New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird

by Elizabeth Bear

  His tone gentle, Lazarian told the dollied Capo: “In plain, unvarnished English, Lou, I’m giving you to a god down in there. I don’t exactly understand Her, and I don’t know what She’ll do with you. I sincerely hope it won’t involve doing you any harm. I only want to say that in spite of my handing you over, I have never wished you anything but the best, Lou. And for all I really know, maybe She won’t either.”

  As he spoke he was clipping lights to the dolly, and to the bonds that bound Lou to it. Lazarian knew his little speech was disingenuous—was a false mercy of delayed revelation. Bonifacio was almost certainly going to end up in the pool.

  He said, “Excuse me putting my mask on, Lou. The air down there’s really intense . . . Can you hear me okay? These speakers aren’t so great.”

  Lazarian began to ease the dolly smoothly down the ties. This kind of descent was almost dance-like. Very soon they were below the lighted zone, and carrying their own bubble of light downshaft, utter darkness both behind and ahead of them. Softly they jolted deeper and deeper.

  “I’m sorry about this dolly arrangement, Lou, but I think you’ll agree it’s the least painful way I can keep you both comfortable and secure.”

  Bonifacio was an older brute, beginning to melt down at the corners and angles of his great frame, but as Lazarian jolted him softly, steadily down the shaft, he lay rigid in his bonds, and his gagged glare never ceased to blaze at his captor. Lazarian had to smile.

  “Lou, you’re old-school in the best sense. If I hadn’t gotten the drop on you, I’m sure you’d be grinding my bones to powder right now with your teeth! It’s always a pleasure to be dealing with a professional.”

  Lazarian’s great strength managed to ease down his massive cargo with a rolling smoothness, always iron-muscled in resistance to the earth’s black yawn of gravity he stepped down into.

  The steadiness of his descent gave an hypnotic regularity to the shaft’s support beams, little timber stonehenges holding the earth apart, rising to swallow them at regular intervals as he stepped down, stepped down, stepped down . . .

  Momma Durtt get you by de-greees

  jus’ take hold

  an’ squeeze an’ squeeze . . .

  All doubt gone now, she was speaking to him.

  Just to him, Lou didn’t seem to hear it. Ever so faint it sounded, far down in that darkness beyond his bubble of light. Echoey now . . . was he hearing it? Or was it the low commotion of his own masked breathing?

  Momma Durtt get you, by degrees . . .

  To Lazarian’s eyes, a faint aura was beginning to glow from Bonifacio’s body. There was a kind of Egyptian pomp in Lou’s big mummified mass as he floated half-recumbent down the shaft on his dolly, his eyes blazing above his bound mouth . . .

  And justly so, Lazarian thought, for in Lou he was sacrificing a kind of deity, one of those furious Elementals like Hades or the Midgard Serpent, brought to heel by gods in tales . . . he was imbued with infernal majesty.

  Then, far down below their light-bubble, from the perfect dark they descended to, something stirred . . .

  A liquid sound? A soft, wet impact?

  Lazarian stayed their descent, and leaned near Bonifacio’s ear to say, “We’ve conjured a god here, Lou, I’m sure of it. With my own eyes I’ve seen . . . unbelievable evidence. We’ve conjured a goddess, more precisely. I’ve heard her voice, heard her sing.”

  The bound man’s eyes flared with a new shade of fear—the fear of lunacy in his captor—which Sol Lazarian saw, and had to laugh. “No! I’m not crazy, old friend. I know how that sounds, but I have heard her sing!

  “And I’m afraid I have to be honest with you, Lou. I’ve procured you, you might say, for the goddess here.” He paused in their descent, resting briefly. “But the goddess, unfortunately, lives in the toxics, and that seems to be where her offerings must be placed.”

  Silence then between them, stepping down through the last long steepness, the burdened dolly’s wheels groaning.

  The ether-reek swelled thicker, swallowing them like a cold reptile mouth.

  And here was the pool . . . Lazarian said, “I’m offering you, Lou—not giving you. Here, I will stand you up.”

  He propped the dolly upright on the lowest crosstie above the black tarn that breathed its sharp, glacial breath in their faces. “I’m not putting you in—just putting you where she can take you. If she is as real as I think, I suppose she . . . consumes you—I don’t really know. But I hope that you know how truly I regret what’s going to happen here.”

  Lazarian bent and locked the dolly’s wheels. He gave Bonifacio’s shoulder a pat, and retreated four ties upshaft of him. Crouched there, uncramping his leg muscles.

  Lou was standing very carefully balanced. He was snugly bound and bandaged to the dolly, but his rage and horror made the little lights he was decorated with tremble on the black pool, which seemed to be almost as still as stone.

  But no, not absolutely still. The subtlest of tremors now and then, here and there, skimmed its blackness.

  Here in this grotto, this chapel of annihilation, Lazarian groped for the proper gesture. What did the black gulf want of him? What gesture of his must call forth the thing that hid here? Should he show his awe? His gratitude? All he could think to do was to declare his reverence. He addressed the pool.

  “I give you the one who conjured you. The one who fed you the poisons that your Nullity grew from. He is your food now, a token of my reverence. In return, grant me vision! Grant me power in your service!”

  Bonifacio was an earthy man, of strong simple appetites. Teetering on this narrow footing at the rim of nothingness, he had as firm a grip on himself as a man thus situated can have. Hearing Lazarian imploring the pool of poison like a god, the Capo knew himself to be in the hands of Lunacy incarnate, and with a wordless prayer he commended his soul to the abyss.

  At which instant a huge black hand rose dripping from the pool and seized him. Its mighty grip was more than half his height, but enough of the Capo’s head and shoulders protruded to show that his features were as much convulsed with fury as with fear.

  The great black knuckles liquesced as they gripped him, the huge fist melting as it lofted and seemed to heft him, as if assaying value.

  And then, in sudden shock, it seemed to Lazarian that he himself melted, that he hung unbodied in the lethal air, because what was happening? The pool behind the huge hand began to bulge, and dome up as an immense face surfaced, her wet black eyeballs (big as human heads) glaring from a thorny thicket of hair, her jeering mouth a big whirlpool slowly spreading on her face.

  The goddess thrust Bonifacio into the melting cavern of her mouth, wherein the Capo’s wordless roar was echoed and then drowned out as he plunged—dolly and all—from sight.

  She faced Lazarian, this face of hers as big as his whole body, a melting face unendingly reborn, her eyes mockingly, merrily glaring in his.

  And Lazarian’s soul spoke within him: I’ve done it! I’ve broken through! Into the world of miracles!

  “You will not die,” her hissing lips of poison told him, each word a wet adhesion to his flesh. “You will serve me while this world lasts, and you will sow plague and poison upon it.

  “I am the miracle you have lived and labored for. Of the Great Old Ones, I am the youngest, no older than this venomed globe itself, but until Dark claims us all again, you’ll till my earth and feed my monsters up to strength to work this world’s destruction.”

  Gleeful now, her seething face, she lofted her great melting fist, and brandished it upshaft, and—far, far up the reverberating tube—an engine growled to life, avalanching echoes down upon them.

  Lazarian found his voice hoarse with grateful joy. “I will serve you, Great One! I will serve you to the end of our time!”

  The black giant grinned from her tarn. “Then let us make some room for your labor! Let us give scope to your service, and give you the power to serve!”

  A mighty din of fractured sto
ne filled the shaft, as a huge convulsion shook the earth they stood in. Raining dust and gravel, the mine’s walls and ceiling heaved, shuddering away from Lazarian.

  And when it stilled, the shaft’s diameter had tripled, the crude-hewn stone ceiling was thrice his height above him, and the pool of poison was now a wide pond. The engine’s noise, still high and far, rang down more hollowly now.

  “In power and style you will serve me,” the giantess leered at him. “Behold!” The distant engine’s roar descended, and its guttural howl came snarling down before it. Rapt, Lazarian gazed up at the lofty walls of stone that contained him—now high and shrine-like.

  Here came the tanker’s headlights blazing down from on high, its echoes a ghostly landslide that broke against him. The shaft tremored like a waking dragon around him. He stood enraptured, unavoiding. The deep tarn was at his back, yet he stood serene as the headlights came down like comets.

  Outside, far above him, under the silent sky, only a few deep dinosaur sounds welled up at the moon—some dim commotion far under the earth, but peace up here. Chip was gone—he’d taken off the moment the earth had shaken. A long and unmarred silence followed in the compound then, peace beneath the pale moon.

  Until at length, a growling began to rise from the Quicksilver’s throat, rose quickly to crescendo, and out of the earth the tanker erupted.

  It launched its hugeness arcing through the air, surged airborne twenty yards or so, until it colossally whumped down, ponderously tap-danced on its heavy tires, then leveled off, and hit the highway.

  You could tell she was full by the sway of her, but even so she ate up the switchbacks, tires smoking down the mountain, zig and zag. And impossibly soon, she hit the cross-country straightaway toward the mighty 101—a linear glow past shadowy hills and groves.

  As she rolled through the fields her looks improved. The moonlight seemed to wipe her bulky mass clean. Her tank turned a bright polished silver, and her cab grew glossy black with silver trim.

  As she surged up onto the 101, she was gorgeous, all scoured steel and glossy black enamel. She rode high in the river of southbound headlights, a star-cruiser cargoed with Death for the Cities of Light that rimmed the great bay to the south. And high in her cab, commanding the wheel sat Lazarian, his eyes rapt on the cities of light as he hurtled towards them. He drank with gusto from the bottle of ale which he gripped in one hand.

  A week later, Alex and Kim had a window seat in a roadside diner. An onramp onto 101 climbed right past their window, up through a Friday night blaze of neon colors. As they gazed out the glass, a gorgeous tanker truck slid to the ramp and surged up it.

  “Whoa,” said Kim, “isn’t that . . . ?”

  “Damn. It is.”

  The pair watched with awe as the great machine roared onto the freeway and geared up for points south.

  When a traveller in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury Pike just beyond Dean’s Corners, he comes upon a lonely and curious country. . . . It is always a relief to get clear of the place, and to follow the narrow road around the base of the hills and across the level country beyond till it rejoins the Aylesbury pike. Afterwards one sometimes learns that one has been through Dunwich.

  “The Dunwich Horror” . H. P. Lovecraft (1929)

  THEY SMELL OF THUNDER

  W. H. Pugmire

  I.

  Enoch Coffin drove his truck along the rutted road, past the stone wall of what might once have been a habitation, although no house stood within sight. There was just a wide dry field that reached to where the lush forest took over on the rising slopes, with here and there growths of high weeds mingled with the tall yellow grass. The sky was overcast and the weather cool, but Enoch liked the window down when he drove and didn’t mind the chill. “Lonesome country,” he mumbled as his pickup bumped over the road’s furrows, and he cast a backward glance to make certain the artistic gear in the rear cargo bed had remained secure. Further on, the road inclined and he could see the mountains above the dense woodland, and something in the primeval aura of the sight excited him—he felt very far from Boston. As his truck crossed over the bridges that spanned ravines and narrow rocky vales, he studied the curious manner in which some of those ancient bridges had been constructed, how various combined portions of timber seemed emblematic in the signs and signals they suggested. The domed hills were close now, and he stopped the truck in order to step out and piss; and as he relieved himself he marveled at the stillness all around as his eyes scanned the shimmering line of the Miskatonic River that passed below the wooded hills. As he stood there a ratty jalopy passed him on the road, and he smiled at the way the suspicious eyes of its driver studied him. Whistling, Enoch raised a hand and made the Elder Sign, which the other driver hesitantly returned.

  He drove onward and came to a bumpy riverside road and then drove slowly across an ancient bridge that crossed the Miskatonic, experiencing a sense of nervous expectancy concerning the soundness of the bridge. The structure’s hoary age affected Enoch’s senses and filled him with foreboding—such things should not be, should not exist in this modern age. The artist was delighted that it did exist so as to spin its macabre spell. But the tenebrous bridge was merely prelude. As the pickup truck slowly crossed it, Enoch sensed a change in the air that wafted through his vehicle’s window. The shadowed atmosphere felt, somehow, heavier, and it carried an extremely unpleasant smell such as he had never experienced. Reaching, finally, the other end of the bridge, his truck drove again across a rough road and Enoch laughed out loud at the sight of Dunwich Village before him, huddled beneath what he knew from his yellowed map was Round Mountain. His fingers itched for pen and pad so that he could capture the uncanny sight with his craft. How could such squalid, disintegrating buildings still be standing? In what era had they been raised? Enoch then began to notice some few lethargic citizens who shuffled in and out of one ridiculously old broken-steepled church that now served as general store, and the artist was amazed at how the inhabitants of the village were so in tune with its aura of strange decay. He had entered an alien realm. The foetid stench of the air breathed in was almost intolerable, even to one such as Enoch who relished decayed necromancy.

  He drove for another three miles, checking with his 1920’s map that his correspondent had sent him, and stopped at the pile of ruins that had once been a farmhouse just below the slope of Sentinel Hill. He sat for a while in his stilled vehicle and watched the three persons who worked at a curious construction of wood, a kind of symbolic design that reminded Enoch of the patterns he had seen on the bridges he had crossed on his way to Dunwich. Finally, he pushed open his door and stepped onto the dusty road, holding out his hand to the frantic beast that rushed to him and licked his palm.

  “Spider,” a man called to the dog, which moved from Enoch and trotted to his master. The artist approached the stranger and they exchanged smiles. “Mr. Coffin, I recognize you from the newspaper photos. I’m Xavier Aboth.” Enoch reached for and clasped the young man’s extended hand. “You found your way easily?”

  “Oh yeah, your grandpappy’s map served me well. I took very good care of it, it’s so delicate.” He looked to the top of the high hill and could just see some of the standing stones with which it was crowned. “The infamous Sentinel Hill. And this must once have been the Whateley farmstead.”

  “Aye, that it is. We’re just sturdyin’ up the sign here. Hey—Alma, Joseph.” The lad motioned for his friends to join them. “This is the artist who was hired to illustrate my book of prose-poems. Enoch Coffin, Alma Bishop and Joseph Hulver, Jr.”

  Enoch shook their hands as the woman studied him. “Clever of our Xavier, writin’ his own book. Course, he’s been to Harvard and Miskatonic. Mostly them as gone to university never return. We’re glad this one did.” She smiled slyly at the poet.

  “I’ll let you two finish up. The powder is in that plastic bag there. It needs to be sprinkled exactly as ye’re sayin’ the Wo
rds.” He turned to Enoch. “My place is up a mile and a half yonder. No, Spider can chase after us on the road, he loves that. Yeah, I walked over, it’s a nice stroll. I like to stop and bury things in Devil’s Hop Yard, over there. You know, things that help enhance the alchemy of the bleak soil.”

  The two men entered the pickup, and Xavier whistled to his canine, which barked joyously and ran beside the truck as Enoch drove. As he drove, Enoch glanced nonchalantly at his companion’s dirty clothes and soiled hands. Xavier was extremely unkempt, living up to the image of Dunwich folk that had been related to Enoch by some who learned that he was journeying there. The word about Dunwich and its denizens was that they were little more than ignorant hill-folk who rejected modernity and lived primitive and solitary lives. Rumors of inbreeding were prevalent, and Enoch’s one friend who had visited Dunwich Village complained of the hostility he encountered there from people who mistrusted those who were not kindred.

  Enoch drove for a while and then the road turned and passed near another high hill, below which stretched an infertile hillside that was naught but rocks and corroding soil. The young man leaned out his window and called to the dog. “It’s okay, Spider, jest run.” Then he turned and smiled at Enoch, shrugging. “He gets nervous near the Hop Yard.” The truck continued to follow the road until coming to a small plot of land on which a shack that was little more than a cottage leaned beneath the dark sky. “Go ahead and park next to my old jalopy there.” The artist did so and climbed out of the vehicle, offering his hand once more to the friendly canine. He joined Xavier in taking out some of the gear from the cargo bed.