she said, wriggling a little in his grasp.
“Vesta, why? Why fight change? Especially when it’s necessary… and inevitable.”
But Vesta wasn’t listening to his words. She was staring at his lips, his mouth… or rather at the air coming out of his mouth.
As cold as it was this fall night, every breath she exhaled turned to immediate steam.
His breath was invisible.
She could hear him breathing, see the rise and fall of his chest, but whatever came out, seemed to be no warmer than the night air.
That gave her a pause.
“I can’t let you do… whatever it is you mean to do, Shug. I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because it ain’t right. American boys… my boy went to Europe to fight against this kind of thing. They died to prevent this kind of thing. And now you want to bring it back here?”
Shug chuckled. “I’m not growing Nazis, Vesta. Not even communists.”
Vesta frowned. “I know that… well… dammit, I don’t know that. I don’t rightly know what you’re doing, I just know it ain’t right. Ain’t Christian or even American.”
“Y
ou’re right about that, my dear. But what have those two things ever done for you, hmm? I mean, what good has either brought to the world?”
“Peace and freedom?”
“Illusions. You have neither. What I’m attempting to do is bring truth here. Just the plain old truth, Vesta. Isn’t that better?”
Vesta considered that momentarily, twisted in his grip.
“No. And I don’t mean that it isn’t better, I just don’t think I believe what you’re selling. I’m not sure it’s that simple.”
“But it’s just that simple, you know that. You saw when you ate one of the shuggoth. You saw reality, even if it was just a glimpse.”
“What I saw frightened me.”
“Wouldn’t you rather know the truth, even if it frightens you?”
“No,” she said, and then she remembered the knife. Her free hand slid into her coat pocket, cold-numbed fingers curling around its haft. “And besides, all I saw was hunger… destruction.”
“Yes… so?”
“So? If your change… if your god requires destruction, I’m not kneeling to that. Besides, it seems like your god eats its worshipers, too.”
“Only some,” he responded. “Now, give me the matches.”
He applied pressure to her wrist, and she cried out, dropped the box.
As he bent to retrieve it, Vesta wrested the knife from her pocket, brought it out and up in a thrust so fast she didn’t feel it sink into his chest up to the wooden handle.
He grunted, stood, looked down at his chest. Shug put his hand out, cupped her face. His eyes were glassy, wide, surprised.
“I would never have hurt you, Vesta,” he grunted, leaning in to whisper to her. “You’re far too important.”
Immediately, she panicked. Perhaps she’d misinterpreted events. Maybe she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Dear lord, what if she’d killed someone harmless, someone whose motives were good? Someone who really did love and cherish her?
Shug crumpled to the ground, blood bubbling into his shirt, spreading.
Blue blood, not red.
Vesta put her hand to her mouth, stepped back.
Shug’s form shifted, wavered.
Suddenly, Shug was gone and in his place was… something.
A monstrosity.
Roughly man-sized, naked, smooth-skinned. Its color was hard to discern in the night, but it was shaped slightly like a torpedo or bomb, bulbous at its base, tapering to a blunt point. A pair of wings were crumpled beneath it, broken and covered in bristles.
There was no head, no discernible mouth, no appendages. Just a ring of eyes around its midsection, perhaps two dozen of them, large as half dollars, black and depthless. Though she could not be sure, she thought they all focused on her.
“Shug?” she asked, kneeling beside him, but not touching him. She couldn’t bring herself to do that. He… it… was so ugly now, so alien, bereft of the beauty he’d possessed when she’d first met him, his glamour stripped away. No gold ringlets or big, powerful hands or piercing eyes anymore, just this cold, squirmy creature coiled on the ground.
The thing stirred, and Vesta heard a sound in her head, as if something were clearing its throat.
“You see me in my true form. Are you repulsed?”
“Well…”
“It’s all right, Vesta. It’s all an illusion anyway, isn’t it?”
“But why? What for?” she asked.
“All toward a greater goal, a deeper end. To bring him into this world.”
“No,” she said, jumping to her feet and stepping away from him. “I can’t let that happen.”
She found the book of matches on the ground, picked it up. Knocking one into her palm, she put its head against the striking plate on the box, drew it back.
The match flared into life, the only white-yellow light in the fields.
“Vesta… don’t,” Shug said.
She didn’t listen, didn’t turn.
Instead, she tossed the lit match into the field.
Much of the gasoline had dissipated since she’d poured it out, but there was enough to do the job.
There was a resonating whumph! and flames leapt into the night, white and yellow, tinged with blue. As they raced from plant to plant, the drooping bulbs hissed, burst open, and the liquid that gushed from them caught fire, too.
Instantly, as she feared, the mewling from the plants erupted into a chorus of wailing in her brain, not the least from the Shug-thing slumped on the ground.
Soon, the field was in full conflagration, and the clearing where Vesta stood was cast in stark light, flickering like the cold stars above.
Appalled by what she’d done—stabbing her lover, setting the last of her husband’s land to the torch—she stood transfixed, immobile for many minutes.
“It’s okay, really,” came Shug’s voice in her head. “My job is done. I’ve brought the old gods to the new world.”
“No, I stopped it,” she said, turning toward the dying creature.
“Vesta,” it chided. “You destroyed the child’s food, that’s all.”
A chill swept through her, penetrating the wall of heat that even now pressed out in all directions from the burning fields, insistent against her face.
“You have to be a child to enter this world, even if you’re a god. And a child must eat.”
At those words, something sharp and demanding cut through her gut. As she felt the Shug-thing die—his essence snapping off in her mind as clearly as a light switch—Vesta dropped to her knees in the dirt, her hands cradling her stomach. It wasn’t bulging with anything at all, but it was tight, and she could feel something turning inside, winding and tumbling.
She was terrified of what Shug had just said, the pain grinding through her abdomen.
But was she also, just a bit, excited?
Did he mean…?
No, dear god, no.
Yes.
She was still in her housedress underneath the heavy coat, and something wet burst across her bare legs, gelatinous and as cold as Shug’s breath.
She heard more than felt her underwear tearing, splitting.
Then, it pushed out of her, spread her legs with its coming, quivering, large, larger than she could have ever imagined. Yet, curiously, she experienced little pain. It was as if it entered from somewhere else, sliding into this world from some other, through the door of her vagina, carried on a slick of some cold, jellied fluid that eased its transition.
Vesta heard it plop to the ground between her legs, and she pushed away from it, ass-scooted across the cold dirt of the clearing.
Already, a light, blue snowfall of ashes fluttered from the sky, smelling of burnt almonds and that elusive, otherwhere spice, now charred and bitter.
In the lambent firelight, she saw the lump she’d passed. It was no larger than a loaf of bread, and covered in something shiny and grey.
Biting back the worst of her fears (and anticipation), she crawled slowly to it, cautious. She saw that whatever it was, it was covered in a caul of tissue that looked like one of the veiny blue pods bursting in the burning field.
Filled with terrified fascination, she reached out, touched it.
It was warm, and it writhed beneath her touch, made a small sound, a little mewl that was not precisely the noise made by the larva that had inhabited the blue pods, yet not quite human either.
Biting her lip, she punctured the caul carefully. Blue-red fluid gushed out on a cloud of steam, trickled over the drooping sac, soaked into the dirt. She tore at the deflated skin, tougher than she’d imagined, but soon she exposed what was inside.
It was a baby, a human child. Its eyes were tightly closed, but its mouth was open, wailing now, and not just in her head, but actual sound vibrating through the air.
Her heart leaping in her chest, Vesta pulled the rest of the caul away, exposing the child’s not quite as human lower half.
Just under its perfectly formed navel, its body narrowed, divided in half, in half
again, then in half again. Eight perfectly formed tentacles, as smooth and pink as the rest of its flesh, curling, grasping at each other, reaching out to touch her legs, clutch at the hem of her dress.
Vesta at first was repelled by it, wouldn’t touch it, considered swatting at its curious, probing appendages.
Then, he opened his eyes, looked at her.
In those eyes, the fiery field was reflected, and Vesta remembered the flames, stars winking out and the many-armed thing reaching through the depthless black of space, destroying, devouring…
She thought about Shug’s last words, how he claimed that this world masked the reality of the universe.
Thought, there beside that writhing baby—that she herself had birthed—thought what it might mean to be the mother of a god, how venerated those mothers were.
Something deeply, primally maternal stirred within her as she looked on the child, as alien as he might be. She decided, there in the dirt, that she would be his mother.
For Shug had given her something… something Cyrus never had.
A child… a god.
She lifted him from the dirt and the prison of his caul, lifted him to her and cradled him, feeling his mouth latch onto her breast and take the milk she was suddenly filled with.
For she knew that true power lay not with the god, but with she who birthed him, she who fed him.
As she looked upon him, the child’s image wavered, flickered.
He rolled over and fixed her with his great, black eyes, each showing something like love for the thing that would be his mother.
She knew he had a name, a name that one day he would tell her.
But for now, right now, he would be Shug.
Just Shug.
IT REALLY IS A BEAUTIFUL TOWN
Ronald Malfi
Behold! As you cut through a blistering afternoon along shimmery blacktop, and if you are somehow compelled to take the correct exit (even though the exit is not identified by any road sign), you may find that your destination comes upon you instead of the other way around. Take that exit and you may see that the trees—which at first appear, so full and green on this midsummer day, to encroach upon you and nearly impede your passage—pull back like curtains on a stage to reveal the gridded streets and quaint, whitewashed houses of the Town. The rooftops look like circuits on a motherboard and the backyard swimming pools, of which there are many, shine like fire beneath the blazing summer sun. Children ride their bikes up and down the manicured neighborhood streets while the boughs of Dutch elms and dogwoods wave at them in the breeze. On weekends, men wash their cars in their driveways while their wives hang laundry in the backyards. The air is scented by the sweet aroma of apple pie. Everyone curbs their dog.
Shadows Over Main Street, Volume 2 Page 23