by Orrin Grey
A few people turned to look at me, then went back to their dinner, shaking their heads.
It’s that mad professor. What does he see in the ocean now?
I threw some lire on the table. Someone must have seen this. The others at the hotel. The guests. I am not alone. I am not alone. Then a blessing. As I left, I saw an old fisherman on the pier cross himself. But that was all. Did he really see it, too, or was he warding off my reaction? My God, am I that alone?
***
I fell at once into the doorman.
“The ferry. The ferry is gone.”
He sniffed my breath, put his arms on my shoulders with the gentle touch reserved for children.
“The weather was bad, Professor. The ferry won’t arrive until tomorrow. Or perhaps after the carnival, if the sea continues her rough play. Come, we still have your room.”
The sea was calm.
“No, I saw it. The hand. The mouth.”
He led me to the bar and poured a grappa.
“Drink this. You’ve been out all day, Professor.”
“All day.”
I echoed his words as if they explained everything. All problems, hallucinations, the pitiful cries of the four-limbed sticks, were the products of being out “all day.”
I took the drink to my room. Sleep. Nightmares.
CARNIVAL
Diario Di Leiano
On the desk, next to the customary water pitcher, lay a three-foot-long cardboard tube and a magnifying glass. I opened the tube and a sheet of paper slid out. There was also a scroll, rolled and bound with a red thread. The paper read: Before the hour of contemplation, you should know certain things. Thus, the experience is enhanced, the feast is well-seasoned.
There wasn’t a signature, but I knew the author. I unrolled the scroll, pinning the corners down with a few books. Pomptinia Sum.
The print fascinated me as before: the quay, the town, the ivy growing over the crumbling ruins, the minuscule people. I saw hints of sublime detail. The morning light shone golden over the professor’s magnifying glass, illuminating the ever-falling dust motes in the air above it. I didn’t want to take it. Oh, how I wanted to take it. A voice, a force deep within—without?—urged me to pick up the glass. I am no saint, but I know the calling: Tolle! Vide! So, I took and I looked. Under the glass, I could see the veins in the ivy leaves, the crumbling holes in the mortar, and the look on each and every person’s face, but the impossible artistic skill was second to my disquiet. I live by my guts, for in my head, I am no one. My guts tightened. I recognized some faces. I’d seen them in town, or on my perambulations around the island. Not relatives, not descendants, the same faces. From the feet of these modern persons from centuries ago, roots—no wider than a hair’s breadth even under the glass—sank into the ground. These tangled, ganglion roots entwined everything on Pomptinia and led inexorably to the sea beneath the castle. More figures. By the church, the priest. And Kate, too, wearing a rustic, loose-sleeved blouse. In a window of the hotel, back turned, sat a figure on this very floor, in this very room. A chill ran through me, but the figure didn’t turn and who knows truly the back of one’s own head. Hallucinations. Visions. Madness. I shall stay outside today, near the sea to wait for the ferry. I will be the first aboard. Until then, in numbers, there is safety from madness.
***
The first day of carnival and the piazza before the Lacrima exploded with color and sound. Strings of red-and-yellow flags hanging in loose parabolas between the buildings coruscated in the sunlight. Children lapped dripping gelato, while their parents munched suppli, fresh and hot. The citizens pushed the fruit stands and fish stalls to the side for the street performers. Harlequins juggled. A fire breather blasted dragon breath into the sky. I made my way from pocket to pocket, sidling closer to a Punch and Judy show. I bought hot, sugar-dusted pecans served in a paper cone, redistributing the new wealth as best I could. The puppet show was the typical proto-vaudevillian farce of gleeful, stick-smacking violence appreciated by children and dictators alike. To one side of the puppet booth stood a line of four players dressed as nuns, their downcast faces veiled with white cloth. Oversized stage manacles linked their legs together. A cardboard sign read: LE SUORE TRISTI. The red letters still dripped. Some carnivalesque farce, but I didn’t recognize the motif.
I watched, transfixed, until someone jostled my shoulder. My hands patted my pockets—it takes one to know one—and I saw the loathsome priest standing at my side. He’d crawled from his church like a snail leaving its shell.
“The oldest entertainment,” he said, nodding towards the puppets as Judy slapped Punch across the face with a paddle.
“I think you’re barred from the oldest entertainment, Father.”
“Before Venus, there is Bacchus. And before the needs of the stomach, something must die, even if the stomach consumes itself.”
He licked his fingers and helped himself to some pecans, spreading the top layer with his saliva. I pulled the cone away spilling the pecans. Vertigo touched me. I felt sick and profoundly cold. “You look pale, John Professore Francisco. Come sit in the church.”
He put his hand on my arm. A visceral repulsion sent bile into my throat.
“I think I’ll watch the show.”
His words wormed into my brain. I couldn’t shake the nausea. Punch and Judy bobbed up and down, and I wondered about the hands that thrust into their guts, held them aloft, lent them life’s verisimilitude. The hands that led to one head, one brain, divided against itself for its own entertainment. And the thought grew. Thousands of hands stretched on the puppeteer’s wriggling arms, finding their way under the cobble stones and thrust up into the children, their parents, the priest. Everyone on the island, sprouting, lifeless rags jiggled by one ancient mind putting on a show.
A final blow. Punch collapsed. The curtains swished shut. Punch and Judy reappeared. A great round of applause—puppets cheering for their own performance. The puppeteer revealed himself and took a bow. Giovanni. He marked me with his eyes.
“And now let the sad nuns ascend the castle,” he said, sweeping his arm towards the players.
“Oh, goody,” the priest whispered, “Let’s get some fruit.”
The vertigo consumed me. Something in my vision twists. No sooner has he spoken than the air erupts with apples, lemons and bananas. Children and adults pelt the players, who crouch and twist as best they can to take the blows on their backs. Now and then, an egg cracks against them. The crowd cheers. Giovanni produces his paddle from the puppet show and smacks the nuns. Muffled cries rise from behind the veils as the superfluity shuffles towards the causeway. A rock hits a player. She stumbles, clutching her head, where a wet stain spreads across the habit.
“Got her.”
The priest grins. “A perfect shot.”
The priest lifts to throw again, clenching a jagged brick. I stay his arm, but the old man is surprisingly strong and he shakes free. His body goes rigid, as if iron rods underlie his bones, then he shoves me. I sprawl back, arms windmilling, until I crash into some farmers behind us. My chest burns where his palm struck me. The farmers cast me aside and I lie gasping on the ground mouthing “why” until sweet air floods my lungs.
“Tenderizer,” he says over his shoulder and throws the brick.
The crowd fires more stones. Giovanni keeps the chain gang moving, goading them with paddle blows as the missiles bounce around them.
I follow behind, grimacing as white fire lances across my ribs. When it reaches the causeway, the mob stops. The players, clothing torn and bloodied, are prodded along until they reach the other side and disappear into the waiting gate of the castle’s lowest staircase. The people disperse; their rigid features slacken. They wander away in twos or threes, plodding back to the piazza like somnambulists. The storm has passed. The priest crouches on the shoreline. He holds his head in his hands, lowers them, and looks in my direction. He weeps freely.
***
The hotel is chaos.
I’m not the only one scuffed and bruised. The Belgian holds a napkin with crushed ice over a purple eye. An Englishman’s arm hangs in a makeshift sling, swollen fingers dangling like dead sausage. The staff urges everyone back to their rooms while the Colonel shouts for them to send for the Neapolitan Carabinieri. The Roman thugs themselves are nowhere to be found. And Kate, Kate has attached herself to the Colonel, rubbing his shoulders, soothing him, schmoozing him. It seems so staged, every actor in place, a tableau of horror, just for me. I retreat to my room. Pomptinia Sum is conspicuous by its absence from the nightstand. My mind has fallen apart. I contemplate the morning events. Why did I stop the priest? What had I truly witnessed? The players are nothing to me. I presume they chose to take part in the pageant. Indeed, for all I know, it is an honor to play the sad nun. But the guests. They were attacked, too. Plan B. I shall remain in this room until the ferry comes.
There is shouting from below. Running upstairs. Footsteps approach.
***
The chancer clutched his cane and stood to the side of the door. The handle jiggled once. Then, with a great crack, the door burst open.
The chancer smacked the first face he saw across the nose. Four others stepped over their writhing comrade. His cane rose and fell, rammed guts, burst an eye, but they had his arms in moments. He kicked and flailed until a heavy-set gunsel worked his ribs and head over with a club. Giovanni’s face leered over his. “Well-seasoned. The castle awaits.”
SOMEONE AT LAST
The room is rectangular. The walls are a yellowish stone with brown splotches the color of tobacco-stained teeth. A stone bench projecting from the wall wraps around the room. Every foot and a half, there is a hole in the bench, beneath which rests a jar. The jars’ rims cup the holes like the mouths of hungry eels. Above each jar slumps a carnival nun. An iron door seals the room. A narrow slit in the wall admits a shaft of yellow sunlight that falls across the slack nuns. Dark, inkblot stains turn a crusty brown on the white veils. I, too, sit on the bench, immobile. Beneath me, there must be a jar. On the third day of entombment, I am astounded at the noise of the flies. I spend the morning trying to tease out the buzz from a single fly. It is like teasing out a single thought from the endless stream that makes up the mind.
***
A shadow crosses the shaft of light. In the slit, the priest appears, grinning. His face beaded with sweat. His eyes bulge.
“And here you will be cured of your delusions.”
The face shifts and bits of other faces appear and fade beneath the skin, outlines pressed in latex. Faces of the islanders; faces I know.
“And once cured ....”
He licks his lips. “You’re going to be a tasty treat. No, you’ll be the main course. Those others are just an aperitif.”
He grows silent and is content to leer at me with his bulbous eyes and lurid grin.
***
The light softens. The room is sweltering, a sauna heat. My sweat runs down my back, into the crevice of my buttocks and finally drips into the jar. All my liquid makes its way there, the air too humid to take any more moisture into itself. My face is scratchy with salt crystals. Across from me, the others shrink, sluicing drop by drop into the jars. The light grows dark, returns in molten gold, recedes into its little death, returns.
***
Flies.
***
A habit falls away to reveal the lolling head of Petrus. His tongue protrudes, thick and black.
***
At twilight, the room shudders. Things snake beneath the floor, reach under the jars, slide them aside. There is a succulent noise. The room shakes; the walls tilt like a storm-tossed ship’s. The corpses across from me dance in their seats, arms rise and fall, legs kick out, heads twist and cock, puppets to whatever thing lifts them from below. Another moist slurp. The corpses fall slack. The jars slide back. The room settles. I was victim to a perverse, mistaken point of view. The room never shook.
***
I am finally stripped away, the core of the onion. I remember only a general and his words to Mussolini: “A nothing man such as this will do nicely.”
***
Hands drag us to the cliff. Below, the water roils. Beneath the whitecaps, a great maw opens and the roaring ocean falls past a billion hungry teeth, one for every star. Behold the face of a Titan, of God. The sluice jars are emptied like slop buckets into the ravenous emptiness. Tongues lap the water. “Down you go.”
The other bodies are tipped into the sea and the great island feeds.
“And now the pièce de résistance.”
Weightless bliss, then cement. The maw closes. The beast feeds. But I am the void. In me, there is no sustenance. I am a poison. Minds are grist for the puppet procession, but I was reconstituted from my grave, empty and ravenous. The ocean heaves. I am spat out on the rocks, a gob of phlegm. I slide down towards the sea where a great thing starves and dies. Perhaps there is room for me now to grow. For a time, the island is free. For a time. A ship approaches, thronging with soldiers. At last, they may come. Blackshirts.
* * *
THE AUTHORS
Jennifer Brozek is an award winning editor, game designer, and author.
Winner of the Australian Shadows Award for best edited publication, Jennifer has edited fourteen anthologies, with more on the way. Author of In a Gilded Light, The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting, Industry Talk, and the Karen Wilson Chronicles, she has more than sixty published short stories and is the Creative Director of Apocalypse Ink Productions.
Jennifer also is a freelance author for numerous RPG companies. Winner of both the Origins and the ENnie award, her contributions to RPG sourcebooks include Dragonlance, Colonial Gothic, Shadowrun, Serenity, Savage Worlds, and White Wolf SAS. Jennifer is the author of the YA Battletech novel, The Nellus Academy Incident. She has also written for the AAA MMO Aion and the award winning videogame, Shadowrun Returns.
When she is not writing her heart out, she is gallivanting around the Pacific Northwest in its wonderfully mercurial weather. Jennifer is an active member of SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. Read more about her at www.jenniferbrozek.com or follow her on Twitter at @JenniferBrozek.
***
Orrin Grey is a writer, editor, amateur film scholar, and monster expert who was born on the night before Halloween. His infatuation with monsters informs most of what he does, from his fiction—which has been collected in Never Bet the Devil & Other Warnings and Painted Monsters & Other Strange Beasts (coming in 2015 from Word Horde)—to his nonfiction work covering subjects ranging from monster comics to the films of John Carpenter. He also co-edited Fungi, an anthology of weird fungal stories with Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and regularly writes licensed work for Privateer Press, makers of Warmachine and Hordes.
Orrin lives in the Kansas City area, which has shown up in several of his stories, though never as heavily as in “The Lesser Keys.” He had a lot of fun researching the history of the “Paris of the Plains” and if you see him at a convention sometime, ask him about the bits that didn’t make it into the story. In the meantime, you can find him online at orringrey.com.
***
A.D. Cahill knows enough about everything to annoy his friends but not enough about one thing to get a job. Did he get a BS in English because he loves science or because he wanted to say he had a BS in English? Yes. He’s lived under the northern lights where the crystal moon hangs like golden frost on the outré black. He’s watched the Abashiri ice flows carry seals to Hokkaido’s shores. He’s delved the mysteries of ancient Pithecusae and other Mediterranean isles. He’s taught English in Japan, Norwegian in Iowa, and Latin in Florida. His work has appeared in Dog Oil Press, Innsmouth Free Press and Future Lovecraft. Stop by adcahill.com or find him on Facebook.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Dreams of a Thousand Young
The Lesser Keys
Pomptinia Sum
The Authors
/> Orrin Grey, Jazz Age Cthulhu