The Children of Cthulhu

by John Pelan

  “I must ask you this question,” he said. Of course, it was in his Southern dialect that sounded to my ear like, “I mus' as' ya dis question. What kind of person is ya?”

  This confused me. “I'm an academic, an educated man,” I offered.

  The men in the tent still chanted, and I could not shake the sense of unreality. He said, “No, I mean are you for Master Montgomery, or are you for us?”

  I didn't have to think to answer. “He must not kill again.”

  Charlie nodded. “Master Montgomery is a devil.” Charlie's voice dropped, and he moved closer, as if he was afraid to say the words loudly. “He is in league with the Invisible Empire. He boasts of it. If we are not respectful, if we forget that the white man is master, then we will be punished. He took tokens from all of us and made evil signs so we could not leave.”

  In the darkness outside the tent, I looked around. The stream still gurgled, and pans rattled against pans in another tent down the hill. Rough laughter came from the opposite direction. Everything still appeared real and definite. Even Charlie's hand grasping my arm felt solid, but it seemed as if I'd entered another world, where Satan and madmen coexisted. I shook my head in sudden understanding and said, “No, no. That's the Klan. Montgomery is part of a group that terrorize freedmen so that you will be slaves again. There is no invisible empire.”

  Charlie whispered vehemently, “I have seen its messengers in Carolina. Ghosts on horses with fire in their eyes and lightning at their hooves.”

  “Men in sheets,” I said, a part of me wondering if it were true.

  “He means to kill us all. The mine holds no gold, so he is returning home. Before then he will make a sacrifice to the empire. He's told me when he was drunk. He'll seal the mine with all the men in it.” Charlie squeezed my arm harder. “We have his book of spells. He collects witchy papers that he keeps locked in a trunk, but I have the key. I've always had the key. If we are to beat a devil, we must use his own magic against him.”

  Charlie glanced around, and he spoke so nervously I thought Montgomery might jump out from behind a bush any moment. “While he was away at the war, a special book was delivered to the house. It came in the middle of the night. The courier wasn't human. I saw him. His cloak slipped when he handed me the book, and I saw his demon eye.” Charlie shuddered, as if he faced the man now. “I have that book, but I cannot read it. Will you read it for us?”

  So it was that I found myself back in the tent, crouched before the lantern, the black miners surrounding me as Charlie handed me the volume. Its cover crackled unpleasantly against my hand. The men hummed in their throats like huge bees, pressing against me when I opened to its first page. In the lamp's yellow light, I could barely make out the spidery writing. “It's in Spanish,” I said. Fortunately I read Spanish well, along with French and Latin. Many of the best mining texts are in Spanish. I canted the book toward the lantern to show the letters better.

  The title was El Libro de los Normos de los Perdidos, and below that was the date, 1579. “It says the author was Miguel Cervantes. Upon My Captivity in Algiers. Ah, not the author, the translator.” I wondered if this was the same Cervantes of Don Quixote fame. I turned to the next page carefully, although the nearly two-hundred-year-old paper seemed supple. I only read a few lines before I came upon an epigraph, which I translated out loud, “ ‘That is not dead which can eternal lie / and with strange aeons, even death may die.’” The lantern guttered and nearly went out.

  “Do not say the black magic words, Master Jonas,” Charlie hissed.

  His beliefs, which would under any other condition provoke incredulity, chilled me. The men leaned away, some with their hands over their ears, still humming. Their fear and sweat hung in the air.

  I nodded my assent and read on silently. This was no Christian superstition. Nothing of witchcraft in this book. It was cosmology and history and strange references to monarchs or gods with unrecognizable names who existed as exiled sovereigns. Most of it I didn't understand, but my bile rose while reading, and I felt the same kind of nausea I'd felt in the Bernice. Is it possible that there is the equivalent of bad air in words? “There are incantations here for calling forth a creature known as the lurker at the threshold. See, there are notes in the margins.” My finger shook while pointing. Charlie moved to where he could see.

  “You will have to tell us how to speak it.”

  “The notes are a warning, not a translation but commentary from Cervantes. He says, ‘Under sanity's blanket lies chaos.’ Then he writes, ‘The spell of summoning costs a human life. Yog-Sothoth consumes.’”

  One of the men started shaking. His lips drew back from his teeth, and his teeth ground together. Eyes rolled back so there were only white marbles in his head. He collapsed, falling slowly between the men crammed so close together. No one paid him heed. They continued their moaning, rocking back and forth. I looked down at my hand on the page. For an instant, it seemed the spidery writing glowed black on the paper, as if the volume couldn't contain the letters anymore, and the ink wasn't ink at all, but thin slits to nothingness behind them.

  I dropped the book and fled from the tent.

  When the sun rose, I was still walking. My agitated pacing had taken me past Idaho Springs, past the stamper mills and abandoned sluice troughs. Down river, below the town, broken equipment sat in piles beside the path. As the sky lightened, I saw first the black holes opened into the mountain, lost claims, dead-end shafts that led to nothing, abandoned when their owners ran out of money or patience, left as futile evidence. In my exhaustion, I fancied the mountain was a great face and the mines were eyes. If eyes are the window to the soul, then the mountain's soul was blank and heartless. No compassion twinkled in those inanimate sockets. I thought about the tunnels burrowing through the canyon's sides, some beneath me, miles and miles of lightless passage stretching through the rock.

  During my life in mining, I had never thought of mountains this way, not the way I did that morning after reading Cer-vantes's horrifying translation. For me, a mountain had presented itself as a beautiful, ages-long story. An open, striated cliff face, bands on bands of mineral and different colored rock told a geologic narrative, as moving as any of Shakespeare's greatest plays, as epic as Homer's Odyssey. But that day I didn't see them as lovely. The yellow tailing piles seemed pestilent, as if the mountain oozed with sores. From one end of the valley to the other, no trees hid the granite bones. Only stumps until just below the ridges, and if the mining continued, those would be gone, too. The creek splashed up ocherous, scummy water where no fish could live.

  I would stop Montgomery, then leave this terrible valley, where black miners trusted frightening books and a crazy Confederate dropped rocks on his men.

  But as the sky grew lighter, and the sun crept down the mountain wall, my fears lessened. Montgomery was evil, this was true, but last night's performance in the tent had had nothing to do with him. Perhaps I had a touch of fever myself. Who knew what diseases passed from man to man in these filthy conditions? Certainly nothing I'd seen in London, where a doctor was no more than a few blocks away, at the worst.

  I'd deal with Colonel Montgomery, and I'd do it without “supernatural” aid. But I could use his own fears against him, his ignorance of the mines. What man would own a collection of witchcraft and superstitious drivel who didn't believe in it at least a little? No wonder he wanted to scare the Negroes. He was nearly heathen himself.

  All I needed was preparation, and then to get him into the claim.

  “You need to see the vein yourself,” I said, holding the gold-threaded quartz in my hand. “It's the richest ore I've ever seen.”

  Montgomery lounged in his chair like a slothful cat, his arms draped back over the low top, his feet on the table next to the open bottle. Behind him, his travel cases lined the tent's walls, each with a huge clasp lock. Charlie told me that some contained liquor, but books filled many, his entire collection of supernatural studies. From what I remembered
of American history, if Montgomery had been caught with the same books in Salem in 1692, he would have been hanged.

  His feet came off the table.

  “Give it to me,” his whiskey-roughened voice growled. He found a hand lens in the desk's clutter to examine the pebbles. At length, he said, “This came from my mine?” The lens magnified his eye into a black ball as lifeless as those dead-end shafts I'd seen that morning.

  “There's a cavity at the end of Bernice. I wanted to find out how deep it was, so I chipped a wider opening. It wasn't until I got to the surface that I thought to look at the stone I'd removed. I exposed a band the same as that at least six feet wide. It could rival anything in California.” I tried to sound optimistic, but not overeager.

  Montgomery bent over the rocks again. “We'll need to do an assay to be sure. I want to inspect it first, though. Get Charlie Crump to run the bucket. I don't trust any of the others.”

  He noticed my hesitation.

  “Oh, Charlie has been with me a long time. I swore to him if anything ever happened to me, I'd haunt him. These African folk are big on hauntings. Very simple that way, so don't worry about riding down with me.”

  As we took the steep path to the shaft, Charlie bringing up the rear, Montgomery said to me, “You're not superstitious, are you? A man died in here yesterday. Lot more ghosts than him in this mine.” He laughed, and I remembered what the sheriff had said about coming out to this claim before. How many other “accidents” had there been?

  “Are you worried about ghosts, Colonel? I don't remember you in the tunnels before.”

  His hand went to his chest, feeling something under his shirt. “I don't believe in ghosts, Jonas. A schooled man like yourself should know better. It's the coloreds who live in a spiritual world. That's why the Klan is so effective. Properly funded, they will win back the South.” He paused, then said without irony, “Just in case, though, I wear a warding. My kitchen woman made it for me years ago. If there were ghosts, it would keep them off. Belts and suspenders is what I always say. Besides, the richest gold strikes in history are associated with tragedy. The Buluma deposits in Austria were discovered after a cave-in killed fourteen miners. The ancient Egyptian kings shored up their mine walls with slave bodies. The greatest treasures in the world were founded on death.”

  Charlie made no noise as he followed. I couldn't help but think of him last night, as I read from the book, eyes wide, too frightened for me even to read the words out loud. Belief is a powerful thing. Charlie and the others believed in haunts and witchings and ritual. I'd seen them pinch spilt salt to toss it over their shoulders. I'd seen one man spin counterclockwise three times after accidentally killing a spider. I'd seen the small sacks they wore round their necks, filled with little bones and bits of feather.

  I'd seen mine owners, too, on a hunch pouring thousands of dollars into worthless projects in the belief their fortune resided only a few feet deeper. I'd seen prayers said over open pits, hoping divine intervention would place wealthy deposits in that day's diggings.

  That's what I learned to resist during my geologic studies. Minerals congregated when the conditions were right. No belief or ritual would put gold ore where the geologic conditions weren't favorable. Science guaranteed success where faith could not. That was why I studied Earth's stony mysteries and turned away from men, like Montgomery, who were too puzzling to fathom. I longed to return to the classroom. Perhaps I could become a lecturer in England, where a man of learning would be respected for his education and not be relegated to sleeping in Brown Town because he wasn't white.

  I reached for the square shape in my ore bag. The book was there. If this worked, the men would be rid of Montgomery one way or another. No matter what, when I left, their lot would be better.

  If I'd felt my brow then, would I have felt fever? The plan was insane. The sheriff in Idaho Springs wouldn't arrest Montgomery, but there was law farther east. I could write to the magistrates in Kansas City. Still, we pressed on.

  My memory of the trek up the hill is filled with garish color: igneous rocks so dark no shadow showed on them, clouds bleached as if the sky had been erased and the stark parchment of the universe shown through. More than once I stumbled. Granite scree imbedded itself in my palm. I put my mouth against the wound and sucked.

  Charlie manned the windlass. Montgomery lit an oil lantern, a luxury he never allowed the miners. They carried shad-owgees, tin cans or buckets shaped to hold candles. I stepped into the bucket beside him. Overhead, the noon sun beat down, but a cool draft blew from the mine. The cavity at Bernice's end must be vast indeed to push this much air from the tunnel.

  I nodded to Charlie, and he unlatched the windlass. The headframe pulley creaked as the cable played out. Ground rose to our eye level as we started the long descent. Crudely carved granite walls replaced the sun-washed mountainside in our view. Montgomery bumped me when the bucket lurched. “Be more careful, you charcoal buck!” he shouted to Charlie. In the shaft's close confines, his voice resounded. The lantern smoked and stank. He hadn't properly trimmed the wick. He smelled of unwashed clothes and old liquor. I half hoped Charlie would drop a stone himself. Surely providence would cause it to hit him and not me. I looked up. The opening glowed like a white-hot coin.

  “If this ore assays out, we'll hire more crew,” he said. “Cornish miners who know what they're doing. Not this shirtless crowd of buffalo heads. My investors, my Southern investors, will be very happy.”

  “Always proper to turn a profit, sir,” I said to keep his suspicions away. Would he notice the new timberwork in Bernice?

  At seventy feet we passed the northward-wandering Agnes, the oldest of the Epitome's three tunnels and the only one with track for ore carts. As always, I grimaced at the few support pillars the light illuminated. They were ill-fitted, coarse beams that needed to be hammered back into place periodically as the uncured wood contracted.

  At 110 feet, Charlie stopped the bucket with nary a jostle, only a foot shy of Bernice's floor. We stepped out. Montgomery's oil lantern cast a much brighter light than the candle in my shadowgee. I checked my pockets. There were plenty more candles there, not that I expected to use them all.

  “You should lead, sir,” I said.

  Bernice bore northeast into the mountain, following quartzy rock in a zigzag fashion for hundreds of feet. We passed short exploratory adits, horizontal tunnels that petered out in a few yards. The farther in we went, the lower the ceiling became. I kept one hand above my head, running it across the rough rock. Something felt wet, and I brought my fingers down to the light. They glistened from seep. I'd seen no sign of water this high in the Epitome before. I rubbed my fingers together. The water was slimy, and the tunnel smelled fetid. I wiped my hand hard against my pants.

  Soon we were bent at the waist. Even shrouded in glass, Montgomery's lamp flickered from Bernice's steady, moist exhalation. The light surrounded him in a circle, while his black form eclipsed the lantern itself. He passed two newly hewn timbers without pausing. I stopped. The cavity was only thirty yards farther around another bend. Over his head, fresh boards covered the ceiling for ten feet. He didn't even remark on the change. Perhaps he never had been in his own mine. I put my shadowgee in a niche on the wall, waited until Montgomery went past the corner, then kicked the first support under the new boards. It didn't move. I kicked it again. What if he heard? What if he discovered me at work? Maybe I'd miscalculated the weight. I sat, braced my hands behind me and kicked the beam again with both feet. It slid over a few inches, and pebbles dropped from between two boards.

  “I don't see your vein,” said Montgomery, his voice echoey and small. “Where the blazes are you, Jonas?” The turn in the tunnel brightened. He must be coming back. I scooted closer to the beam and kicked a last time with all my strength. The timber slid another half foot. A board cracked farther along. More dust dribbled from the ceiling. Montgomery's lantern came around the corner, and I reared back for one more desperate kick, but I
didn't need it. With a loud pop, the center board snapped and rock roared into the tunnel.

  Instinctively, I rolled away, covering my head. Rock on rock makes a particular sound, a crisp clack. For several seconds, lying on the stone floor, I heard the rocks hitting one another, clack, clack, clack. There was dust.

  It took me a minute to light a new candle. Broken rock choked the tunnel closed from floor to ceiling, and shards reached to my feet. If I had not moved, the cave-in would have killed me. The flame bent toward the shaft. My blockage hadn't stopped air flow. If my calculations were correct, there was no more than twelve feet between Montgomery and myself. Of course, he wouldn't know that. He'd have no way of knowing if the entire drift had collapsed.

  “Montgomery,” I called. “Are you still alive, Montgomery?” I placed my hands on the jumbled rock.

  “Thank God!” came his answer, his voice clear through the breakdown. “Jonas, is the drift clear behind you? Can you get help? My leg… I'm hurt.”

  I didn't say anything for a while. He had stood on the edge of a mine shaft and dropped a stone on four men, killing one. I remembered his eyes when he looked up, no different than if he'd stepped on an insect. The breeze blew cool air through the rocks beneath my hands. I let it play off my face. “Who would come to help you, Colonel? Should I call Charlie Crump? How about the other men on the bucket yesterday? Do you think they'll come down the shaft for you?”

  No answer.

  You may think at this point that surely I meant to kill him, but I didn't. I'd loosened the ceiling, but only enough to fill the passage. Montgomery could dig his way out in a day or two, all the while without light, an unknown cavity looming behind him.