Haunted Worlds
Page 28
Madly, Zul raced down the spiraling ramp, tears flowing over her scars. She tripped and fell, and in so doing her tevik became partly unraveled. She tore it from her head and her long hair fell free. She raised herself to run again. She burst through the slick, leathery curtain. She hurried through the narrow tunnel. She ran into the entrance hall.
The front portal was gone. But she saw, when she drew closer, that it had not vanished but instead closed to a tight pucker.
Crazed, she darted toward a small window at ground level. Yet even as she neared it, she could see it, too, beginning to grow smaller, to pucker closed.
Just before reaching it, through this window she saw one of the outermost of the eight spires. And it was writhing, fluid and alive, as she knew all eight spires must be doing. Ugghiutu was rejoicing in the sacrifice which Zul had unknowingly brought him.
The orifice sealed up and shut out the last rays of light. Zul was plunged into a darkness as black as her hair.
And when Zul’s father set out with his men in search of her the next morning, he found a herd of twenty glebbi mummies, rotting at the foot of the forbidden purple mountains.
But there was no trace of Zul. Nor even of a temple there.
Drawing No. 8
As mentioned earlier, in my notes for “Good Will toward Men,” every story set in my milieu of Punktown is written with the intention that it can function on its own, without the reader having had to read any other Punktown stories previously or feeling obligated to read any further stories subsequently. Having said this, however, there are connections between some of the Punktown stories. “Drawing No. 8” actually serves as the first in a loose trilogy of stories centered on the god Ugghiutu being summoned to Punktown, which continues with “Gathering Forces,” a story written to accompany the guidebook to a Punktown role-playing game, and culminates in a story called “Wunderwaffe,” which appeared in the anthology World War Cthulhu . Perhaps someday, somewhere, I’ll see the three stories published together.
“Drawing No. 8” was originally intended for an anthology called The Dark Rites of Cthulhu, but when I realized it was going to exceed the word limit, I wrote another tale (called “The Dogs”) for that book instead.
When I reread “Drawing No. 8” now, it occurs to me that readers might feel the emphasis on the spiral was overly influenced by Junji Ito’s Uzumaki . The truth is, though I had long before seen the quirky and fun film version, I hadn’t at the time of writing my story read the manga upon which the movie is based, in which the artist focuses chapters on the coils of our DNA and the whorls of hurricanes and galaxies . . . instances of the spiral in nature that I discuss in my tale. Now, having read the manga, I understand just how much was by necessity omitted from the film, which could never have hoped to live up to its source material. So, again, the focus on the spiral in “Drawing No. 8” was not a deliberate nod to Uzumaki, but I will take the opportunity here to express my admiration for this breathtakingly creepy manga, which to my mind is the epitome of cosmic horror.
Also, this story was written several years before Indonesian artist Ardian Syaf secreted anti-Semitic and anti-Christian propaganda into his artwork for an X-Men comic, just as messages are concealed in the drawing at the heart of my story. Me, I only worked skulls and ghostly faces into the leather folds of the pocketbooks I drew for the catalogs of the handbag company I worked for in 1983. Nothing otherworldly was summoned up by those subliminal visages . . . as far as I know.
Redemption Express
Another Punktown story, originally intended to accompany the aforementioned guidebook for a Punktown RPG, until I realized it was not only going to be too long for that project, but not of the right tone to inspire gamers in plotting their adventures. It turned out to be, though, one of my own favorites of my Punktown short stories.
Overall this collection is on the grim side, so I wanted to end the book with the protagonist escaping its pages scarred but intact. I hope she’ll be okay.
Acknowledgments
“Carrion” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 3 June 2015.
“Drawing No. 8” is original to this collection.
“Feeding Oblivion” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 9 July 2015.
“Good Will toward Men” is original to this collection.
“The Green Hands” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 11 June 2015 (Part 1), 17 June 2015 (Part 2).
“The Left-Hand Pool” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 8 April 2015.
“Mr. Faun” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 12 May 2015.
“Redemption Express” is original to this collection.
“riaH gnoL” is original to this collection.
“Saigon Dep Lam” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 23 December 2015.
“Spider Gates” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 22 July 2015.
“The Temple of Ugghiutu” is original to this collection.
“The Toll” originally appeared on the Patreon website: Jeffrey Thomas Is Creating Weird Fiction . Published 20 April 2015.