“Please,” said Brecken.
“I’m one of them.”
“Okay,” Brecken said after a moment, trying to stretch her world to fit Great Old Ones that actually existed. Since she’d already made room for shoggoths and sorcery, that was less of a challenge than it might have been, but it still left her dizzied.
“Your shoggoth friend,” said Satterlee then. “If you come to Arkham that’s going to be a challenge, no question, given how big they are.”
“She’s not,” said Brecken. “You know they’re of different sizes, right?”
The old woman’s smile vanished. “Just how big is the shoggoth we’re talking about?”
“About this big when she’s all drawn together.” Her hands mimed a four-foot sphere.
“And when did you meet her?”
“It was—” She counted days silently. “October fourteenth of last year.”
“In Partridgeville.”
“Yes.”
Satterlee closed her eyes. A slight ducking of her head hinted at emotions Brecken had no way to gauge.
“I know the rest of her people are dead,” Brecken said then.
The professor opened her eyes, considered Brecken with the same terrible intensity as before. “I don’t think anyone knew there was a colony near Partridgeville. It might have been possible to save them along with the others, but—” She let the sentence drop.
Brecken opened her mouth, found no words. She swallowed, tried again. “Others?”
“There used to be colonies all up and down the coast, and back into the mountains. There were still six that—certain people—knew about.”
“And—and the shoggoths—”
“They’re safe, most of them. It was quite a mess, from what I heard.”
“She’ll be so happy,” Brecken whispered.
The old woman considered that, and then said, “Perhaps you can tell me a little more about your shoggoth friend.”
Brecken glanced up at her, nodded, drew in a breath, and began to talk about the thunder behind Hob’s Hill, Sho’s appearance in her kitchen, the bond that had taken shape between them even in those first encounters. She hadn’t intended to talk about how that bond had changed and what it had become, but the sheer relief of being able to talk to someone else about her feelings for Sho swept everything else aside; before she’d quite noticed, she was recounting the way she and Sho had spent the winter holiday. Reddening, she stared fixedly at the table as she finished the story and silence settled back in place in the kitchen.
“Child,” Satterlee said then. “I’m not going to pass judgment on somebody else’s heart.”
Brecken looked up from the table to the old woman’s smile. It wasn’t the dreadfully calm smile she’d seen before, the one that could kill; it was far more human, tinged with a certain indulgence. She ventured a fragile smile of her own. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Then, her expression turning serious: “But I want your permission to call someone and talk about what you’ve told me. Someone—probably not the same someone—may want to come here and talk to you about it. I promise you that no harm’s going to come to you or—her name’s Sho?”
“Her nickname,” said Brecken.
“Or to Sho, and it might end up helping some people who need it very badly. Not all of the people in question are human, by the way.”
Brecken considered her for a long moment. “Okay,” she said. “But I’m trusting you with someone who—who means more to me than anyone else in the world. Please remember that.”
“I will.” She met Brecken’s gaze squarely. “We know how to keep secrets.”
With that, Brecken had to be content.
AT PROFESSOR SATTERLEE’S SUGGESTION—it was not quite brusque enough to be called an order—she hauled her suitcase and tote bag up the spiral stair to the guestroom on the third floor, got her things unpacked and settled in the old oak dresser there, stood irresolute for a time while a clock on the wall ticked away the seconds. Fifteen minutes, the old woman had said, and then Brecken should come back downstairs and play the piano for a while. Turning away from the clock, Brecken went around the big canopied bed to one of the two windows, looked out over the rooftops of Arkham.
It was strange, she thought. Arkham and Partridgeville both dated from the 1680s, or so she’d read online, and their founders had settled in similar spots where rivers flowed out of rugged hills toward the sea; they’d passed through the same trajectory from farming village to seaport to mill town to college town, and yet a glance across the skyline made it impossible to mistake the one for the other. It wasn’t just the difference between the gambrel roofs of old Massachusetts and the straight gable roofs of old New Jersey, or the spartan simplicity of New England meeting houses and the ornate lines of the First Baptist Church on Angell Hill. Some difference she couldn’t define hovered in the air over Arkham, flowed down from the brooding hills, pooled above a curious island in the middle of the river that seemed to have lines of something tall and gray—standing stones, maybe?—rising from long grass.
Whisper of a voice from the hallway outside broke into her thoughts, and she turned, looked at the clock again. It had been more than twenty minutes since she’d headed upstairs, so she left the room and went to the stair. Professor Satterlee was at the foot, and as Brecken came down the last turn of the stair the old woman said with a smile, “I was starting to wonder if you’d fallen asleep up there.”
“Not quite,” Brecken said. “I was looking out the window.” Then, because so many strange things seemed so ordinary to the professor: “There’s something in the air over that little island in the river.”
The smile dropped off the old woman’s face. “Yes, there is,” she said. “Have you always seen things like that?”
“No,” Brecken said, startled by the professor’s reaction. “No, not at all. What is it?”
“Voor.” Then: “We can talk about it some other time. Just now, it’s time for music.”
They went into the parlor, where a grand piano overawed the sofa on one wall and the chairs and bookcases on two others. Satterlee gestured Brecken to the bench; she sat down, stretched and shook her fingers, then turned to the professor. “What would you like me to play?”
“Anything you want,” Satterlee said, settling on the sofa.
Brecken drew in as deep a breath as her nerves would allow, gave the keyboard a blank look for a moment, and then started to play her Bourrée in B flat. The first few notes faltered, but then she found her rhythm, let the music guide her hands straight through to the final cadence.
“That’s a charming little piece,” Professor Satterlee said when the last notes had faded to silence. “I don’t believe I know it, though. Who’s the composer?”
Brecken opened her mouth, then swallowed, then forced out, “I am.”
The old woman’s eyebrows went up the way they had when Brecken had mentioned shoggoths. “You wrote that.”
“Yes.”
Satterlee took that in. “Play something else you’ve written.” After a moment: “Please.”
Brecken considered the Minuet in C and the three Sarabandes, but the moment called for something more ambitious, she was sure of it. “I’m not really satisfied with this yet,” she said, and then played the first of the three sforzando chords of her Theme and Variations in G. As always, she could feel it reaching toward something she didn’t yet know how to help it grasp, but she threw herself into the performance, got the sense of nervous energy in the staccato measures of the second variation as close to perfect as she’d yet managed, nearly stumbled over the flurry of notes at the beginning of the third variation, but got her balance again and plunged into the furious allegro that followed, playing hard, straight through to the three chords that ended it.
When she was done, she closed her eyes, gathered up her courage, and glanced over her shoulder at Satterlee.
The old woman was staring at her with unalloyed surprise. “Child,
” she said, “that’s a fine piece of eighteenth-century music.”
“I know,” said Brecken. Then, taking her courage in both hands: “Professor Satterlee, that’s the music I love, and it’s the music I want to write. I know it’s supposed to be a dead art form—but it’s not dead for me.”
Satterlee pondered that for a time. “No,” she said finally. “No, I see it isn’t.” Then, shaking her head a little as though to clear it. “Well. Perhaps you’d like to play a piece or two from the standard repertoire now. Something by Bach, maybe?”
Brecken broke into a luminous smile. “In my sleep,” she said, and launched straight into the Prelude and Fugue in E flat from The Well-Tempered Clavier. The serene mathematics of Bach had their usual effect, rounding the jagged edges of her nerves, setting the world in order.
She finished, glanced back over her shoulder at Satterlee, and was startled to find that the professor had been joined on the sofa by a plump young woman with short brown hair, wearing jeans and a Miskatonic University sweatshirt.
“Brecken, this is Sarah Choynski,” said the professor. “She’s renting the second floor apartment from me this year. Sarah, this is Brecken Kendall, who may be renting it next year.” With a smile for Brecken: “I usually rent the space out to music students. They don’t mind if I play at all hours, which I do, and of course the reverse is just as true.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Sarah with a broad grin. “That was Bach, right? Nice.”
“Sarah’s a vocalist,” said the professor with an apologetic look. “Jazz, mostly.”
“My dad wanted me to be a classical musician,” Sarah said. “But one of my aunts played me an Ella Fitzgerald CD when I was eight, and that was all she wrote.”
Laughing, Brecken turned to face the sofa. “My grandmother wanted me to get into jazz and blues, but then she took me to see Mozart’s The Magic Flute when I was seven.”
“Her grandmother,” Satterlee observed to Sarah, “was Olive Kendall.”
Sarah’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously? I adore her stuff. That lady could really sing. I mean really really sing.”
“True enough,” said the professor. “Sarah, can you show Brecken the apartment? She ought to know what she’s getting into.” Then, to Brecken, who was working up the courage to ask how she’d done: “I think you’ll do well—but we’ll have to see how tomorrow goes.”
“I WARN YOU,” SAID SARAH as they went through the door. “It’s pretty cluttered right now.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. Like most college students, Brecken was far from finicky about housekeeping, but Sarah’s evident enthusiasm for piling books, sheet music, stray pieces of clothing, and other impedimenta on every available surface was a little daunting. Still, the apartment was pleasant enough: a spacious parlor with an upright piano conveniently set against an inside wall, a kitchen of decent size, a small but comfortable bedroom, and a bath that unexpectedly featured a big white clawfooted tub. Windows looked south across the roofs of old Arkham, west across more roofs to the cyclopean brick and glass buildings of the Miskatonic University campus, north toward the green whaleback shape of a hill, untouched by buildings, that rose above dark woods close by. “Meadow Hill,” Sarah said when Brecken asked about that last. “No, nobody’s ever built anything on it. I don’t think anyone ever dared. There’s supposed to be a lot of funny stories about it.”
That was the only odd note in Sarah’s conversation, though. Waving her hands as she talked, she told Brecken about the quirks of the house’s archaic plumbing and the apartment’s aging stove, the local weather, the latest happenings in the Miskatonic music department, and a great deal more, including the habits of Brecken’s potential landlady. “She’s going to tell you you shouldn’t help out in the kitchen. Don’t believe a word of it. I swear to God, if I didn’t pop down there every few days and do a bunch of cooking, she’d never eat anything but salad.”
“Okay,” said Brecken. Tentatively: “I like to cook, so that should work.”
Sarah’s face lit up. “Do you? So do I. I bet you get a lot of crap from people about that.” She sniffed. “As though there’s anything liberated about living on takeout.”
By the time they came down the stairs again they were discussing recipes, and once they’d brushed aside a futile protest from Professor Satterlee, the two of them got down to work in the kitchen. “My dad’s folks were a Choynski and a Desrochers,” Sarah said, “and my mom’s were a Gilman from a little town north of here—you’ll hear lots of stories about Innsmouth once you move—and an Ellwood. One hundred per cent American mutt, and I cook that way.”
Brecken started laughing. “Ever had gefilte fish and cheese grits for dinner?”
“No, but it sounds good.” Sarah handed her a yellow onion. “Your folks make that?”
“My grandparents—and it’s really good.”
They got a casserole baking in the oven and a salad marinating in the fridge, and settled in the parlor, where Professor Satterlee had finished correcting a stack of student papers. An hour of gossip later, dinner for three hit the table, and most of an hour after that they were back in the parlor, taking turns at the piano. Brecken remembered “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Honeysuckle Rose” well enough from her girlhood to back Sarah’s singing on both pieces; Professor Satterlee took over the keyboard and hammered out a fine version of “St. James Infirmary Blues,” then she and Sarah belted out “Shout, Sister, Shout” and “Minnie the Moocher,” and all three of them joined in “It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing.” Laughing, Sarah begged off then, pleading an imminent midterm, and headed upstairs.
Before Brecken could think about doing the same thing, the professor turned to her and said, “Someone will be here to talk to you in a few minutes.”
Brecken swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “Okay.”
That got her a calm smile. “Glass of wine?”
“Please.”
The old woman got up from the piano bench, vanished into the kitchen, returned with two stemmed glasses of something pale golden in color. Brecken, who knew next to nothing about wine, sniffed hers, sipped, said, “That’s really good.”
“Thank you.” They settled on the couch. Brecken took another sip; the professor watched her, her thoughts inaccessible behind a placid smile.
“Does Sarah know about—” Brecken gestured vaguely. “Shoggoths, the rest of it.”
A quick shake of the professor’s head denied it. “She’s a dear person and a very good musician, but I haven’t told her anything and she doesn’t seem to have found any of it out on her own. You’d think that Arkham would be crawling with people who know about the elder world and the Great Old Ones, wouldn’t you?”
It took Brecken a moment to make sense of that. “Because of H.P. Lovecraft?”
“Yes, and what Miskatonic has in its library, and the town’s history generally.” She sipped wine. “But I’ve met very few of them here. The people I know who understand it all are scattered far and wide, and they have to keep moving.” With a sudden, intensely human smile: “I’ll be glad if you pass your audition and get a place in the composition program. It’ll be pleasant to have someone else in town who understands—to say nothing of a shoggoth.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
A silence passed. “If I do okay on the audition,” Brecken said then, “I’m definitely going to want to talk to you about the apartment.”
“Good.” Satterlee sipped from her glass. “Your friend Sho will be safe here.”
Brecken’s gaze snapped up to the old woman’s face, then fell again. “Thank you,” she said. “That means a lot to me.” With a little laugh: “No, that’s an understatement. It means everything to me.”
The professor made as though to speak, but suddenly glanced toward the entry, as though she’d heard a knock. “Just a moment,” she said, set her glass aside, got to her feet and went to the door. Brecken, who had heard nothi
ng, watched her in perplexity, heard the door open and shut, quiet as a whisper.
A MOMENT LATER TWO sets of footsteps sounded in the entry, and Professor Satterlee came back into the parlor. Behind her was a man of indeterminate age with a gaunt, lined face that looked tanned by years of sun and weather, and a shock of pale disorderly hair. His clothes were unremarkable to the point of camouflage, his expression carefully neutral, but Brecken sat up abruptly; something in him or around him crackled like distant lightning.
The professor did not introduce them. She simply got a chair for him, set it in front of Brecken, and then sat down on the other end of the couch and resumed sipping her wine. The man sat down, gave Brecken an assessing look, and then said, “I hope you won’t mind answering a few questions.”
Brecken glanced at Professor Satterlee, then said, “No, not at all.”
“June tells me you’ve befriended a shoggoth.”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind telling me its name?”
“Her,” said Brecken. “I don’t know what her name is today.”
That got a sudden fractional smile, and Brecken realized that she’d passed a test. “Fair enough,” he said. “Perhaps you could tell me how the two of you met.”
Brecken nodded, and described the night that thunder sounded out of a clear sky behind Hob’s Hill, the accidental purchase of the photocopied lexicon that allowed her to communicate with Sho, the events of the following days.
“Thank you,” he said when she finished. “And has your shoggoth friend told you what happened under Hob’s Hill?”
“Yes,” Brecken said. “We’ve talked about it. I can tell you about it if you want.”
“Please.”
Brecken drew in an unsteady breath, closed her eyes, recounted what Sho had said about the last moments of her people and her own desperate flight to the world outside. When she was finished with the story, she opened her eyes. The man in front of her was still watching her, and his expression had not changed at all, but something hidden in his gaze reminded her of the intensity she’d seen in Professor Satterlee’s eyes earlier that day. That, and more: she felt old griefs there, and terrible purpose.
The Shoggoth Concerto Page 23
