Lovecraft Country

by Matt Ruff

  “Tell William I’m ready for the meeting. Have him fetch the others from the lawn and send them up here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “As for him,” Braithwhite senior said, nodding at Atticus, “we’ll need him for the ritual tomorrow. Until then I don’t want to see him again, or get any more calls from William about his antics. Is that absolutely understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” Caleb said, for a third time. Then he bowed, like a villager, his face fixed in an expression of solemn respect. It wasn’t until he and Atticus were back on the elevator, headed down, that he allowed his amusement to show.

  “Dell will take you to see your father,” Caleb Braithwhite said to Atticus. They were in the foyer with George, Letitia, Dell, William, and a couple of other house servants, large men whose presence seemed intended to insure that no one acted up. The Antenauts had already gone upstairs. Through the open dining hall doors, Atticus could see other servants clearing the tables.

  “You’ll stay here,” Caleb told George and Letitia. “William’s going to take you back up to your rooms.” Smiling at Letitia: “Unless you’d like to have dessert with me.”

  “Thanks, I’ll pass,” Letitia replied. To Atticus she said: “We’ll be waiting for you.”

  Atticus nodded, and Caleb Braithwhite said, “You do understand, if there is any more trouble, there’ll be consequences.”

  “Yeah, I got the message,” Atticus said. He turned to Dell. “Let’s go.”

  They descended the hill in the summer twilight. The villagers had already retired for the evening; Atticus could see lamps and candles burning in the cottages and more lamps strung along the bridge to the east. The village square was deserted and dark, except for the workshop.

  “It’s me,” Dell called as she stepped onto the workshop porch. The mastiff, unchained, met her at the door. She grabbed it roughly by the scruff and shoved it aside, and it backed up into the corner by the door and settled on its haunches—but it remained alert, tracking Atticus’s every move and growling low in its throat.

  The workman sat in the center of the shop on a stool tilted back against a post. On the worktable beside him was the newly sharpened scythe, a tall mug filled with something frothy, and a collection of small stones, like checkers, arranged on a grid incised into the table’s surface. “Any problems?” Dell asked him, and he shook his head, allowing himself a long look at Atticus.

  The trapdoor was concealed beneath a trunk in a back corner of the shop. Dell got it open, revealing a steep set of wooden stairs descending into darkness.

  Atticus stood looking into the dark hole. “You put my father down there?” he said, turning his head to include the workman in the question.

  Dell responded without shame or embarrassment: “I did what I was told.” She took a lantern from a hook on the wall, lit it, and offered it to Atticus. “You’ll need this.”

  “You aren’t coming down?”

  “He doesn’t like me,” she said. “And he throws things.”

  “Good for him,” said Atticus.

  He went down. The cellar like the storehouse was cool and dry, though there was a musty smell here. The lamplight reflected off long rows of jars in wooden shelves—preserves of some kind—and illuminated jumbles of workshop detritus: a broken-spoked wagon wheel, a wooden mallet with a splintered handle.

  “Pop?” Atticus called, and heard a sound from the far end of the cellar. Moving towards it, he began to encounter a different kind of detritus: streaks of dried gruel or porridge, a smashed apple core, bits of broken glass. Atticus thought: He throws things.

  A few more steps and the lamplight fell on a rough wooden cot. A figure sat hunched on the edge of the mattress with a blanket wrapped around its shoulders. On the floor, a gleam of metal: A chain was padlocked around the figure’s left ankle and secured to a ring in the wall.

  “Pop?” His father looked up red-eyed and raised a hand against the light, exposing a palm covered in old scars. Atticus drew the lamp back and held it up to illuminate his own face. “It’s me, Pop.”

  He saw the recognition come into his father’s eyes, followed almost immediately by another, all-too familiar expression: disappointment, laced with disgust. Despite everything, Atticus felt a disgust of his own rising in response, like bile at the back of his throat.

  “Really?” said Atticus. “Really, Pop?”

  “Twenty-two years,” Montrose Turner said. “Twenty-two years, you fight me on everything. And now the one time I don’t want you to mind me, what happens?”

  “You want to talk about years, Pop? How many years was Mom telling you to let it go? Why couldn’t you mind her?”

  Montrose sprang to his feet, shrugging off the blanket. “You want to have a discussion about your mother?” he said. “Step a little closer.”

  But Atticus shook his head. “I’m not here to fight with you, Pop.” He looked down at the chain, then back up at his father’s face. “You all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right!” Montrose said, still bristling. “Why’d you have to come here?”

  “Because you asked me to,” Atticus said. “Why didn’t you wait for me? After you sent me that letter . . .”

  “Ah!” Montrose put up his hand again to fend off the question and looked away. After a moment he said: “It was that boy. Caleb. He got in my head somehow.”

  “What, he hypnotized you?”

  “No! It wasn’t like that! It was like . . . I don’t know what it was like. I knew he wasn’t on the level, all right?—I’m not stupid—but what I kept telling myself, as long as I know he’s not on the level, it’s like I’m putting one over on him. I’ll just play along, until I get at the truth . . . And I needed to get at the truth. Not for me. For Dora. For you . . . So when he offered to let me ride back with him, I said sure, why not?” He frowned at the chain. “Why not?”

  “So he brought you back with him. And put you down here?”

  “No, that was the father,” Montrose said. “They had me up at the big house at first. For a few hours. But the charade was starting to wear thin, and the old man’s not nearly as good a liar as the boy. Or maybe he just didn’t care to have me under his roof. As soon as I met him, it’s like the spell, or whatever it was, was broken. I got unruly.” He smiled, thinly, but the smile didn’t last. “So they turned me over to the serfs,” he concluded. “What day is it?”

  Atticus had to think. “Monday. Night. You left home eight days ago.”

  “Eight days, that’s all?”

  “I came as soon as I got your letter.”

  Montrose shook his head. “I didn’t expect to see you for a month, if that. Been praying I wouldn’t see you at all.” The disgust crept back into his voice: “Twenty-two years.”

  “Yeah, twenty-two years, Pop. You hold that thought.” Setting the lantern on the ground, Atticus turned and stalked back to the stairs.

  Dell was waiting above by the trapdoor. She opened her mouth to say something and Atticus hit her in the forehead with the mallet. Her eyes rolled up and she dropped like a stone. Even as she fell, Atticus stepped past her to meet the onrushing mastiff, dealing it a solid blow to the skull as it leapt.

  The workman scrambled up next, spilling his drink as he grabbed for the scythe. Atticus dropped the mallet and got a shovel from the wall. He deflected the scythe blade with the shovel blade and caught the workman in the throat with the side of the shovel’s handle. He seized the choking workman by the forelock, banged his head against the table, and half-dragged, half-wrestled him back to the trapdoor and pitched him down the stairs.

  The mastiff was struggling to stand but couldn’t get its legs to work together. Atticus hit it with the shovel until it stopped moving. Then he paused, listening to his own breathing and the sound of the village around him. Another dog was barking somewhere, over by the cottages, but the barking didn’t come closer and soon quieted.

  Atticus got Dell’s key ring. He found a bolt cutter too.

 
The workman was lying motionless at the bottom of the stairs. Atticus stepped over him and went back to his father and gave him the keys and the bolt cutter. Then he dragged the workman away from the stairs and propped him against a shelf of preserves. He went up and got Dell in a fireman’s carry and brought her down and put her next to the workman. By then Montrose was free. He came over and held up the lantern and looked at his jailers. “I get the next two,” he said.

  “You can get the next fifty,” said Atticus. “And you might need to, if we don’t get out of here soon.”

  “You have a car?” Montrose asked.

  Atticus nodded. “Woody.”

  “Woody?” said Montrose. “George is here too?”

  “Your family cares about you, Pop. Live with it.”

  They went up and dumped the mastiff down the hole and closed the trapdoor and slid the trunk back on top of it. They blew out all the lanterns and went to the front door and stood listening again in the dark.

  “Where’s George?” Montrose whispered.

  “Bringing the car, I hope.”

  “You hope?”

  “Just wait.” Atticus held up a hand. “You hear that?”

  A vehicle was approaching along the cottage road. Atticus leaned out onto the porch to see if it was the Packard coming, only to get caught in a sudden splash of high beams.

  It wasn’t the Packard. It was the Daimler. By the time Atticus fully registered that fact the silver car had already come to a stop in front of the workshop. Letitia poked her head out the driver’s window and called Atticus’s name.

  “You brought a girl with you?” Montrose said.

  “Let’s talk about it on the road,” Atticus suggested.

  They got into the back of the car, Atticus sitting behind Letitia, Montrose behind his brother. “Montrose!” George said, turning to look at him. “You all right?”

  “You brought a girl with you?” Montrose said.

  “Hi, Mr. Turner!” Letitia said good-naturedly, smiling into the rearview as she got the car turned around. “They tried not bringing me, but the Lord Jesus and I had other ideas.”

  Atticus looked at George. “You got away all right?”

  “I think so,” George held up the revolver. “We put William in ’Titia’s bathroom. Tipped the wardrobe in front of the door, yanked the phone, and locked the hall door, too. One of those big guys is in there with him, so it probably won’t take them that long to bust out, but we got clear of the manor without anyone raising the alarm.”

  “And Woody?”

  “Had to leave it,” George said sadly. “It’s blocked in by all those limos—’Titia noticed when she was outside earlier. But this was still parked out front.”

  “Had the keys right in it,” Letitia added, her tone suggesting: a gift of Providence. And whether you believed that or not, Atticus supposed there were advantages to escaping in the Daimler. No villagers came out to challenge them as they drove past the cottages. The dogs didn’t even bark.

  “Yeah,” said George, “but I’ll miss that car. Maybe when we get home I can trade this in on a new one.”

  “How you going to do that?” Montrose said. “You got underworld contacts I don’t know about?”

  “I might be able to help,” said Letitia. She swung the car to the right to go onto the bridge.

  The engine died in the middle of the turn. It didn’t sputter or stall; it just shut off. As the car slewed to a stop facing the bridge, Letitia reached for the ignition key, twisted it back and then forward again. Nothing happened.

  “What the hell is that?” said Montrose. Looking down the length of the bridge, they could see the lanterns hanging in pairs from the iron hooks. Five pairs, now four, the furthermost pair having just winked out. A moment later the next pair were extinguished as well, creating the impression of a wave of darkness advancing out of the Wood.

  By the time it swallowed up the third pair of lanterns it was clear that it was more than just an optical illusion. The Daimler’s high beams still functioned, and they could see the glow of the headlights extending to the center of the bridge span and then vanishing abruptly into a void.

  Letitia’s hand dropped away from the ignition. The darkness had stopped advancing but seemed to gain substance as it settled onto the middle of the bridge, a blob of living shadow barring their escape. Genesis 2:19, Atticus thought numbly. Adam forgot one.

  “Oh, hell!” exclaimed Montrose. He reached forward over the seat back, grabbed the revolver from George, and shoved his door open.

  “Pop, wait!” said Atticus, thinking he meant to attack the thing on the bridge, but on exiting the car his father went the other way. Atticus turned around in his seat and looked out the back window.

  Caleb Braithwhite was coming down the road from the manor. He walked slowly, not hurrying, and despite being some distance away Atticus could see his face clearly, as if a light were shining on it. He was smiling.

  Atticus cursed. He got his door open and scrambled out, but as he stood his feet became rooted to the ground, as though he’d stepped onto quick-drying cement.

  His father hadn’t gotten much farther. Montrose was standing about five paces beyond the Daimler’s back end. He was leaning forward, as into a stiff wind, and his right arm was fully extended before him. He had the revolver pointed, the hammer cocked and his finger curled around the trigger. But he didn’t, or couldn’t, shoot.

  Caleb Braithwhite just kept coming straight on, making no attempt to move out of the line of fire. Atticus reached down with both hands and tried to lift one of his paralyzed legs. He couldn’t budge it. Behind him he heard Letitia and George pounding at the inside of the Daimler’s front doors.

  Caleb came to a stop before Montrose, stood smiling down the barrel of the revolver. Atticus prayed he would pull the gun towards him and so snag the trigger, but when he did finally take it he was careful, slipping his thumb beneath the hammer to keep it from falling and twisting the gun sideways.

  Then the gun was in his hand. He swung out the cylinder, checked that it was loaded. Snapped it closed. Recocked it.

  “No,” Atticus said. “No!”

  Caleb spared him a glance. “I told you,” he said. “Consequences.”

  He pointed the gun at Montrose’s chest and pulled the trigger.

  Morning again.

  Atticus, sitting vigil at his father’s bedside, was awakened from a doze by the crowing of a rooster down in the village. He leaned forward over the bed, confirmed that Montrose was still breathing, and then, drawing down the covers, stared at his father’s chest as it rose and fell in the gray dawnlight.

  There was no wound.

  Even now he had trouble accepting it. He’d seen and heard the gun go off, had seen his father crumple. Servants had come running from the lodge; Atticus, half out of his mind with rage, had fought them as best he could with his legs frozen but was quickly overpowered. He and the others had been carried back up to the east wing and locked in the double suite. Able to move again, he’d shouted at George and Letitia to get water and towels. But when he’d torn open his father’s shirt, what he had found was not the anatomical ruin he was expecting but unbroken skin and bone, beneath which his father’s heart still beat strongly.

  He hadn’t believed it at first—he’d seen the gun go off, at point-blank range—and in desperation he’d rolled his father’s body first one way and then the other, looking for the gunshot wound that wasn’t there.

  No wound. No bullet hole or powder burns on the shirt either. And the only blood came from Atticus’s own raw knuckles.

  In the midst of being manhandled, Montrose had opened his eyes and told Atticus to leave him be, he was fine—though he sounded as dismayed as his son that this should be so. He tried to sit up and a sudden spike of pain knocked him right back down. He steeled himself and tried again, this time getting all the way to his feet before the agony of the phantom bullet in his chest caused him to pass out. Atticus caught him as he fell, got him
back into bed, and started coming to terms with the double-edged miracle: His father was alive. And couldn’t be moved.

  Now, as Atticus put the blanket back in place, his father stirred and blinked himself awake. “Hey, Pop,” Atticus said, speaking gently but prepared to pin him down if he tried to rise.

  But Montrose had learned his lesson: He shifted position on the mattress but remained horizontal. “I was dreaming about your mother,” he said.

  “Yeah? Good dream?”

  “She didn’t say ‘I told you so,’ at least.” Montrose turned his head carefully, looking around the room. “Where’s George and Letitia?”

  “In George’s room,” Atticus said, pointing at the connecting door.

  “They OK?”

  “’Titia got a black eye fighting the guy who was carrying her and George is a little banged up too. Otherwise they’re fine.”

  Montrose turned his head again. “You try breaking that window yet?”

  “We’re not leaving without you, Pop.”

  “You could at least get the girl out of here.”

  “If you think you can talk Letitia into running, I’ll go wake her up right now.”

  “No,” said Montrose. “I guess that’s not my strong point, talking people into things.” He frowned at his son. “You know what Braithwhite’s planning to do with you?”

  “Not the particulars,” said Atticus. “But I can guess.”

  Montrose nodded. “He’s going to summon up one of the Elder Klansmen. A host of shiggoths too, probably. And you’re the sacrifice.”

  “I’m glad you’re feeling good enough to joke about it, Pop.”

  “Well I’m not saying I’m happy, but I read enough of those stories of yours to know how it ends. The grand wizard and his minions get eaten too. Or driven mad.”

  “Usually,” Atticus said. “But Braithwhite didn’t seem too concerned when I talked to him. Maybe he knows what he’s doing.”

  “The father is a fool,” Montrose said. “It’s the boy who’s the dangerous one. You get a chance to push him into the pit, you don’t hesitate.”

  Half an hour later, not long after Montrose had slipped once more into sleep, Atticus heard a key in the hallway door. It was Caleb Braithwhite. He was alone.