Autopsy of an Eldritch City: Ten Tales of Strange and Unproductive Thinking

by James Champagne

  We arrived in the city the last week of October. Because the house I had grown up in had been sold a number of years ago (following the death of my parents), I was forced to take a room at the Lucky Clover Hotel over on Wicker Street. The first day I got back, I just spent a bit of time driving around the city and taking in the sights and sounds. True to the city’s slogan, in some ways it was a “city on the move.” I noticed lots of new buildings that hadn’t been there since I last visited 13 years ago: these new buildings had replaced the old mills that had once upon a time lined the Blackstone River, mills that had dated back to the 1800’s… now gone, stripped away, and replaced with boring office buildings. Yet many of the old churches remained, to say nothing of the countless graveyards and cemeteries: proof that while the living of Thundermist still paid lip service to the Abrahamic God, the dead remained in thrall to the Conqueror Worm.

  Another thing that hadn’t changed was the Thundermistian appreciation of Halloween. As I drove down the streets of the city, I saw with my own eyes that the competitive spirit in the city was alive and well, as many of the lawns were decorated in an even more excessive and outlandish fashion than I remembered them from my childhood. And everywhere I looked were jack-o’-lanterns, grinning their cryptic Mona Lisa smiles. I had the radio switched to 8-Bit FM, a local radio station that only played music from computer and video games, and even they were in an appropriately festive mood: that afternoon they were playing the soundtrack to the classic 1991 Super Nintendo game Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, the current song being the background music for the stage known as “Crucible of Flame.”

  Most of that first week in Thundermist was spent scouting out possible locations for shooting. But on October 31st, Halloween, we were all given the day off, and I decided to have a bit of fun.

  For the first time in 18 years, I decided to wear a costume that Halloween. So I quickly tossed together an outfit that was a dead ringer for the black swan costume sported by Natalie Portman in the film Black Swan (one of my all-time favorite films, I should add). Then, dressed up in such a manner, I began visiting various spots around Thundermist that I had liked to frequent as a kid. The first location I hit was the local Covers bookstore, which I was surprised to see had hired my old childhood chum Frederick as a bookseller. When I walked into the store, I spotted him setting up a promotional table in the center of the store that was dedicated to classic horror books. He was just as surprised to see me. We chatted for a few minutes, but something about him seemed different: there were bags under his eyes, and his skin had a sickly, pale look: he seemed bizarrely interested in talking about Atlantis, of all things, and he asked if I was still in touch with Bernadette, a cousin of mine who was also a nurse. When I asked him why he wanted to know this, he mentioned something about needing an epidermal shot in his spine to treat an old sports injury. I decided to not enquire further.

  Following my stop at Covers, I drove down to Main Street to catch the annual Feast of Wasps parade. As always, it didn’t disappoint, and I was pleased to see that the Lamb of Torment balloon was still in use, though like Frederick, looking a little worse for wear. After leaving the parade, I drove down Main Street and pulled into the parking lot outside of Duncan’s Drugs, a popular local pharmacy. As a child, I had always loved visiting the place, and had usually gone there at least once a week. Old Mr. Duncan loved kids (having never had any of his own: his wife had died many years ago, when he had still been a young man, and he had never remarried), and towards the back of the store, near the kid’s aisle, a small play area had been set up, complete with building blocks, Lincoln Logs, a box of Lego bricks, and some Play-Doh. The Play-Doh had been a particular favorite of mine: I used to enjoy shaping the dough into little figurines, whole families made of the modeling compound, to which I would assign names, identities, life stories. Then I would crush them flat, roll them all together, then from that mass create new figurines with new identities.

  Upon entering the store, the first thing I observed was that Judy Garland’s cover of “Purple People Eater” was playing over the store’s sound system. The second thing I noticed was that old Mr. Duncan was still working at the store, looking as gnarled as ever, though I was pleased to see he was still in good spirits. He recognized me at first sight (“The Play-Doh Girl!”), and we spent a few minutes catching up on old times. He filled me in on some of the things that had occurred in Thundermist over the last year (including the tragedy at St. Stephen’s Church the previous month, which in my mind wasn’t a tragedy at all), and once I was done talking to him I was back on my way.

  As evening fell on Thundermist, I was pacing around my room at the Lucky Clover Hotel, still wearing my Black Swan costume. As I paced I pondered what I should do to pass the time that evening. Most of the local TV channels were playing classic horror films, so that was a possibility, but eventually I decided it might be fun to just walk around the streets of my old neighborhood. I was way too old to trick-or-treat now, but I could at least take in the decorations and admire the costumes of the new generation of trick-or-treaters. Something about the city seemed to be calling out to me that evening, and it was as if I was not a swan but instead a moth, one being called out and drawn toward that pumpkin-colored light.

  So I left the hotel, hopped into my car, and drove to my old neighborhood. I parked in a public parking lot near the perimeter of Vernon Park, then got out and began walking the streets. There were many children out that evening, most of whom were accompanied by their parents, and I delighted in the costumes that were on display; I was amused that a great deal of girls (and even a few of the boys) were dressed up as Miley Cyrus.

  Eventually, I was surprised to see myself standing at the corner of Keziah Street. I looked down the dead-end street, and sure enough, there was Ms. Paddock’s house, looking pretty much exactly as I had remembered it. A featureless humanoid piñata still dangled from a branch of the front lawn’s lone tree, and it looked as decrepit as ever, having been reassembled perhaps one too many times. A small crowd of boys were around it, taking turns whacking it with the provided stick, and though it spun and twirled and danced in the air, they were unable to knock it off.

  I began walking down that dead-end road, heading in the direction of Ms. Paddock’s house, and as I walked past the boys I could feel their eyes on me, no doubt checking out my long and exposed legs. A second later and I had reached the front door of the house, and was reassured when I saw the usual grinning jack-o’-lantern in the front window. I rang the doorbell and waited, unsure of what to expect. But nobody answered the door. I waited a minute or two, then tried again. Still nothing. I frowned. Why wasn’t Ms. Paddock answering her door? Did she even live here anymore? The piñata and the jack-o’-lantern were in place, so I figured she had to still be living there. Was she okay? What if she had fallen and hurt herself?

  I reached out, gripped the door knob, and turned it. The door, unlocked, swung open. I stuck my head into the foyer and called out, “Ms. Paddock?” The only answer I got back was the echo of my own voice. Concerned for the old witch’s safety, I stepped into the house (closing the door behind me), then began investigating the first floor. I peeked into the living room, made a quick search of the kitchen and bathroom, but Ms. Paddock was nowhere to be found. I then walked upstairs. There were only two rooms on the second floor, these rooms being another bathroom and a bedroom. After I saw that the upstairs bathroom was empty as well, I entered the bedroom.

  The bedroom was the largest room of the house, though it was sparsely furnished: there was a bed, a dresser, a vanity bookcase (in that its shelves were lined with various editions and publications of Ms. Paddock’s books, including a number of foreign editions), and, against one wall, a desk, on top of which was an old-fashioned cassette player and a typewriter, with a pile of blank paper next to it. This desk was placed right next to a window that overlooked Ms. Paddock’s front lawn and the tree with the piñata. I didn’t really notice all of this at first, however, because wh
en I first stepped into the room what really captured my attention was the bed, and what was on it.

  Resting on the mattress of the bed was a human skeleton. A cassette tape was held in the bony fingers of its left hand. Oddly enough, I was nonplussed by this sight, but as it were, I’ve never been the sort of girl who jumps at things that go bump in the night. Knowing through some sixth sense that this tableaux had been prepared for my delectation, I pried open the skeleton’s left hand and took hold of the cassette tape. A label had been applied to its outer surface, and sure enough, it was labeled “For Alice.” Tape in hand, I walked over to the desk. I placed the cassette tape into that tape player, then hit the PLAY button.

  A few seconds later, the tape started playing. It essentially consisted of a long monologue performed by Ms. Paddock in her eerie old lady voice. I wish I could transcribe the monologue in her exact words, but, as one will soon see, that proved to be an impossibility. Instead, I’ll summarize the main points. First off, whilst listening to the tape, I quickly came to the conclusion that my parents had been erroneous when they had claimed that Ms. Paddock was a woman without religion. In her own weird way, she did worship a god, one more obscure than the Judaic-Hebrew one that I was on more familiar terms with. On the tape, Ms. Paddock explained how she was not only a witch, but also a member of a little-known cult known as the Sect of the Fecundating Cauldron. She never explained who had founded this cult, or even how old it was, though she did go into some detail concerning its theological beliefs.

  According to Ms. Paddock, the Sect believed that our world (and, indeed, all worlds) was an illusion, and beyond this illusion lay a higher reality they referred to as Tir-Na-Nog, a “land of the dead” oft mentioned in Irish mythology. In their variation of it, Tir-Na-Nog consisted of a vast crater filled with amniotic plasma, presided over by a crone that was possibly an avatar of the goddess known as Cerridwen. Their name for this 5th-dimensional crater was the Fecundating Cauldron. They believed that our reality was nothing more than a bubble that was forming on the surface of the Cauldron’s broth, a bubble that was ever-expanding but which would, one day, pop into nothingness. The Sect claimed that all life, all ideas, all universes, all of everything could be traced back to this archetypal cauldron, and they worshipped it as if it were a god (or, to be more precise, a goddess, for it essentially functioned as a cosmic womb).

  Another aspect of the Sect’s theology was a figure they referred to as “The Perpetual Martyr,” a messiah-type character of a transient identity who they classified as the true savior of our world. The Sect believed that it was the suffering and death agonies experienced by The Perpetual Martyr that kept the bubble of our universe from popping: it suffered so that we didn’t have to. The Sect taught that The Perpetual Martyr usually manifested itself in the guise of fiction, usually as the main character in horror short stories, especially those of a pessimistic bent. Such stories, as I’ve explained earlier, usually end with the main character either dying, going insane, mutating into some wretched new life form, and so on. Its purpose thus served, The Perpetual Martyr would be cast back into the cauldron, until some new writer would once again call it forth, giving it a new name, a new identity, for in truth it had no name, or race, or gender. Its only purpose was to be put through Hell, over and over again, for all-time. This latter aspect of the cult’s theology didn’t strike me as all that far-fetched: after all, I was aware of Irish folklore and legends which told of dead warriors being placed into cauldrons and being returned back into a soulless existence to fight again. Such a legend had even been used as a major plot point of Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron, which had been one of my favorite books to read as a child.

  The Sect put this praxis of torturing the Martyr into practice by training their acolytes at a young age in the art of writing weird fiction. Ms. Paddock had been one of those acolytes, and on her tape she had named a few other horror writers as well, some of them big names in the field, but for fear of being accused of slander, I won’t name names here. For many years, Ms. Paddock had played her part, torturing The Perpetual Martyr innumerous times in her sinister stories. But in the end, her own inner cauldron of creativity had dried up, and she took up a new task: seeking a new acolyte to take her place, to continue the torturing of The Perpetual Martyr and the worship of the Fecundating Cauldron. The tape ended with Ms. Paddock’s revelation that I was that new acolyte, that she had been grooming me to take her place for years now. And now that the truth was known to me, I was ready to fulfill my role and join the Sect of the Fecundating Cauldron. With those words being uttered, the tape came to an end, and it evaporated into ashes inside the tape player.

  I directed my attention towards the typewriter, saw that a blank sheet of paper was already in place and ready to go, a white field crying out to be irrigated with words. I sat down and ran my fingers over the keys, which felt as cold as frozen bone beneath my touch. I thought back to my earlier failed adolescent attempts at writing pessimistic cosmic horror fiction, my reluctance to usher more nihilism and darkness onto a world that was already so weary of such things, that for countless years had gluttoned itself on gloom. But if there was a divine purpose behind such fiction, if it did in fact serve some holy function, then perhaps, perhaps…

  Outside of the house, on the front lawn, the children continued whacking away at the hapless piñata.

  IRIDOPHOBIA

  For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a fear of the sky.” I paused, took a sip from the glass of water that Dr. Roxy had been thoughtful enough to leave on the small wooden end table to the side of my chair, and then continued on with my story. “I have this very distinct memory from childhood where I was hanging out at Vernon Park one day and staring up at this domed hill, and on top of this domed hill there was this one lone tree, and because it was late fall all of the leaves had fallen off this tree, leaving its branches bare. From where I stood, at the bottom of the hill, the tree looked completely black, and juxtaposed as it was with the cloudless blue sky behind it, it seemed almost as if the tree were a crack in the sky itself, and for a brief few seconds the tree/crack seemed to begin to grow before my eyes, and I panicked, visualizing in my mind’s eye the sky itself cracking open and shattering to pieces all around me like big shards of blue glass. The sky as a giant blue Easter egg being smashed against the rim of a frying pan, the rim in this case being the Earth’s horizon. What can I say? As a child, I had quite an imagination. But it wasn’t just the sky itself that scared me. It was also things that came from the sky. One raindrop could have been the precursor to a Biblical flood that would never end. Then there were tornadoes, which scared me witless, even though I’ve yet to ever see one in my life. I often had nightmares of tornadoes, as a child. In these dreams I would often see storm clouds gathering in the sky like the black ships of the Antichrist’s armies and watch in horror as the bottom tips of maturing tornadoes descended from these storm clouds like enormous cobras unsheathing their fangs. Lightning was an electric crack that seemed to shatter the mirror of the sky, and thunder unsettled me. There was this one bad storm I suffered through when I was a child, I may have been maybe 9 or perhaps even 10 at the time, where I was home alone with my father and we were both in the living room of our house, he on his favorite rocker and me on the family sofa, and I guess to try to take my mind off the storm my father was telling jokes, or just making comments that were supposed to be amusing in general. One of these comments (or perhaps observations would be a better word) was that thunder was nothing more than God farting in Heaven. But that comment had the opposite of its intended effect on me: instead of making me laugh, it shocked and even horrified me. It seemed blasphemous to me that he would say such a thing, even though I knew he wasn’t being serious. I looked at my father with a glum face and asked him, in a nervous voice, ‘Dad, will you go to Hell for saying something like that?’ Many years later, during a period of my life in which I found myself studying the Qabalah, I came across a book by William G. Gra
y entitled Qabalistic Concepts: Living The Tree, that had first been published in 1984. There was this one chapter in the book, chapter 20 I think it was, that was titled ‘Esoteric Excretion,’ in which the author pondered the idea of Man serving as the Microcosm that was made in the likeness of God (and the Macrocosm), and wondered how, if Man has a digestive and excretory system, then does God as well? Or, as the author puts it, ‘does deity produce dung?’ He examined the Qabalistic Tree of Life and came to the conclusion that the Sephira Daath, otherwise known as ‘The Abyss,’ served as a sort of mouth, then conceptualized a second Abyss, in between Yesod and Malkuth at the bottom of the Tree, that served as the anus of God. It’s quite an interesting chapter, really, and reading it one can see how it was a clear influence on Grant Morrison’s The Filth comic book. At the start of the chapter, he wrote how, in the old days, there was a reason why hanging was the preferred method of dealing with criminals. It was believed that when the soul left the body at death, it did so via either the mouth or the nostrils. But when one was strangled, the soul would be unable to escape the corpse using those routes, and would instead be forced to escape via the anus, or the ‘dung gate’ as it was called. It’s common knowledge that when one is hanged one often ejaculates, but explosive defecation is also quite common in such situations. By forcing the soul to flee from the body side-by-side with shit, they believed they were condemning it to an ill-starred afterlife. Anyway, reading all this reminded me of my father’s observation about the farts of God years ago, and got me looking into the topic of intestinal exorcism. One day while I was paying a visit to the Thundermist Rescue Mission I happened to bump into a friend of mine, Padre Pendragon. We got to talking, one thing led to another, and he eventually got around to lending me a book called Glory of the Confessors by Gregory of Tours. In this book he writes about this bishop from the 5th century named Martin of Tours who was known for his ability to exorcise demons from people who had been possessed. At one part of the book Gregory mentions how one of the afflicted men that Martin exorcised ended up expelling the demon from his body in a ‘blast of air from his bowels.’ So I got to researching the topic a bit more and I found out how in the Middle Ages it was believed that flatulence was seen as a way of casting demons out from one’s body. The idea of demons being expelled by flatulence isn’t unique to Western Christianity, however. For example, Ethiopians also believe that when one farts demons escape from the body. And there’s also a certain mysterious voodoo cult in Haiti that worships Ti-Moufette, the lwa of bad smells. The priesthood of this cult conducts rituals in which they try to emit as many bad smells as they possibly can: I’m sure you can imagine what that entails.”