Black Wings of Cthulhu, Volume 3

by S. T. Joshi

  “I do what I want.”

  Maya laughed. “Bull-fucking-shit! You don’t do anything you want! You work a job you hate. You’re stuck with a woman you don’t love. You follow every fucking rule and regulation you have thrown at you.”

  I was getting mad. “I came here, didn’t I?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, you did. But who fucked who, Doug?” Her lips curled into a smirk.

  “You wanna show me you really don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything, Doug?” She reached over to a table next to the couch and felt around for something. “Take one of these.”

  Maya held out her hand and, lying on her palm, were two black pills. I’d never seen anything so black. Each one had a large “N” on it in white.

  “What are they?”

  She waved her finger at me. “Uh-uh. No questions. Just take it.”

  “I’m on medications. I can’t just take anything…”

  Maya jumped off the couch. “Fuck it. I knew you weren’t the right one.”

  I grabbed her arm and pulled her towards me.

  “Give it to me.” I said. She put the pill between her teeth and leaned toward me. Our lips met and she pushed the pill into my mouth. I cold-swallowed it. She popped the other pill into her mouth and swallowed. I grabbed her ass and pushed her down on me. “Now we’ll see,” I whispered in her ear, “who’s doing the fucking.”

  TIME CEASED TO HAVE ANY MEANING. IT WAS JUST A concept. A concept that I, in my ultimate power, was rejecting. I’d never taken drugs before in my life. I remembered all the things I’d read and heard about acid trips and highs, but this didn’t feel anything like that. It was like being in a dream but being fully awake.

  I felt rather than saw Maya beside me. We were in the clearing but we were also in her apartment, limbs intertwined and thrusting. I was here but I was also there. My mind was split and I could move and function in both places at the same time. Off in the distance, something was coming for me.

  In the here, I was looking in Maya’s face as her eyes rolled up inside her head.

  In the there, she took my hand and beckoned me further to the other side of the clearing.

  In the here, my hands were roughly rubbing her breasts as her veins became brighter and shone through her skin.

  In the there, I stepped outside the opposite edge of the clearing and heard something coming closer.

  In the here, Maya’s breath became short and ragged.

  In the there, something moved toward me without moving.

  In the here, she sang and chanted with the voice of something inhuman and outside.

  In the there, something moved through the wood of the trees and shifted and ululated as it came forward like a mist.

  In the here, I licked the sweat from between her breasts and tasted blood.

  In the there, something crawled toward me and in its center was chaos.

  In the here, Maya wept and laughed.

  In the there, something opened my mind and stepped inside and I allowed it to.

  In the here, my hands went to Maya’s back and I felt leathery wings.

  In the there, the voice spoke to me and I finally understood what it meant.

  In the here, I felt myself ripping Maya apart.

  In the there, I knew my insignificance and saw its truth.

  WHEN I AWOKE, MAYA WAS IN PIECES ON THE FLOOR. A blood-stained butcher knife was in my hand. I looked at her and felt only envy. I took a shower, got dressed, and left. If anyone had heard anything, I didn’t notice it. In my pocket were about two dozen of the black pills.

  Maya was right. I hadn’t really understood. I had been foolish and innocent in my blindness. What I had thought was insignificance hadn’t even begun to touch the truth. The chaos had shown me when it came into my mind. Nothing of man mattered. None of the history, none of the accomplishments, the wars, the heartbreak, none of it made any difference. The cosmos was awash with creatures whose footsteps eclipsed our civilizations in length and indifference. Laws, rules, and morality were mere trappings man clothed himself in while he desperately tried to convince himself that he mattered at all. Now I understood it all and what it truly meant to be insignificant. Nothing was important, which was liberating and damning all at the same time.

  That’s what Lovecraft had meant. The “gods” and “monsters” were just window dressing, something for the “earth-centric”-minded ones to latch on to. When you finally understood it all, you knew that there was no reason for anything. There were no “gods” waiting to reclaim the earth. There was only the universe, spiraling onward, unknowing, uncaring, indifferent to man who puffed up his chest like a little puppy barking at a garbage truck.

  When I got home, I moved a chair to face the front door. I got a large knife from the kitchen and sat down to wait for Ann. Time no longer had any hold on me. I sat in the chair, swallowed black pills, and waited. When I was finished with Ann, I’d get on the bus and go to work and show them how insignificant they were. I’d show everyone how insignificant they all were and make them look into my face and see and know that they had never been important, they had never mattered. None of it ever had.

  Thistle’s Find

  SIMON STRANTZAS

  Simon Strantzas is the critically acclaimed author of Nightingale Songs, Cold to the Touch, and Beneath the Surface—three collections of the strange and supernatural published by Dark Regions Press. His British Fantasy Award–nominated fiction has appeared a number of times in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, as well as in venues such as Postscripts and Cemetery Dance. His story collection Burnt Black Suns was published in 2014. He can be found haunting the streets of Toronto, Canada, where he continues to live with his ever-patient wife and an unyielding hunger for the flesh of the living.

  I’D CALLED DR THISTLE BECAUSE I WAS TIGHT ON cash and because the place I’d been staying had just been flipped by the police again. It was getting old, to be honest, but I was used to it. The police and I didn’t get along—not after what happened when Mrs. Mulroney died, at any rate—so I did my best to avoid them. They were bad for business, and it didn’t help that Detective McCray still had his crooked eye on me, along with the rest of his moustache gang.

  But I thought I could trust Dr. Thistle to help, or at least hide me out for a while. I’d known him for nearly my entire life—ever since I was a weird little kid and he was my weirder neighbor. My parents had warned me to keep away from him, but even then I knew they were full of shit and didn’t know what they were talking about. Dr. Thistle treated me like an adult, which is all any kid really wants.

  He wasn’t a regular doctor. I’m not even sure he ever went to medical school. When he first told me to call him “Doctor” I did and never questioned it. He had all the credentials: his house was full of all that equipment only a doctor could afford. It all seemed legit to me and I’d seen enough doctors on TV to know what I was talking about.

  I eventually figured out he didn’t treat people and that he was a bit of a quack, but that only made him more interesting. His thoughts were crazy, and the mumbo-jumbo he talked about when I first met him only made marginally more sense once I was a teenager and had some school behind me. Some of the words he used went right over my head—so far over, I think a plane might have hit them. Eventually, I got bored of going over there all the time to deal with his insanity, but I kept it up because my asshole of a father forbade it, and because I’d read a book once where a crazy old man gave a fortune to the one kid dumb enough to stick around and talk to him. It was a gamble, sure, but no one else ever visited and those machines couldn’t have been cheap to buy.

  When the bus let me off at Thistle’s I barely even looked at the house I grew up in. My parents still lived there as far as I knew, but if they did I knew they’d never let me back in. They believed everything Detective McCray told them about me, and that was that. There was nothing more to do. If they saw me get off the bus in front of Thistle’s house they didn’t open the door or com
e to the window. I was like a ghost to my own flesh and blood, which was kind of ironic when you think about it.

  Thistle’s house had an aura around it. The feeling was palpable as I stood there, staring at the two levels of dilapidation, my skin slick and clammy. The air smelled of ozone, as though reality had been bent, something I was far more familiar with than I would have liked, thanks to Mrs. Mulroney. Still, it left me feeling nauseated.

  Whatever Thistle was up to inside, it was clearly a bad idea. My gut knew it, even if my head thought different. Still, I couldn’t help but be curious, so instead of running I climbed the uneven concrete steps to the porch and swung the front door’s tarnished brass knocker. Flakes of paint fluttered like dead leaves to the ground.

  The old man that answered the door must have been Thistle, but it was hard to tell under all those gray wrinkles. He was dressed only in an old undershirt and boxer shorts, and both were stained so severely I wondered if they’d ever been washed. He was sweating and out of breath, and the putrid smell that hit me took me off guard. It burned my eyes.

  “Owen! It’s good to see you. Your timing is perfect. Now, inside. Quickly!”

  I kicked the dirt off my feet even though they were probably cleaner than his carpet. Doctor Thistle was, quite simply, a hoarder, and over the years since I’d been in his house it had only grown worse. When I was a kid, visiting was like going on a treasure hunt, and I think all the things I discovered there beneath the piles and stacks taught me that there was always something interesting to find if I just looked hard enough. It also taught me that other people’s stuff was unimportant next to finding those things. Thistle complained, but he never kicked me out for tearing his stacks apart, which is another reason I stuck by him for so long.

  He led me down a narrow path between stacks of old science journals and newspapers. The further into the house we got, the sicker I felt.

  “I need some help, Doc. I’m a bit light on cash and—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving my predicament away. “I need to show you something. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for you, so just follow me; I haven’t written everything down yet and I don’t want to get confused.”

  I don’t know how old he was when I first met him, but after so many years Dr. Thistle had to have been ancient. You could see it in the cataracts of his jaundiced eyes. The smell in the house hadn’t eased, but I’d acclimated myself to it somewhat and was able to stop cupping my mouth in my hand. I wondered what Thistle had been cooking and whether I could pry one of the painted-over windows open enough for some fresh air. It was like breathing in a room full of rotten meat. The flies were legion.

  Thistle’s old heavy feet clomped on the bare wooden staircase into the basement. I’d never been allowed down there before, and as we descended I felt the old tingle of childhood fear creeping up on me. I hadn’t been afraid of anything in so long that part of me was amused by the sensation, but there was another part that wondered why it had occurred at all, especially considering all the horrible things I’d witnessed since. I suppose we’re all just an amalgamation of our childhood fears and instincts; no matter what our brains know, sometimes old fear runs much deeper than logic can dam.

  And for that fear, I can only blame my parents.

  My mother had told me there were rumors about Dr. Thistle, and I knew Dad and she were angry about him moving in, but it didn’t make sense. He may have been strange, but he’d been nothing but nice to me. I can probably guess, in hindsight, what stories my mother had heard, but nothing unsavoury ever happened. I’m pretty sure I would remember something like that. Well, reasonably sure.

  The basement lights were off, but sunlight edged around the material papering the windows. I heard the hum of the machinery running, as well a whining noise and something shuffling. The rotten tobacco odor from upstairs had given way to the tremendous stench of old musky sweat, and no matter how deep I breathed it wasn’t deep enough to get acclimated. The world wavered in the periphery of my vision, and what I could see amounted only to the red and blue indicator lights of a room full of electronic gear. I heard something there in the dark, like breathless panting and slobbering, and a low growl that sounded as if it was almost on top of me and not very happy.

  “When did you buy a dog, Doc?”

  “A dog?” His voice seemed warped there in the dark. “I don’t have a dog. What you’re hearing, that’s—well, that’s something else entirely. I’ll show you, but you need to see something else first. Just stand right where you are. I don’t want you knocking anything over.”

  I heard Thistle’s footsteps move away from me, and I thought I could make him out faintly in the corner of my eye, rippling the dark as he passed. The smell off him faded a bit, but I still felt nauseous. And curious. I definitely felt curious.

  The lights blinded me when they came on. I don’t know if they were too bright, or I just wasn’t ready, but the pain in my head was as sharp and swift as a razor and I was already screaming before my eyelids shut. It drove whatever animal Thistle had down there crazy. It started howling and thrashing while Thistle’s shushes seemed aimed at us both. When I finally managed to pry my eyes open again I immediately wanted to shut them. Impossibly, the basement was more cluttered than the floor above. I don’t think there were as many boxes and piles, but what was there was larger and odder shaped. It just seemed full of equipment. Blue network cables were wrapped around and hanging from joists crisscrossing the room, sometimes dangling so low they looked as if they’d clothesline any average-sized man walking past. Machinery and computers were running everywhere, displays spitting out screen after screen of meaningless code. In the middle of it all was what looked like a mirror. About two feet square, its surface was less reflective and more as if it had the appearance of reflection. That’s the best way I can put it. Whatever I could see in its surface was blurry and didn’t look quite right. The thin metal square was held up by a two-post rack, and I wondered if every goddamn cable in the place attached to it in some way.

  “What’re you building down here, Doc?”

  “Oh, it’s built, it’s built.” Thistle laughed but the sound of it had a strange throaty warble, and the look on his face was hard to peg. “It’s a door, Owen. I’ve built a door.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Hang on. Don’t touch anything.”

  He started hitting buttons and turning knobs and the machines in the room made the same noises they had before, but the pitch was higher. It was as if they were working together to produce the most ear-splitting whine possible. Immediately, my nausea tripled, and I experienced something similar to my worst flashbacks. I covered my ears, but Thistle didn’t, probably because he was already used to the experience. Or maybe he’d just found a node to stand in. He worked the controls as if he was a lot crazier than I’d ever given him credit for. He danced between the switches and keyboards with glassy-eyed glee, his tongue peeking from him mouth, periodically licking his bottom lip. I also heard the mournful cries of that animal, though it wasn’t easy over the device’s whine.

  Thistle turned around—it was the first time he’d looked directly at me since switching on his equipment, and without missing an excited step started pointing at the middle of the room where the reflective metal square was standing. Beneath it, lights flickered with the same hyperactivity, but the mirror itself had changed forms. Earlier its reflection had been a poor reproduction of what was in front of it—colours muted, angles bent, images blurred and unknowable—but the surface had started to glow and ripple, and whatever had been reflected there wasn’t anymore. Just what images were reflected was baffling, but the sight was enough to make what little I’d eaten for breakfast come rushing up my throat. I bent over and vomited, and it spread across the floor like thick soup.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, Owen?” I stood up and nodded, looking at Thistle though my watering eyes. I wiped off my mouth.

  “Th
e noise is really messing with my head.”

  He nodded. “It takes some getting used to. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off in a minute. And don’t worry about the floor. It’ll be fine once it dries. Come look at this.”

  He led me to the mirror, and though I felt the pressure in my head worsen, my stomach settled down. Thistle’s odor didn’t help matters. I wondered what I was doing in that basement, and what the hell Thistle was up to. Mostly, though, I wanted to leave and get myself to a bar. If there was one thing I’d learned about throwing up, it was that it always tasted a lot better followed by a shot of gin. And maybe one before, as well.

  “Look, but don’t touch,” Thistle said, and I peeked into the mirror with suspicion. I didn’t see my refection. What I saw I don’t think I can properly describe. It was like a window hanging over the middle of the floor, and what was on the other side of it was a vast landscape of rock and scrub brush. I peered closer as Thistle watched me, a playful smile on his face while mine was no doubt clouded with confusion.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s a world, Owen. A world almost nothing like ours. I discovered it many years ago, but over time the barrier between there and here has grown thin. So thin, in fact, I was able to fashion a quantum hole using harmonic glass and—”

  “But… how?”

  Thistle looked at me over the top of his glasses.

  “I am a doctor, you know.”

  Suddenly, I saw the truth in his eyes.

  “You think this is going to make you rich, don’t you?”

  Thistle cleared his throat. “Well, the thought did cross my mind, but no, not yet. I haven’t been able to tune it. Right now, this is the only world I can see, and it’s not the kind of place anyone wants to visit.”

  “What do you mean, visit?”

  “Yes, Owen. This isn’t a window. It’s a door.”