I take my seat at the chessboard. The board has been set, pieces arranged with inhuman precision into two straight lines on each side of the board. The pieces have been carved from some strange stone: the white pieces radiate under the light, while the black ones absorb it. I don’t touch them; I don’t even dare breathe on them.
A hand appears.
The hand seems to float, detached and boundless like driftwood in nebulous waters. Its withered fingers pick up a white pawn, and move it two squares. The hand then repeats the maneuver on the black side of the chessboard.
I gasp, nearly tumble from my seat, but I manage to keep calm; after all, I assume this is my host. Not what I was expecting, but then again, I don’t know what I was to expect in the first place.
The hand moves a white knight, then gestures at the black side, which I can only guess it wants me to join in the game. Yet when I touch a black pawn, my fingers phase right through it.
I look at my hand, it seems solid enough. But I still cannot pick up the piece. Now that I come to think of it, I can’t feel my heartbeat, either. Have I — have I died? When I fell, did I actually meet my end?
“Dead, no”
I don’t hear the voice in my ears, but rather in my bones as it rises up from the nether both below and around me. A throbbing starts in the back of my skull, as though my brain would rather reject the words said by force than to logically account for it. And I squeeze my eyes shut as tears spread down my face.
The pain subsides enough for me to open my eyes. The hand reaches into the darkness, and I watch with wide eyes as it pulls back this dimension as though it were no more than a curtain, revealing pure white that burns if stared at for too long. It’s a doorway. But to where, I would like to know.
I receive no answer — and instead I’m yanked upon, like there’s an invisible string attached to my chest and someone is tugging on the other end. I cling to the chair. It disappears along with the chessboard. The doorway looms ever closer, its harsh rays stretching over me. The light scalds like boiling water, penetrates my flesh and worms its way to my bones. My body moves on its own accord toward the doorway despite all my mental resistance. I can’t even work my mouth to scream.
White; it’s all I can see, all I can feel.
My vision clears, and I find myself walking into an office room with chairs around a large steel table, the blinds shut against approaching dawn. It seems I’ve flipped the light switch when I entered. Yes, I know this room. The cold glare reflecting off the table; the feeling that you’re slipping away while seated in a stiff chair. We have a meeting here every three months, and I give my Powerpoint on how the company is doing financially and suggestions to cut costs. How odd I couldn’t recognize the building at night.
Then again, I don’t suppose I was myself.
There’s a chessboard at one end of the table, perhaps left behind by another meeting. A funny coincidence. I sit down in front of the board, bringing back the memory of that moment with the hand, and feel around in my pocket for the invitation. Instead I find a piece of paper napkin. My brows furrow. Maybe I just wanted to believe and had deluded myself in the process. Wanted to escape.
I look around the room with a sigh. There’s only one reality for me.
I grab one of the chess pieces — my fingers phase right through it.
Siobhan Gallagher is a recent graduate from ASU and wannabe zombie slayer. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Eschatology, Flush Fiction anthology, and Abyss & Apex. Occasionally, she does this weird thing called ‘blogging’ at: defconcanwrite.blogspot.com
Story illustration by Leslie Herzfeld.
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In Memoriam: Robert Nelson
by W.H. Pugmire
Written for Robert Nelson, one of H.P. Lovecraft’s correspondents. W.H. Pugmire says, I have been quite moved, the more I learn about this young suicidal poet, Robert Nelson. I like to pay homage to young doom’d souls, & thus I have writ this wee prose-poem, enclos’d, which I hope you will be able to use in ye Lovecraft eZine.
UNDER THE UNMOVING CLOUD, I WAIT. Still, I taste the nectar of that lake of blood, wherein I washed my innocent hands, and then my face, with gore that spilt from hands that knew no crime as yet. I take up one perfumed blossom from the lake of blood, that bloom wherein is curled a fetid serpent that, rising, kissed my eye. And white mist of moon sinks down to copulate with crimson mist of lake, and I rise at last, barefoot, a phantom lost in mournful youth. I creep beneath unmoving cloud, into the woodland of neglected souls, and shake from my splintered skull my crumbled dreams. I drift, barefoot, through rotting gloom, beyond joy and pain, into a realm of ecstasy and pain. I find the vacant tomb beside the vat of gore, that tub before which kneels a clumsy skeleton that has dropped its skull into the silo’s mess. I push my hand into the thick liquid debris and pluck the skull, but turn my eyes away from its too-wide grin. I walk, barefoot, upon the soft floor of that mephitic woodland, sucking in its fumes, until my calloused foot touches mausoleum marble. How sad the crimson candles look, unlit. I set the skull onto a ledge and place one candle in its jaw. Striking flint, I summon sparks that kiss my eye, that lick the candle wicks. The tiny scarlet flames are beads of blood on fire. They shimmer as did the lake of blood, and I clutch with innocent hands into the air of carnage. One candle alone remains unlit, reposing in a death’s-head jaw. I strike the flint a second time and wonder why this candle’s flame is black. I feel that glacial flame upon my eye, that eye that peers onto the sharp edge of the flint stones, that hard unyielding edge. I strike that edge unto my mortal wrists and watch the mist of mortality rise from me and conjoin with crimson air. I move my barefoot foot in pool of blood and peer at that one midnight flame that ushers me, at last, into glad deliverance.
(c) 2011 Andrea Bonazzi
Many have called Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire the greatest living Lovecraftian writer. W.H. Pugmire is a writer of horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His adopted middle name derives from the story of the same title by Edgar Allan Poe. Strongly influenced by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, many of Pugmire’s stories directly reference “Lovecraftian” elements (such as Yog-Sothoth of the Cthulhu Mythos). Pugmire’s major original contribution to the Cthulhu Mythos is the Sesqua Valley, a fictional location in the Pacific Northwest of the United States that serves as the primary locale for much of his fiction. According to his official biography, his “goal as an author is to dwell forevermore within Lovecraft’s titan shadow.” Pugmire is a self-proclaimed eccentric recluse as well as “the Queen of Eldritch Horror.” His stories have appeared in major horror anthologies, and collections of his fiction and poetry have appeared under small press imprints such as Necropolitan Press, Mythos Books, Delirium Books, and Hippocampus Press.
Visit W.H. Pugmire’s page at Amazon.com to buy his books!
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A Stranger at the Door
by Bradly Shelby
This is a story that caught my attention, by a promising young writer who shows great potential. I’m throwing it into this issue as an “extra”. I told Brad on the phone that he has talent and he really should write more. After reading this story, I think you’ll agree. — Mike
April 2
It has been four days now and it still has not moved away from in front of the door.
I came across this journal earlier today while I was going through all of the supplies, trying to figure out what I have to work with and what I might have to ration, and I thought that writing in it would be a good way to help pass the time until either help comes or I see a chance to run for it. After all, since there’s no electricity up here I don’t have a television or a radio to keep myself occupied, and even if I did, I doubt I could bring myself to turn them on. Even the idea of making more noise than I have to, of really making any noise at all, fills me with dread. It’s mostly due to the fact that I don’t want to attract its attention any more than I already have and
give it further reason to continue sticking around…and, admittedly, somewhat because I worry about being unable to hear any possible changes outside.
This constant paranoia makes it a challenge even to try reading some of the books and magazines that we brought up here with us. I can’t really bring myself to concentrate on whatever it is that I am trying to read- I’m too distracted, too busy jumping out of my skin over every creak of timber or gust of wind to really focus. I read the words and then the door crowds them back out of my mind. The sounds that arise during the night make it impossible to do anything other than cower up here in the loft, staring unblinkingly down at the door and praying to God to just make this thing go away already, or for the sun to come up so at least it will quiet back down for the day. Sometimes I honestly don’t know which is worse- the tense silence during the days or listening to the door creak and moan as whatever the hell that thing is pushes on it all night long while endlessly, wordlessly screaming at me.
No, the nights are the worst, and I know it.
And so I have decided to start writing in this journal, so that I’ll at least have something to do with my time other than just sitting here and staring at the door all day…just waiting for something to happen, praying that nothing will.
The journal must be one of Katy’s- she’s always scribbling and writing in these things, especially when we come up to here to the cabin, but I’m certain she won’t mind my using it. Dear God, I hope she’s alright. I hope that she’s found help.
April 3
Still no changes last night. It started its screaming a few hours after sunset, pushing heavily on the door, seemingly trying to force its way inside. I honestly don’t know which is worse- the fact that the sound is so incredibly human in nature, or the fact that something about it simultaneous makes it glaringly inhuman and unnatural. There is something about it, some quality that seems familiar, and yet at the same time alien to me. That vague feeling of familiarity frightens me more than anything else. It makes me think of an article I read years ago about something called the uncanny valley- they said it described feelings of revulsion towards anything that closely imitated human life but was obviously far from it. I can’t think of a better term for the sounds this thing makes.
Each morning after the sun has come up and the thing has gone quiet for the day, I remove my barricades and inspect the door, and so far, it still seems to be holding up fairly well. The hinges and locks remain firm and unbent. Despite the creaking I have heard during the nighttime assaults, the wood doesn’t seem to be cracking or warping anywhere. I’ve braced it up as best I could with what I have, but I don’t really have much to work with: whatever furniture there is, a few assorted tools, a bit of rope.
I don’t know that wedging the couch up against the door is doing much good, but at least it’s something. No, I think that it has everything to do with the quality of the door itself- my father really put his heart into it years ago when he built this place, and he built everything in here to last, from the roof to that door. All that had meant before was that Katy and I would have a nice place up in the mountains for years to come where we could get away from the city for a while. A place where we could enjoy being in nature and the smell of fresh air and just…being together with each other. Now his craftsmanship seems to be the only thing standing between me and…I don’t even want to know. Thank God that he decided against putting any windows in the place when he built it, however strange that had seemed at the time. The fireplace still worries me, but I imagine that it must be too narrow for that thing to fit down. At least, I hope it is.
I spent this morning gathering up all of the empty buckets, jars, and tubs that I could find and filling them with water from the hand pump he built in the kitchen area. I don’t honestly even know why I did it- I really can’t see how it would reasonably be able to tamper with the well or affect the water supply, and yet all the same, it felt like the right thing to do. Besides, the last thing I need is to run out of water somehow, and a bit of precaution isn’t going to hurt anything. If nothing else, it gave me something to occupy my time with. There’s enough canned food stored up here to last me for quite some time, especially if I rationed it a bit, but I hope that there won’t be too much of a need to worry about that. I have to imagine that whatever it is out there is either going to get tired of trying to get at me or waiting on me to come out, or that help comes- but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
It’s hard to believe that just five days ago Katy and I were driving up here, laughing like we were teenagers again, talking about when we wanted to go for a hike and when we wanted to do some fishing and how nice it was going to be to get out of the city for an entire month and just how much we needed it. To think, that was less than a week ago, and now it seems like a memory from another time, like seeing something from someone else’s life. Despite how much we had enjoyed the drive up here, I had known that something was wrong almost as soon as we got out of the car. At first I could not figure out what seemed to be bothering me, but as we were carrying things in from the car and unpacking, the wind changed. A strange odor, almost a sort of musk, had drifted in out of the forest on the breeze, and when I smelled it I had nearly dropped the box I was carrying. I saw the color drain from Katy’s face when she came back outside and smelled it as well. She asked me what it could be while covering her nose with her shirt, but I told her that I didn’t know. I had no answer for her, as it was nothing quite like I had ever smelled before- it wasn’t a particularly strong smell, or even all that putrid…but there had been something…wrong about it. Something invasive and unclean.
You see, my father had been bringing me up here on camping trips for as long as I could remember, and so I was no stranger to the smells of death and decay- I could still remember that once when I was young we had been hiking and had found a dead deer in the water, and that we hadn’t been able to get the smell entirely out of our clothes for days. But this was something entirely different. The instant I had smelled it, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and my stomach had tightened into a knot. I had felt the overpowering urge to climb back into the car, start driving, and never, ever look back. The need to put as much distance as possible between myself and whatever was causing that smell. I had told Katy as much, and though it obviously bothered her as well, she had laughed and told me that it was only some dead thing out in the woods, that I was being silly and getting upset over nothing. Now, looking back at how pale her face had been and how nervous that laugh had sounded, I know that she hadn’t really believed that. God, why couldn’t she have just trusted me? Were you just too proud to admit that you felt the same feelings of terror that I had? Or maybe it had simply been because it had taken us so long to manage to finally set up an entire month off from work together. It had taken more than a couple of sacrifices on both our parts, but we had known that it was really going to be worth it. Maybe that’s why she refused to go, and maybe it’s how she finally convinced me to stay.
And so, instead, we had continued unloading the car, unpacking everything we would need, getting ready to settle in for the next month together. I had been unable to keep myself from glancing at the forest anytime we were outside, half expecting to see something, though I could not say what, out there in the shadows. I had known that Katy was right, that something had simply died nearby. And yet, no matter how many times I told myself that, I still could not quite make myself believe it. I don’t think Katy did, either, though she hid it better than I could. It seemed as though the longer we were around the smell, the more intense my discomfort became, and I felt the beginnings of a tension headache begin to steadily spread from the back of my head. By the end, I think the only thing that had really kept me here was the fact that I was going to propose to her while we were on this trip. I can’t even stand to look at the ring right now, and I know that I won’t be able to until I know that she’s safe, that she’s alright. Until I can know that, until I can hold her in my arms again,
it has become nothing more than a symbol of how much I might have lost, and what a fool I was for letting us stay.
Katy, wherever you are, know that I love you.
April 4
Still no changes to report. Just another night of that damned thing trying to force in the door, screaming at me hour after hour, all through the night. Why does it scream like that? Is it hoping it can scare me out of my little hole, thinking it can frighten me into making some sort of run for it? Could it serve some purpose beyond my understanding? Perhaps it’s intelligent and just derives a sick pleasure from knowing that it’s tormenting me in here. I’m not about to try asking it. I have enough difficulty just bringing myself to get close enough to the door in order to check it for damage. Just knowing that it’s sitting there on the other side, waiting…it’s just too much for me to handle at this point. I know I should man up and move the rubber stopper away from the bottom of the door, that I should be trying to watch it and see if it either comes and goes or just…incessantly sits there, waiting, day in and day out. I know that I should, but I can’t bring myself to do it. I just can’t handle the idea of those eyes staring in here under the door. That would be even worse than the screaming, and that’s already almost more than I can bear. I saw them once, which was more than enough.
My headache had grown steadily worse as the day had gone on until it became almost unbearable, and I knew I would have to lie down for a while. Katy had suggested that it was most likely due to the change in altitude during the drive up here, that she knew it could sometimes cause headaches. Of course, I reminded her that this had never happened to me before, and that I had been coming up here for years now- she simply reminded me that I was getting old, that these things happen. Eventually I settled for taking some aspirin to help ease the pain in my head, climbing up into the loft, and lying down in bed while she finished unpacking things and setting up around the cabin. I had made her promise to wake me up if she needed anything, and to not go far from the cabin until after I had woken up. I didn’t even want her to go outside without me, but I knew she would have been upset by that. In the end, she told me I was being silly but promised nonetheless, and I fell asleep almost immediately after lying down.
Lovecraft eZine Megapack - 2012 - Issues 10 through 20 Page 36
