* * *
A Dog Named Shallow: The Testimony of Lilya Redmond
As provided by Erick Mertz
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Back then I had a dog. Her name was Shallow. We lived together in a fifth-wheel, parked on a two-acre plot way up on Passmore Road. All around us there was this wide-open meadow, hemmed in by a deep, dark pine barren.
Those there were good days.
Shallow and I walked each day. We would strike across the meadow then down along the tree line. She loved walking, always mindful of my voice. As a reward one spring morning, we took a different path. We left the trailer before dawn, under a canopy of fog stretching out as far as the eye could fathom.
Instead of crossing the meadow, we walked through the barren. We were turning back just after daybreak when we come suddenly upon this man out walking alone. I had never seen him before, burly type with a stare as distant as the horizon. Had an exotic accent, a quality I've always felt attracted to. Shallow loved him. Couldn't pull her away. I remember a sense of lost time; although our talk lasted only a minute or two, it felt like eons.
What did we talk about? As I recall, we discussed the fog.
What I remember best was his manner of speaking. Maybe something got lost in translation, but to hear him describe that fog, it was like a living, breathing thing. I listened until we reached a particular moment in our conversation, then he simply vanished back into the woods. How odd, I thought.
That morning changed Shallow. Couldn't keep her close on our walks. She'd paw at the door all day while I was at work. I'd come home and find our space torn apart, like she was desperate to escape something. After nightfall, she'd pace up and down, keeping me awake, growling and barking.
One morning, I recall driving in to work. It was early October, time of year when the light starts changing. About halfway into town, I was overcome with a sudden, dreadful sensation that I couldn't shake. I felt like I had left the stove on, so I turned around and went back.
I approached the trailer and found the door ajar. As my hand went to the knob, a fear worse than a hot burner was confirmed: Shallow had escaped. I ran like mad through the trees, yelling her name at the top of my voice. All afternoon I looked, dragging through every blackberry tangle and creek bed in that barren. Around 4:30, as the fog settled, I gave up. My only hope, I thought, would be that she returned to the trailer out of either fright or hunger.
On my way back, I passed through a birch grove. The leaves were golden, still clinging to the branches. One gust would have stripped them all clean. In the center there was a clearing and a rock, unlike any I'd seen in that barren. It was hip high, big around like a dinner table and certainly did not form there. Seemed to me that rock had been dropped into that clearing from somewhere beyond.
There were footsteps in the mud, going every which way. I crept around to the opposite side of the rock where I found Shallow. She wasn't sleeping. She was just curled up, lingering on the brink, completely unaware of me. I whispered her name, "Shallow," voice trembling. She didn't budge though. Not even a slight twitch of her nose. A chill consumed me and it wasn't the cold.
After a moment, I picked her up. She was heavy, legs dangling as I carried her body away. We went up that hill through the gloaming, back toward our trailer. When I laid her down to open the door, I had a vision.
That man. As clear as day, his face washed over me. He's been down by that stone recently, I thought. He's behind this.
Shallow passed that spring. Don't like to talk about that time too much, except to say in those last months, I was by her side, night and day. I stayed away from work so I could care for her. I chose a spot on our customary walk to bury her body, in her favorite trail wayside where she would run up ahead and root around. Chose not to mark her spot. I dragged branches over the mound.
I'll remember where she rests, I thought.
This part I will tell though. On my way back from burying Shallow, I passed through the clearing where I had found her months before. As I arrived amidst those trees, I about fell over with fright. That stone had vanished with neither hole nor crater to mark its place. A patch of grass-covered earth lay undisturbed before me. I looked around, thinking there had to be a sign of how, tire tracks or perhaps bark burned by a rope pulley; there was nothing. As that thought trailed away, I was overtaken by another vision. I recognized more than that man's face. He knows that I'm here, I thought, as I ran from the clearing.
There was no doubt in my mind, detective.
I think of Shallow every day. She had spirit. Once she encountered that man though, everything sapped away. After Shallow passed, there was no use keeping the land. I allowed my lease to lapse and sold our trailer. I married some guy in town so I could be closer to work. The way I'm telling it now, suppose I was starting over, trying to forget.
I seemed to move on too, until the other day, when I seen that man again. He was on the news, the one you arrested for digging. You know whom I'm describing? The man who dug a grave down in that pine barren, only to discover there wasn't a body.
Right. Him. That was the man who spoke about the fog like a living, breathing organism. That was the man who stole my life away from me.
* * *
Lilya Redmond ran away at the age of eleven. She was gone a week before returning and never spoke about her experience. Lilya has never been honest regarding her age. Some peers have placed her as a junior in 1982 although this she has denied.
She attended three terms at MU before dropping out. She has worked at a group home since 1987, never rising above the position of direct care worker. In 2001, she married Edwin Black, a long haul trucker from Toronto. In 2003, she made an allegation of verbal abuse against Black, but has since recanted her initial claim.
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Erick Mertz writes fiction, screenplays, and poetry while living with his wife, dog, and cats in Portland, Oregon. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in English and Comparative Literature in 1998. He writes full-time while also working with persons with disabilities and mental health challenges.
Recent short stories have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles and Mad Scientist Journal. His short story "The Measurable Blood" has been adapted into an audio book. His new novella The Pelican is due in the summer of 2014. Follow along @emertzwriting and his site: www.erickmertzwriting.com.
* * *
So Praise Him
An account by Wesley Strang, as provided by Samuel Marzioli
* * *
I, Gloria Stromm, a surviving member of the First Church of Arkham, bear witness that "The Revival," written by Mr. Wesley Strang, is an honest and true record of the events that did transpire on April 6th through April 12th, 1950.
Signed,
Gloria Stromm
Arkham, Massachusetts, 1955
#
Excerpted from "The Revival," by Wesley Strang
Mr. Todd stood, again, poised over the paraffin candles on the altar, thumb upon the flint wheel of his Zippo lighter. To his right, Pastor Stromm held his arms out, shaking as if he were supporting some enormous weight. Around me, the congregation lifted one or both hands, eyes shut as they focused on that single word of invitation, "Come!"
That evening, on Pastor Stromm's insistence, we used a new approach to praise and worship--loud and ostentatious, like carnival barkers enticing passersby. He said he'd been researching the practice for years before bringing it to our attention and that it was the key to our success. But so far it'd been four nights of raucous praise and prayer, met by an apathetic silence from above, and our own discontent. Despite it all, we pressed on.
"So praise Him," Pastor Stromm shouted, attempting to stir us up into deeper supplication. "I can sense some of you are holding back. He wants to hear you, so praise Him!"
Voices lifted in a wall of sound. I tried again to join them. I closed my eyes, put my attention on that spot behind my eyelids where red and black swirled in an endless corridor of con
centration. My praising spot. After another earnest attempt, I sighed and settled into my seat.
Guilt tugged at the muscles of my gut. No matter how much I wanted to participate, something held me back. Perhaps nerves. Perhaps confusion about what this was supposed to accomplish. But most of all, the fear that our desperate cries for attention were no better than a pack of noisy dogs, barking and scuffling up the trunk of the wrong tree.
#
At the beginning of the fifth day's service, disappointment ran high. Though I chose to remain quietly indignant, the grumbling from others in the parish came in a widespread baritone murmur. Pastor Stromm reacted quickly. He raised a hand and everyone fell quiet.
"I can sense the doubt among you, but you must hold steadfast if you wish to reap the benefits."
He put his hands behind his back, began pacing the stage with eyes downcast. Equal parts Charlie Chaplin shuffle, and a death row march to the electric chair.
"You've heard me mention this story already, shared with me by the great granddaughter of the man, Francis Seymour, himself. In 1850, the Ten Faithful of Vinewood Street met in Pastor Seymour's house to collect in prayer. It was a humble house, not much more than dust and hardwood flooring. Hardly a temple fit for God. I dare say, for five weeks, nothing happened beyond good old fashioned fellowship and a whole lot of sore knees."
On cue, a chuckle from the crowd.
"But on the sixth week, the last day of a planned three-day fast"--he slammed a palm against the pulpit, with a wood shivering crash--"the Divine Presence shook up that house and everyone inside it. Changed them somehow, once and forever."
His theatrics did their job. The congregation responded with an enthusiastic, "Amen!" that had them shifting in their seats.
"Now, Seymour's wife left the group soon after and took their daughter with her. She lacked the faith, lacked the conviction, to carry on. As a result, both wife and daughter lost out on the blessings poured out from that day forward, something I gather they both regretted until their dying days. But this close to the finish line, we can't be guilty of the same, can we?"
He fell still, turned toward the audience and dropped his arms into a loose shrug.
"Of course not ... So praise Him!"
The response was instantaneous. Our voices lifted in accord and hands shot up so fast one might have thought Pastor Stromm had threatened to jump into the crowd. Soon, the sanctuary filled to bursting with hopeful cries and singing.
Everywhere, people began to shake in turns, as if a low electric current progressed from person to person and pew to pew. Pastor Stromm fell to his knees. Mr. Todd rested his chin on his palms and his elbows on the altar. He lit his face with a closed-eyed smile, having quite forgotten the ritual lighting of the candles.
Even I wasn't immune. I could feel heat gathering in my chest and in my palms. A buzzing started in my brain and the world teetered like an ocean. For a moment, I was a raft thrown about by violent, cresting waves, which threatened to swallow me up in its vast waters. I choked, if only on the idea. But then I realized the sensation wasn't breathlessness after all, rather strange words attempting to rise unbidden from my throat.
"Kamsssa isss-cryp sssak-reepee--"
The spell soon broke for me when Anthony, the Leftkes' boy, turned around and stared. Amid the maelstrom of similar gibberish shouted by the other parishioners, I could feel his gaze--those twin beams of absent-minded distraction--burrowing into my skin. When our eyes met, he shoved a finger into his nostril and dug around. It didn't come out alone. And I couldn't bear the thought or sight of it drifting to his open, waiting mouth. I hurried from the sanctuary to stem the rising tide of sick.
As I stepped into the night, I took in a deep breath. The light of the only working lamppost wavered from half a block away and then fizzled out. After that, the street teemed with a dark and eerie silence, transforming trees into giants caught in a ceremonial sway, cars into crouching beasts waiting for unsuspecting passersby.
Once my stomach settled, I focused on the waning moon. Letting my eyes absorb its soft trim of glowing blue.
We were a church of the Calvinist tradition, and for the most part held ourselves proper and restrained. Though we were open to outward shows of worship, they were never anything on this level. And never before had there been such a demonstrative response to our efforts.
Whatever it was, it'd brought more than just mesmerizing warmth, disorientation, and the compulsion to make strange utterances. There was hunger in it--a need stronger than the pulse of our collective desire, maybe even stronger than our will.
I didn't bother going back inside.
#
On the sixth day, I almost didn't attend the service. The experience from the previous night left a hollow ache inside me, as if I were a battery drained of all its juice. It wasn't so much physical weariness, but like some indistinct quality deep within me had gone missing.
Nevertheless, my sense of obligation was the stronger pull. I'd been attending the church for nine years, had grown fond of many of its members. We may not have been blood, but we were family even so. And it was a small congregation by most accounts, only fifty strong, including children. No matter what I believed had happened, it seemed wrong to leave them now.
I arrived a few minutes late. The left of the heavy double-doors groaned shut as I crept inside the sanctuary and found an empty spot in one of the rear-most pews. Pastor Stromm was already in the middle of delivering another micro-sermon to start up the proceedings.
"It'll be a hundred years, tomorrow, since the Ten Faithful left Arkham behind for good, to preach the Good News throughout the world. From the testimony of the great granddaughter, power and signs preceded them, the likes of which mankind had never seen before. That could be us. We're on the brink of something truly extraordinary tonight."
We all clapped, though mine seemed by far the less enthusiastic.
"Tonight, we claim our heritage by walking the same path set out for us by our spiritual ancestors. Storming the gates, as it were, until God can't help but answer our call--can I get an amen?"
"Amen!"
"So praise Him!"
It started simple, same as the previous nights. But then the presence returned and it became different, progressed into something ... wrong. I opened my eyes, took a look around the sanctuary. The strips of halogen above us winked out and Mr. Todd lit the candles one by one. The stained glass windows behind the pulpit--brightened by the setting sun--sparkled like jewels, bathing us in beams of primary colors. All around me voices rose, low and throaty, high and tinkling, laughing, sobbing, screaming babble.
I could feel it trying to force its way inside me--a sensation like warm water blasting from a nozzle. Only it was everywhere, all at once, and not even clothes or skin could hold it at bay.
"Stop," I said as it poured through hidden channels into the reservoir of my soul. My tongue lolled in my mouth and I bit the tip hard when the word "kamsssa" slithered from my throat. At the same time, I grabbed my arms, forced myself into a seat to keep my body from thrashing.
It wasn't hard to guess the presence did the same to others. I heard a growl to my right. Kathy, the Sunday school teacher, dropped on all fours and proceeded to galumph along the center aisle, barking. Martin and Cynthia, a newlywed couple, began to laugh--harder and harder, until they collapsed in their seats, gasping for air. Some roared like lions, others fell prostrate to the floor, and others still convulsed as if caught in a seizure.
"Stop this," I yelled to Pastor Stromm. "It's gone too far!"
He didn't hear me. He tore at his clothes, screaming, "I'm burning with the glory, burning with the glory!" tears sliding down his cheeks.
"No. This isn't right," I called behind me, struggling for the exit.
On my way out, I spotted Anthony. Much like Pastor Stromm, he and all of the other children in sight cried too. But unlike Stromm, it wasn't rapture on their faces. They stared up at the ecstatic display of their parents
in helpless, stark terror.
#
For the seventh day, Pastor Stromm booked Mount Harmony, a conference center located in a backwoods southeast of Dunwich. We'd held our yearly church getaway there for the last five years, so it was familiar ground. Beyond the complex proper, dirt paths twisted through the forested terrain, choked by conifers, oaks, maples, laurels, and a dozen other species besides. Less than a mile north from the sanctuary, the Miskatonic River marked the border of the property. And all around, the sanctity of nature: air fresh as new creation, drenched in birdsong, and the moldering scent of litterfall.
Shame that it would be wasted on a thing like this.
The afternoon and early evening had been set aside for free time, family events, and dinner. I arrived late, during the hour of preparation for the evening service. When I entered the conference sanctuary, I found Pastor Stromm's wife seated on the front row pew, lilting her head while singing a hymn. Mr. Todd fixed up a makeshift altar out of a folding table and a tablecloth on which to set the candlesticks. As for Pastor Stromm, he paced the stage, muttering things I couldn't hear over the distance.
Once he saw me, he waved and smiled, causing his white and gray speckled mustache to lift into a lazy M.
"Ah, an eager beaver! Welcome, Wesley. We saved you a spot up front," he said, with a mischievous wink.
I hurried over, greeted Mr. Todd and Mrs. Stromm with a casual nod along the way, and said to the pastor behind a cupped hand, "Do you have time to talk?"
"Of course," said Pastor Stromm.
That Ain't Right: Historical Accounts of the Miskatonic Valley (Mad Scientist Journal Presents Book 1) Page 14
