Cthulhu Fhtagn!

by Laird Barron

  “Let me get the two most beautiful girls in the world a drink,” Wilbur says gallantly. “What’ll it be?”

  “Champagne!” cries Jane. “Champagne for all of us!”

  “All right,” agrees Mary.

  “My dearest Jane, come get it with me—we’ll be right back,” promises Wilbur.

  The lovebirds scurry off, leaving Mary alone. She smiles as they go, then sobers. The party is crowded and overwhelming, full of Wilbur’s friends from school. And others—as she waits, a strange foreign man approaches her.

  “You are Mary Whatley?” he asks. She can’t quite place his odd accent, but it is hauntingly familiar. “I am Professor Leng—your brother was one of my best students. He told me he had a sister, but not that she was so lovely.”

  “Thank you,” says Mary. She wants to get away from this creep, he smells of mothballs and the Crown’s best bitter.

  “You’re not here alone, are you?” He steps closer. “With all these rowdy university students, you’ll need some protection. Come, let me—”

  “Wilbur!” she cries, pretending to wave at him, and with an insincere apology to the professor, she dashes off. But really, her brother is nowhere to be seen, so she goes out back behind the pub.

  Mary takes a deep breath of the fresh air and sighs. But when she turns round to go back in, she bumps into a tall, imposing figure. The man in the cape grabs her by the shoulders.

  “Is it true what they say?” His mellifluous voice makes her shudder and squirm. “The sweeter the fruit, the harder the pit?”

  The sheer corniness of the line is as bracing as a cup of strong black coffee, and Ingrid blinks. Up close the disguise isn’t nearly as convincing. Price’s patrician nose is not something you can easily hide behind a little make-up and latex. Ingrid crosses her arms. “Careful, Vincent. I socked Ollie Reed in the nose at a party for making some horrid rhyme about the state of my Pitts, you know.”

  “I couldn’t help myself.” Vincent Price waggles his bushy synthetic eyebrows.

  She jabs a finger into his chest. “This is no laughing matter! You’ve got a lot to answer for! Peter nearly lost his head when that lighting rig swung loose.”

  “It was his fault,” Vincent sniffs. “If he hadn’t missed his mark it never would have come close to him. He was supposed to be two steps over.”

  “You don’t deny it, then!” Ingrid advances on Vincent as he backs away across the weedy, overgrown yard. “So all those accidents really were your doing!”

  “I deny nothing!” There is a manic gleam in Vincent’s eye as he grabs Ingrid’s wrist. Inside the summerhouse-cum-barn-cum-Temple to the Unpronounceable-cum-local pub, the party sequence seems to be carrying on well enough without them, and two things occur to Ingrid, then. First, it’s not the party sequence that has everyone inside so merry—it’s the wrap party. Second, even were she to scream, nobody could hear her.

  Vincent’s breath smells oddly of lilac as he suddenly pulls her into him, casting his cloak over her back. “Silence, someone approaches—oof!” He staggers back, and Ingrid bounces on her heels, ready to deliver another right hook to his breadbasket if he tries that shit again.

  “Ingrid?” Peter calls from the doorway, backlit by the party lights. “Are you sneaking off for a smoke?”

  “Petey Cush?” Vincent cackles triumphantly. “Who would have figured you for a closet beatnik!”

  “Oh, hello Vincent,” says Peter, extending his hand. Vincent takes it, and Ingrid notices they do something weird with their thumbs as they shake. “Finally dropping the ruse, eh? Why didn’t you come forward from the beginning?”

  “After the mess you and Christopher made of things during the Scream and Scream Again fiasco, I had to make sure you were playing for the right team,” Vincent says reproachfully. “I couldn’t risk unmasking myself until I was certain. Now that I am sufficiently convinced, the time is nigh to reveal all.”

  “Past time, I’d say,” says Ingrid. She pokes Vincent in the sternum. “What’s your game, Price?”

  “Come,” he says, taking each of them by the wrist. This time his grip is light as a ladybug. “We have much to discuss, yes, but it would be better… if I showed you.”

  “Where are we going?” asks Peter as they are dragged across the lawn. “Should I fetch a torch?”

  “The last place they want us to explore,” says Vincent, “and don’t worry, you’ll see enough without a light.”

  “So long as you’ve got a match,” says Ingrid, popping a spliff in her mouth as they approach the hulking silhouette of the ancient barn. Her heart is in her throat, and not just because she’s been losing time again, or because she’s sneaking off into a forbidden building with someone who’s clearly lost his marbles. No, what makes Ingrid’s palms sweat is that she can see the landscape as well as day, as though a cheap night-filter were draped over her eyes…she’s no longer sure if this is really happening, or if it’s just another scene in Curse of the Deep Ones. Or whatever it’s called.

  ***

  Vincent Price is apparently an expert locksmith, for the padlock falls away after he fiddles with it for a moment. The door moans as he pulls on it, revealing nothing but impenetrable darkness. God knows Ingrid has seen some horrors in her day, on- and off-set…and yet her heart pounds as she contemplates the abyss.

  “Ladies first,” Vincent burbles.

  “Like hell,” she says. “You know what’s in there—you go in and give us the tour.”

  “Oh all right,” he says, stepping into darkness. It swallows him quickly, and Ingrid looks at Peter—bright as the night seems out here, inside it’s black as a tomb. The real kind. But they’ve come this far…

  It smells of hay and old dung, with faint notes of leather and the tang of oiled metal. Just a barn. Pigeons coo from the rafters, and there is a rustling further in—Vincent, she hopes. Peter snakes his shaky hand into hers.

  “Come on, come in.” Vincent’s voice comes from somewhere ahead of her, and she takes a few more cautious steps. “Nothing to worry about, I promise you.”

  “Is he joking?” she whispers. Her eyes have adjusted, and in the dim starlight that penetrates the cracks in the ancient walls, she sees Peter shrug.

  “No.” Vincent’s face is a narrow white moon hanging nearly a foot above her; she gasps, and takes a step back, alarmed. “I know you think me the villain of this drama, and while that is indeed the kind of juicy rôle one might sink his teeth into, you may rest assured I am the intrepid hero.” He stands aside, his cape billows, as he points to…something. Ingrid squints, but can’t see anything.

  “What the hell is this, Vincent,” she snaps, finally frustrated.

  He sighs. “I suppose August was getting sloppy at the party; likely he won’t notice if we shed some light on the matter.” He casts about and eventually locates a lantern. Getting it going with a match blinds her, and by the time she can see again he’s turned down the flame, creating more shadow than light. Once she’s lit her joint with a match of her own, though, it’s enough illumination for Ingrid to see that someone—August, if Vincent’s oblique ranting is to be believed—has created a little office of sorts. A shabby desk slouches in the corner, covered with loose paper, old notebooks, and an encyclopedia-sized tome that says NECRONOMICON on the cover in gold gothic letters. But it’s not the prop—or is it? Ingrid can’t tell.

  “See?” crows Vincent as Peter approaches the mess.

  “I see the den of some eccentric,” says Peter, “but not your angle.”

  “Look at the walls!” he cries, “and see the doom of humanity writ large!”

  But all Ingrid sees is a series of maps. There is Great Britain, with little red flags stuck into various random locations, and the United States, too, with the same. A few other nations are represented as well—China, some Continental countries, and Africa, though fewer flags dot those locales.

  “It’s their sign,” he mutters. “All shall cower before the great old ones once,�
�� he says something bizarrely familiar and yet utterly unrecognizable, “is loosed!”

  “Yes, well, I really must get back.” Peter’s clearly at the end of his rope, and Ingrid nods in agreement as Vincent whirls on them, eyes wild.

  “See then, and know the truth!”

  From nowhere Vincent produces a pen and begins to trace the points between the flags like a connect-the-dots puzzle. But the outline that begins to emerge is not a cat or an ice cream lolly, but something sinuous and strange, a maledictory shape Ingrid can’t put a name to, but that appalls her nonetheless. It is an unholy sigil, that’s the only thing she can say with any certainty; a precise shape that could not be a coincidence. It pulses and writhes like a living thing, even after she passes Peter the joint and rubs at her eyes.

  “Never before has this studio managed such broad distribution for one of their films,” murmurs Vincent, “and the film, if played at these crucial points around the globe, shall bring about the end of mankind. It is a key that when turned in these international tumblers will unlock…doom. This is why I interfered—this is why I did what I could to create delays—to destroy the work entirely! But I fear I have failed, and it has all been for naught. They are too strong—those August works for are as powerful as they are keen to see their unholy desires made real!”

  All is silent in the barn as they contemplate this. Then a seed pops in Ingrid’s joint. Shaking his head, Peter asks, “How in the hell did you glom on to any of this?”

  “August originally came to an American director with his project, a friend of mine,” explains Vincent. “Roger showed me the pitch, and while he didn’t see it for what it was, I recognized at once what the madman intended with his little ‘adaptation.’ I talked Roger out of making the movie, but when I caught wind that August had taken his plot across the pond I followed. Great forces conspire against us, so I knew I had to be subtle in my sabotage.”

  “So what do we do?” Peter’s convinced, strangely enough, and Ingrid realizes she is, too. Or at least, she’s convinced Vincent’s convinced.

  “It’s missing a scene,” says Vincent. “A small one, yes, but as I understand it, the entire picture must be complete for the ritual to function. All you two have to do is refuse to film the last scene—an elegant solution, is it not?”

  “But it’s wrap,” says Peter, echoing Ingrid’s thoughts. “I mean, we’re done, Vincent, we completed principal shooting—”

  “Impossible!” cries Vincent, gesturing to the cluttered desk. “I’ve been over his notes and part of the Great Work is missing—just one moment, one brief scene where ‘Wilbur Whatley’ calls upon,” again that strange name, “by its true appellation!”

  “But Vincent, we filmed that bit.” Ingrid remembers it clearly. “It was one of the first scenes we shot, on the first day, before…” She stares at him. “Before the ‘new make-up artist’ joined us after the original chap got food poisoning!”

  Vincent stares at her. “No,” he whispers. “Then we are…”

  “Oh dear,” says Peter. Wringing his hands, he nearly drops the spliff, but Ingrid gets it back from him in time. “That is a shame. I’m rather unhappy to be part of some film that dooms humanity. Goodness.”

  “There must be something we can do,” says Ingrid. “We can’t just sit idly by.”

  “There’s nothing to do,” says Vincent. “I’ve examined the contracts, and the producer has promised August final cut—not Freddie.”

  The smoke curls through Ingrid’s lungs and out her nose like the tentacles of some infernal fiend. She’s had an idea that might save them all, or at least calm down her friends.

  “There is something we can do. Something I bet no actor’s ever done, so they’ll never see it coming…”

  “What?”

  “Remember all that hullaballoo surrounding The Vampire Lovers?” she says to Peter. “How the censors ruled it obscene, because of my scene with Kate?”

  “Yes,” he says slowly.

  “Well, they ended up allowing it, obviously, but only because all that lesbian stuff was in the Le Fanu.”

  “The what?” Peter asks.

  “Carmilla,” Vincent intones. God damn, but the way he says it sends a shiver down Ingrid’s spine. She could listen to him pronounce things all night. “The novella by Sheridan La Fanu.”

  “But I’ve read ‘The Dunwich Horror,’” Ingrid says, “and I assure you, there’s no threesome with Wilbur Whatley and his sister, or all that weird rutting with fish-people.” She shrugs. “I’ll make a few calls. Once the Board hears about August’s ‘creative liberties,’ they’ll demand edits. There’s no power on earth more diabolically powerful than British censors, so there’s no way it’ll make it into theatres uncut…unless everyone in the government’s already fallen to the curse of the Old Ones.” She grins. “Though come to think on it, Thatcher seems a likely candidate.”

  Vincent is staring at her with wide eyes and falls at her feet like she’s some radiant avenging angel.

  “My lady,” he says, grasping her ankle and kissing the top of her foot. “You will go down in history as the bravest, most beautiful, most intelligent woman in the world. A simple solution—so elegant—so perfect…my own genius pales before yours!”

  She takes a long drag on her joint and passes it back to Peter. “Oh, come off it,” she says, kicking him away. Gently.

  ***

  Curse of the Old Ones, The (1975-British) 85m. BOMB D: Freddie Francis. Peter Cushing, Ingrid Pitt, Sandor Elès, Pippa Steel, Andrew Keir, Ferdy Mayne. Incomprehensible mishmash of several stories by H.P. Lovecraft. A priest (Cushing) and a young woman (Pitt) wander aimlessly around shoddy sets in an attempt to stop a sinister cult from summoning the devil. Francis is usually reliable and the top-notch cast seem game, but what could have been a fun if predictable entry in the canon of bodice-ripper horror is hamstrung by bad pacing, sloppy editing, and a nonsensical script. Widely regarded as one of the financial disasters that brought down Hammer Film Productions, along with the marginally more watchable Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter (p.47) and the equally inept remake of The Lady Vanishes (p.169). Apologists have made much ado over the years regarding the British Board of Film Classification’s heavy censorship of the film, but Cushing and Pitt refused to promote the picture, and the screenwriter adopted an Allan Smythe credit. A forthcoming director’s cut promises to restore the film to its original vision with recently rediscovered footage that was excised from both the theatrical run and prior home video releases, but in light of the quality on display in all previous versions, this new release will appeal strictly to completionists.

  AKA: Call of the Deep Ones, The Evil of the Old Ones, Kootulu is King of Hell

  Love Will Save You

  Cameron Pierce

  By Christmas morning, the world was dead.

  ***

  The job offer in Elko fell through before Thanksgiving. A week later, Anna called off the engagement and asked Mark Rothko to move out. Mark packed his few possessions—clothes, fishing gear, a vintage bottle of scotch—and drove away from the one-bedroom apartment where he and Anna had lived for several years. He pulled on to I-80, out of Truckee, intent on leaving his disappointments behind.

  California had little left to offer him, and his opportunity in Nevada had dried up before he even arrived, so he headed northwest into Oregon. He spent the first night of his new life in an unheated yurt in the Valley of the Rogue. In the morning, he fished the Rogue River and fought a nice steelhead to the bank, but when he reached down to net the fish, the chrome buck thrashed his head from side to side and dislodged the hook. Mark fished for another fruitless hour before hitting the road. In Medford, he stopped at a gas station for coffee and a pack of powdered doughnuts. His card was declined and he was forced to put the doughnuts back on the rack. The clerk let him keep the coffee.

  Back in the truck, he dialed Anna. She answered after the second ring. “So you cleaned out the account,” Mark said.

&nb
sp; “Mark, you need to know—” Anna said, but Mark’s cellphone died before she finished.

  In his rush to leave, he’d forgotten to pack a cellphone charger. He dug in the center console for change, counted up wads of crumpled dollar bills—relics of all the time and money he’d invested in strip clubs east of Truckee—only to realize that he needed every last dollar for gas, if he was going to make it further north.

  Mark sat there in his truck, debating something in his mind, before getting out and going into the gas station again to get change for a dollar. He stuffed the quarters in the payphone outside and put a hand to the cold silver numbers. “Shit,” he muttered. They’d never gotten a landline and Anna had changed her cell number several months ago. He hadn’t bothered memorizing her new number. In his cellphone she was listed under Honeybee, but now his honeybee was unreachable. He’d write her a letter when he got where he was going, wherever that happened to be.

  Mark continued north. Late that afternoon, he parked his car in a desolate river district somewhere outside Portland and hiked to a beach on the river. He walked along the beach until he came across the graffitied, rusted-out hull of a wrecked ship. It would provide adequate shelter for the night. He gathered twigs for a fire, then sat beside the fire until sundown, when he stamped out the flames to avoid detection. The night was cold and he would likely find sleep hard to come by, but he wasn’t ready to be around other people, couldn’t admit even to himself that he had nowhere to go. He crawled inside the shipwreck, only to find that at night it did not look as it did in the daylight.