Enoch watched this display of lost glory and future promise, and knew that he was naught. Shaking uncontrollably, he flung himself before the Messenger with pleading in his liquid eyes. But the Messenger merely glanced for one moment at the frail and puny freak before him; and then in contempt he struck the artist’s head.
This was that cult . . . it had always existed and always would exist, hidden in distant wastes and dark places all over the world until the time when the great priest Cthulhu, from his dark house in the mighty city of R’lyeh under the waters, should rise and bring the earth again beneath his sway. Some day he would call, when the stars were ready . . .
“The Call of Cthulhu” . H. P. Lovecraft (1928)
THE SONG OF SIGHS
Angela Slatter
I
February 12th
The song of Sighs, which is his.
Let him kiss me with his mouths:
for his love is better than ichor.
The translation is coming along, but ponderously.
It takes so long to get the languages to agree, the tongues to collude. But it is close. Some days, though, I wonder why I don’t adopt an easier hobby, like knitting or understanding string theory. I tap on the thick folio with nails marred by chipped polish. I remind myself this is for fun and stare at the creamy slab of bound pages, let my eyes lose focus so all the notations of my pen look like so many chicken scratches. So they all cease to make sense. If I stare long enough, perhaps I might see through time, see the one who wrote this and ask, perhaps, for its greater meaning.
A polite cough interrupts my reverie. I look up and find twenty pairs of eyes fixed upon me. I realize that I heard the buzzer a full minute ago, that my class has quietly packed up their texts and pads, pens, and pencils.
“Doctor Croftmarsh?” says one of them, a handsome manly boy, tall for his age, dreamy blue eyes. I cannot remember his name. “Doctor, may we go? Only, Master Thackeray gets annoyed when we’re late.”
I nod, pick his name from the air. “Yes, Stephen, sorry. Offer my apologies to the Master and tell him I will make amends. Read chapter seven of the Roux, we will discuss what he says about Gilgamesh tomorrow.”
Thackeray will expect expensive whisky in recompense; he does not miss an opportunity to drink on another’s tab. His forgiveness is dearly bought, but it is easier to keep him sweet than make an enemy of him. There is the scrape and squawk of chair legs dragged across wooden floorboards, and desk lids clatter as students check they’ve not forgotten anything.
As they file out, I offer an afterthought, “Those of you wishing to do some extra study for next week’s exams, don’t forget your translations. The usual time.”
“Yes, Doctor Croftmarsh,” comes the chorus. There will be at least six of them, the brightest, the most ambitious, those desiring ever so ardently to get ahead. This is what the academy specialises in, propelling orphans upward. Idly, I make a bet with myself: Tilly Sanderson will be the first to knock at 6:30.
The door closes softly behind the last of the students and the space is silent, properly silent for the first time today, no whoosh of breath in and out, no nasal snorts or adenoidal whistles, no sneezes, no sighs, no surreptitious farts, no whispered conversations they think I cannot hear simply because they don’t want me to. Dust specks cartwheel in the shafts of light coming through the windows. I close my eyes, enjoying the sensation of not being scrutinised for however brief a time. A band of tension is tightening across my forehead. Beneath my fingers, the substantial cushion of journal pages is strangely warm.
II
February 13th
Because of thy savour
thy name is as fear poured forth,
And thus do virgins fear thee.
The refectory is awash with polite noise, the clatter of cutlery against crockery, the ting of glasses and water jugs meeting. Students and teachers, all at their allotted tables, talk quietly to one another, all in their own class groups.
The academy is a large place, a great building in the Gothic style, four long wings joined to make a square, with a broad green quadrangle in the middle. Two sides of structure face the sea, looking out over the epic cliff drop; the other two are embraced by the woods and the well-tended grounds. The nearest town is ten miles distant. There is a teaching staff of twenty, three cooks, four cleaners, two gardeners and a cadre of two hundred-odd students.
As a child, I was occasionally sent to stay with an acquaintance of my parents, here in this very house, before its owners’ dipping fortunes made a change of hands essential, and it became a school for exceptional orphans. I recollect very little about those visits, having but dim impressions of many rooms, large and dust-filled, corridors long and portrait-lined, and bed chambers stuffed with canopied beds, elaborate dressers and wardrobes that loomed towards one in the night like trolls creeping from beneath bridges. I remember waking from nightmares of the place, begging my mother and father not to be sent there again.
It was only after they were gone, when I was grown and qualified, seeking employment and a quiet retreat after the accident, that I saw an advertisement for a history teacher. It seemed like the perfect opportunity. I have been here for a year.
This is what I’m told I remember.
I’m assured it’s one of those things, this kind of amnesia that takes away some recollections and leaves others—I retain everything I must know in order to teach. I keep every bit of study I ever undertook tucked under my intellectual belt. I memorized the things that have happened since I came here. I may even recall the car accident—or at least, I have a sense of an explosion, of flying through the air, of terrible, intense pain—but I’m never quite sure what I can actually invoke of that time.
I suppose I am fortunate to be alive when my parents are not. I’ve been promised that many people I once knew are dead, but I’m uncertain whether I actually feel a loss. There are no remnants of that old life, no photos of my parents and I. No holiday snaps, no foolish playing-around in the backyard photos. I have no box of mementoes, no inherited jewelry, no ancient teddy bear with its fur loved off. Nothing that might provide proof of my growing up, of my youth, of my being.
I fear I have no true memory of who I am.
In the same notebook where I make my translations, in the very back pages are the scribbles I write to remind myself of who I am supposed to be. I read them over and again: I am Vivienne Croftmarsh. I have a PhD. I teach at the academy. I am an only child and now an orphan. I translate ancient poetry as a pastime.
This is who I am.
This is what I tell myself.
But I cannot shake the feeling that something is working loose, that the world around me is softening, developing cracks, threatening to crumble. I can’t say why. I cannot deny a sense of formless dread. My hands are beginning to ache; I rub at the slight webbing between the fingers, massaging the tenderness there.
“Wake up, dreamy-drawers.” Fenella Burrows is the closest thing I have to a friend here; she plants herself and her lunch tray across from me at the deserted end of the table I’ve chosen. Most of the faculty take the hint and stay away, but not her and I don’t mind. She tells me we went to school together, but isn’t offended when I am unable to reminisce. She jerks her head towards the journal and my ink-stained fingers. “How’s it going?”
“Getting there. Second verse.”
“Second verse, same as the first,” she snorts. Fenella throws back her head when she laughs, all the mouse-brown curls tumbling down her back like a waterfall. She leans in close and says, “Don’t look now, but Thackeray is watching you.”
I pull a face, don’t turn my head. “Thackeray’s always watching.”
“Oh, don’t tell me you don’t think he’s attractive.”
Yes, he is attractive, but he stares too much, seems to see too much, seems to dig beneath my skin with his gaze and pull out secrets I didn’t know were there. That’s the sense I get anyway, but I don’t tell Fenella because it sou
nds stupid and she clearly finds him appealing. Her smile is limned with the pale green of jealousy. “He’s all yours,” I say.
She sighs. “If only. No one wants the plain bridesmaid.”
“How were your classes this morning?” I ask.
“Tilly Sanderson out-Frenched me.”
“That sounds appalling and punishable by a jail term.”
“Grammar-wise, you fool.” She adds more salt to the unidentifiable vegetarian mush on her plate. I can’t really bear to look at it. Fenella insists it’s an essential tool in her diet plan. I see no evidence: her face is still as round as a pudding and so is she.
“Well, she’s very smart.”
“Yes, but I hate it when the little beasts are smarter than us.” She shovels the mess from her plate to her mouth and seems to chew for a long time.
“Honestly, don’t you think eating is meant to be, if not fun, then at least easy? How much mastication does that require?”
“It’s good for you; it’s just a bit . . . fibrous.”
“It looks like the wrong end of the digestion process.”
“You’re an unpleasant creature. Don’t know why I talk to you.” She steals a chip off my plate.
I stare up at the head table, frown. “Have you seen the Principal lately?”
“A day or so ago,” she says. “Why?”
“Just feel like they haven’t been around for ages.”
“That’d be your dodgy memory. Old trout will be here somewhere,” she says dismissively. “You can always talk to Candide, if it’s urgent.”
“No, nothing really. Just curious. Also, I don’t want to get trapped by the Deputy Head—last time I ended up listening to him recounting his thesis from 1972 on the evils of the Paris student uprisings of ’68.” Candide’s about sixty, but he seems older and dustier than he should. Fenella hooks her thumbs under the front facing of her academic gown, tucks her chin into her neck and looks down her nose at me, adopting a sonorous intonation.
“ ‘Bloody peasants, disrespecting their betters. It’s all one can expect from a nation that murdered its own royalty and has far too many varieties of cheese.’ ”
“Don’t make the mistake of mentioning Charles I and the thud his head made on the scaffolding. I learned that the hard way.”
We laugh until we’re gasping, and the older teachers are looking at us disapprovingly. We’ll be spoken to later about the dangers of hilarity in front of the students and letting our dignity visibly slip. Causes the natives to become restless if they think we’re human and we lose our grip on the moral high ground.
III
February 14th
Lead me, I will wait for thee:
the King once summoned me into his chambers:
and I was glad and rejoiced,
I remember thy love more than life:
All tremble before thee.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who, when faced with a window two floors up, will immediately accept the limitations it places upon them; and those who instantly look for a way to subvert both the height and the threatened effects of gravity. This room is full of the latter. It’s one of the reasons I love teaching: the opportunity to find those who would chance a fall in the attempt to fly, rather than stay safely within bounds.
The buzz of conversation in my oak-paneled rooms washes over me. Stephen and Tilly are arguing about whether Ishtar is more or less powerful as a profligate prostitute goddess, or is simply a male wish-fulfillment fantasy; the other five watch the back and forth of a teen intellectual tennis match. The tipple of port has made them aggressive and I imagine sex will be the result at some point. Time to nip that in the bud. I give a slow blink, to moisten my dried eyeballs, and clap my hands.
“Enough, enough. You’re not talking history anymore, you’ve slid into pop culture, which is Doctor Burrows’ area not mine,” I say. “Look at the time. Off you all go.”
“Goodnight, Doctor Croftmarsh,” they say. The closing of the door and then the one student left, the one who always waits behind; the one who stands out, and frequently apart from, her fellows. Tilly, who thinks herself special, and is, I suppose. So much talent, so clever; she will do well when she goes out into the world.
“How are you?” she asks and I am a bit taken aback. She steps close, takes my hands in hers, begins stroking the palms, an intimate, invasive gesture. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. “Do you feel it yet? Has it begun?”
“Do I feel what, Tilly?”
Her face changes, the avid expression painted over by one of uncertainty, perhaps fear. What does the child mean?
“Tilly.” Thackeray’s voice is low but seems to affect the girl like the crack of a whip. She starts and looks guilty. I didn’t even hear the door open. “Tilly, don’t bother Doctor Croftmarsh. It’s late and time for you to be getting back to your room.”
Tilly drops my hands, and dips her head, blond curls covering her blush-red face. She makes for the exit, then looks back over her shoulder before she leaves, smiling a sunburst at me and then throwing an odd glance at Thackeray, which I cannot interpret.
“Sleep well. Don’t forget to read the Roux,” I say after her as the door closes and Thackeray leans his back against it.
He grins, his thick lips smug, then he moves into the room without invitation and helps himself to the whisky waiting on the shelf, knocking one of the heavy crystal glasses against the other. He raises the bottle at me, and I nod. Beneath his black woolen academic robe he is still a rugby player, but slowly going soft and bloating in parts. His pale cheeks are shadowed with ebony stubble; the ruffian’s posture hides an acute, albeit lazy intelligence; sometimes I wonder how he came to teach at a place as exclusive as this.
“So, young Tilly Sanderson,” he begins, handing me one of the tumblers. His own measure is far more generous. He slumps into the chair I recently vacated, drapes himself across it, long legs stretched forward, one arm hanging down almost to the carpet, the other hand clutching his drink. His voice is low, trying for levity, but there’s a dark edge that tells me to tread carefully. “Not teaching her something new, are you?’
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I sip at the whisky, feel it burn down my throat then take up residence in my belly, heating me surely as a fire. From a chest at the foot of my writing desk, I pull an unopened bottle and hold it out to him.
“What? Can’t want me gone so soon, surely.” But he gets to his feet and reaches out. He wraps his large hand around not just the neck, but my hand as well, trapping me unless I want to sacrifice forty-year-old Scotch. His breath is hot and malt-rich on my face; I can feel the warmth radiating off his body, and my cheeks flame with a dim memory of drunken fumbling. I’m not sure how far it went. “Surely we could indulge ourselves once again . . . Who’s to know?”
I would know. And so would he. And it would give him something else to use against me in a school where fraternization of any kind is reason for dismissal. I know how the world works; he would receive a slap on the wrist and I would be gone without references. “Good night, Thackeray.”
I pull away and he has to juggle to save his prize. He gives a slow smile, takes his defeat well, throws back the amber in his glass and returns the empty to the shelf.
He leaves and I feel as if I can breathe for the first time in an age. From the corridor, I hear the whisper and scuffle of boots. My heart clenches at the idea that any of the other teachers might have seen him coming out of my room. I creep over and crack the door, putting my eye to the sliver.
Thackeray and Tilly stand close, oh so close. His free hand is roaming up one thigh, over her hip, then cupping her backside roughly. Her face is hidden from me, pressed into his chest.
I step back. The headache that’s been with me all day worsens; I feel as if the bones of my skull are pushing against each other. I rub my palms across my face, hoping to hold the pieces in place, to press the pain back.
IV
February 15th
I am hidden, but lovely, O ye daughters of darkness,
as the dreams of Great Old Ones,
as the drowned houses of R’lyeh.
The office door, with its frosted glass panel reading simply PRINCIPAL, is unlocked, and there is no sign of the watchdog, Mrs. Kilkivan. The Tilly-Thackeray situation gave me a restless night and I thought I might approach the Head before class.
Inside, the floor is covered with an enormous rug that stretches almost to the boundaries of the enormous office. The walls are covered by bookshelves, neatly stacked with hardbacks, decorative spines showing off silver lettering. Three display cases take up one corner, each with a series of ancient gold jewelry, marked with carefully hand-written labels and histories: this one found in ancient Babylon, this one from a well in Kish, yet another dug up from the depths of Nineveh, this from Ashur, these from Ur and Ebla. Artifacts excavated from the cradle of civilization; I seem to recall the Head had been active in archaeological digs in early life, and that father and mother, uncles and aunts, had all spent time in the Middle East.
Beneath the broad tall window is a desk roughly the width of the office, with just enough space to walk around, if you’ve slim hips. The desk is neat and tidy, a notepad on the blotter which is perfectly aligned with the edge of the mahogany edifice, the bases of the two banker’s lamps also carefully placed, one on the left corner, the other one the right. The pens, fine things, are in individual cases on the polished surface; a sturdy pewter letter opener lies next to them, protected in a bronze enameled sheath.
New Cthulhu 2: More Recent Weird Page 40
