“Father,” Elias said, trying to distract himself, or them, or everyone at once. “I saw a curious building at the edge of the forest.”
“How’s that?” Nevill muttered, not looking down the table at his son.
“I said,” Elias called, cupping his hands around his mouth, “I saw an old building in the far grounds, by the forest. It had a big wheel.”
Nevill tried to feed Marsila a boiled carrot, but she slapped it from his hand. “The old gristmill,” she said, stuffing her mouth full of fowl. “Put up before my family took over this land.”
“Bloody Vikings, I reckon,” Nevill said.
Marsila snorted. “Norsemen couldn’t properly wipe their arses, let alone build something like that. The mill be Pictish made.”
“It looked quite interesting, father, and I was thinking it would be—”
“—Stay away from it, boy,” Marsila said, spitting out a splinter of bone. “The planks are old and rotten. You could fall through and end up God knows where.”
“But—” Elias began.
“—You heard your mother, boy!” Nevill snapped.
Elias hadn’t heard his mother. He hadn’t heard her voice in a long, long time, and realized with a pang of sadness that he had forgotten the sound of it, just remembering the music. The pitch and cadence, the rich and slightly sad laughter, that was unlike any other voice on Earth. It was a beautiful sound, like a violin played in a minor key. He closed his eyes and started to hum, as Marsila regarded Elias with a decayed grin. He looked down at his fish, which was now on the tablecloth, several feet away. A zigzagging trail of slime led from the plate.
Elias got up from the table. He’d go to bed hungry that night, even if the breach in etiquette earned him the belt. He’d welcome it at this point, if it meant a return to the old days. The familiar comfort of paternal attention. Nevill didn’t notice him leaving the room.
Elias lay in bed, continuing to hum tunelessly while staring at the wood grain on the ceiling, lit by a blue moon outside that had somehow wormed its way through the mist that seemed to shrink away from the sky at night, as if it knew it wasn’t needed then. He stopped humming as the patterns of the wood began to quiver, then morph into something more than just striations in dead trees. He shrank into the heavy covers while the figures above grew into a canopy of beasts and winged demons, dancing, clutching at each other, copulating. Eating each other and giving birth to something new and then eating what was born.
Elias tore his eyes away and stared at his bedpost, counting backwards from 100, as his mother had always taught him during thunderstorms. A bizarre, geometric pattern had been carved deep into the wood. Elias traced it with his fingers, the disjointed melody inside his head beginning to find their notes.
Dawn crept hesitantly over the land, fighting in vain through the briny mist that had arisen with the sun. Groups of sheep huddled on the damp hills, moving away from the mansion that bled smoke into the sky from only one of its many chimneys.
Under this smokestack, in the master bedroom, a rail of low flames played over a stack of damp logs that smoldered and spit in the massive fireplace, as if the wood repelled the heat. On the four post bed big enough to sleep a family of Irish, Marsila pushed Nevill off of her with a wail and a burst of surprising strength.
“Stop pawing at me!” she said, her skin now greenish and loose under the ever-present pancake makeup. Her stumpy shape was almost swallowed up by the swirl of her poofy nightgown.
Nevill bounced off the bed and landed heavily on the floor, his sleeping robe billowing around him. “But lovie, we’re married now.”
“But lovie, we’re married now,” she whined, mocking his voice. “Stop sniveling, you worm.”
“Aren’t we…” he began, losing his nerve as she fixed him with a withering glare from deep inside her face. He lowered his voice. “Aren’t we going to… consummate?”
Marsila laughed, a phlegmy, guttural sound. Nevill’s head drooped. She continued to laugh, covering her mouth, when she abruptly went silent, jerking her head to the bedroom door. Elias stood in the doorway, watching them. Marsila raised a finger and pointed at the boy, her eyes narrowing to slits, nearly buried inside the folds of made-up skin. “Sneak.”
Nevill ran to Elias, gesticulating awkwardly. “Get outside!” he roared, slamming the door in his son’s face. Elias smiled.
Elias walked with purpose through the back garden grounds, putting distance between himself and the house. He had a satchel lashed across his back, stuffed with a candle, matches, a notebook and pencil, two butter sandwiches, a butter smeared table knife, and a jar of milk. These were his expedition supplies, and the mill would be his Everest. At least for today.
As he marched through the tall grass, feeling every bit the junior naturalist in this exotic new land that was now his home, he made brief note of the insects, the pairing of birds, the scuttle of unseen creatures hidden beneath the brome. Mostly, he marveled at the menagerie of weird statuary that dotted the grounds, appearing in unexpected places and reposing at odd angles. All were built by uncut yet precisely stacked black obsidian stones, veined with green and gold. The figures were shaped in fantastic, half human configurations. Bare breasted women with the heads of jackals. A hunched man with spiders for hands. Octopi that walked on two legs. A circus of freakishness set in foreign stone, trussed tight with layers of dead vines that seemed to restrain them as much as hold them to the ground.
Past the collection of statues, the front prow of an ancient ship jutted up from the ground, as if jammed backwards into the earth in the planet’s early days. The ship had a primitive, boxy construction, obviously from an antediluvian era long forgotten in the civilized world. Either this structure was the work of some mad Northumbrian eccentric or was an important archeological find laid bare by the elements. Whatever it was, it was most certainly abandoned to the weeds and insects of this untended estate.
At the furthest end of the property, marked by a low wall of smooth stones, Elias forded a marshy gully, then climbed a hillock covered in miniature white lilies. Cresting the hilltop, he looked down at the decaying watermill, backed by a forest of sagging trees that seemed to be curling in on themselves. The structure was built on rough-cut castle stones, topped by gray wood planks on which grass had grown on the dust and desiccated wood that had built up into a proper layer of soil over the generations. The stream under the waterwheel was brackish, choked with an unnatural abundance of reeds and soupy green algae. Nothing moved. This was a dead machine.
Although the watermill was unremarkable in general appearance, looking like any of the thousands of mills anywhere in the English countryside, there was a feeling of foreboding emanating from the whole, leaking through the knot holes and gaping windows, slithering out through the foundation and poisoning the stream with overgrown fertility. It seemed somehow unholy, this collection of sawed wood and iron, which only quickened Elias’ pace in time with his heart.
He climbed the limestone stairs and stopped at the door that didn’t seem as old or decayed as the rest of the building. Arcane carvings covered the door, which was fastened to the frame by two-inch thick iron hinges, girded by a system of locks and deadbolts. Weathered and worn smooth by a thousand generations of hands, it looked like it hasn’t been opened in centuries. Elias tried the handle, and to his surprise, it opened easily with an audible pop, releasing a waft of moist air tinged with smells of rot and vermin. The boy stepped inside.
His eyes adjusted slowly in the muted light that cut in from outside, pinholing the darkness like spotlights from tiny perforations in the roof and walls. The room was mostly empty, cluttered here and there with the remains of primitive equipment and broken tools. The mill drive shaft, as big around as a tree trunk, had been snapped in half and lay next to a ruined lantern gear, dissolved on one side, the metal dripping down onto the floor and through it like melted wax. One of the enormous flat millstones, as round as a biscuit, was snapped in half and tossed into
the corner of the room. The other had cut through the floorboards, and must have come to rest in a level below. Elias took a step toward the aperture, amazed by the clean lines of its circumference, when the boards beneath his feet creaked and bowed, sinking his feet into the wood. Just like in the house. He was now the ball, stitched canvas, stuffed with all manner of spongy material. Elias froze - not from the sensation of sinking into mostly solid wood, but because he had looked up and noted the same dizzying spiral patterns that were carved into his bedpost, decorating the roof with a burst of beautifully arcane geometry set incongruently in this roughhewn building.
Elias’ head bent backwards on a jellied neck, mouth parted, as he lost touch with his body. He felt himself unraveling with the pattern from his marrow outward, swirling into it like a cloud of unstrung particles. Sand through a pinwheel. He reached up, wanting to touch it, this terrible dance of shape and angle, when the floor gave way under his feet and he fell into the darkness below.
After what seemed like an eternity spent drifting in between shadowy places that were neither heaven nor hell, Elias jerked back into his body and sat up slowly, realizing that he had been knocked unconscious and was now partially cocooned in cobwebs. The pack had broken his fall, and he, in turn, had broken everything inside of it, as evidenced by the circle of milk that had spread out behind him on the dirt floor like a pool of ivory blood. Embarrassment hit him before the pain, but both combined to produce a groan as he slowly rose to his feet, coughing and pulling off the webbing and wiping the dust from his eyes. He blinked up at the break in the floor above him, and began figuring the odds that a ladder was stashed somewhere in this dank basement when a sound stopped him cold… A choking gurgle, a scratching from somewhere in the darkness ahead of him. Seeing nothing, Elias felt the weight of a presence leaden the air, tightening the blackness around the boy, sucking the breath from his lungs as the hair on his neck prickled.
Elias squinted with one eye into the darkness and saw... something. A squat, quivering shape, huddled in the corner of the basement, slavering and shifting its amorphous bulk. In the dim light, it was hard to make out details, but it seemed to be a large lump of flesh gathered together in a vaguely human configuration. A torso set on flipper-like feet. A knotted appendage - a sort of unformed arm - reached out to Elias, with two droopy fingers flexing and grasping.
Elias fell backwards, scrambling over gnawed animal bones and bits of dried fur toward the wall built of bricks as tall as a man. There was no way out. He was stuck down here, with... it.
The fleshy hump waddled forward, as a moan shook free from the thing. An opening appeared on the top part of the shape. Inside writhed a thick, fleshy worm... Not a worm - a tongue, surrounded by rows of cut ribs that formed three rows of teeth. An utterance bubbled from within it: an unpracticed voice, muffled and wet, drowning inside itself. “Wwwww….iiiill..?” the thing gurgled.
Elias covered his ears. The sound was too terrible to hear.
“Wiiill... yooou...?” it continued, battling through malformed flesh and fluid to form recognizable words.
Elias removed his hands from the sides of his head, curious by what had vaguely become human speech.
“Will you... siiing...?”
Elias was terrified, confused, but also captivated, for before him squatted something out of books, nightmares. “W-W-What?” he stammered.
“Will you... sing?” The creature’s voice became stronger, better defined. “Will you sing?” The thing shambled forward one step, its topside mouth firming around the words, body quivering with anticipation. “Of the… Half Made Thing?”
“I… don’t…” Elias whispered, unable to put into words what was happening in his brain, as his perception of what was reality and what was fairy tale suddenly inverted.
“I… do,” the thing said.
Elias found himself moving toward the creature, his heels carving grooves into the dirt. Nearing it, he reached out a hand and touched the thing, resting a palm on the sticky skin. A painful burst of images tunneled their way into Elias’ already swirling head. Impressions etched in secreted years flashed behind Elias’ eyes, branding those corners of the mind that transcended sight and dwelt in the halls of memory: The stink of noxious chemicals. Bubbling decanters. Jars of powder, ash, salts. Chants of necromancy. Inexplicable equations written in blood. An invitation screamed out into the void. The rending of matter, tearing of dream. A roar, a roar, a chorus of roars. Alchemy of the flesh. A consciousness sucked back into the light from the screaming abyss...
All at once, Elias knew how and why this thing came to be, and why it remained yet undone. Elias’ legs failed him and crumpled back onto the floor, his eyes wide, brain now teeming with arcane knowledge born in darker days of a blasphemous past erased from the visible libraries of the world. He wanted to tear at his hair, peel off his skin. Instead, he just wept, without knowing exactly why. For the loss of innocence, perhaps, or of sanity. Everything had been a lie, and he was ashamed at his ignorance.
“Will you… help me?” it said. A bloodshot eyeball emerged from the mass of slimy flesh. Elias turned his head to face the thing. The cyclopean eye stared directly into the hollow place that once housed Elias’ naïve soul, but was now bared to the elements like an open wound. “Will you… finish me?”
Tears streaming down his face, Elias nodded.
The thing shuddered, paused, and exhaled from somewhere deep inside the mass of twisted bone and musculature. Gathering itself, it shuffled over to the wall and threw its bulk against it with surprising strength. The bricks shattered and crumbled to the floor, revealing an alcove behind the wall, framed by tree roots leeching down from the forest above them. Elias joined it at the wall and pulled out the broken brickwork, glancing at the patches of hair and pustules covering the back of the thing next to him. Clearing away the last of the masonry from the opening, Elias reached inside and removed an incredibly old book, perfectly preserved and without a streak of dust marring the dark brown leather covering its front and back. Elias looked at the thing, which seemed to nod without the ability to do so. With shaking hands, Elias carefully opened the book and turned the brittle pages, finding cryptic diagrams, blasphemous images, and unreadable text written in a spidery language.
Elias shook his head. “I-I… can’t. I… don’t…” Words failed him again. This was all too much for a young boy to deal with. For anyone.
The thing quivered expectantly. “I will teach you.”
A grin crept across Elias’ face.
Days passed. Leaves on the towering larch and yew trees skipped the color change for the first time in decades and simply browned and fell dead to the earth. The mists outside the house increased, hailing the changing of the season from autumn to winter, which always seemed just due East of the North England coast, held at bay by Saxon magic against the Frost Giants of the great Northern Lands.
Elias spent his days with his personal tutor, a doddering old Scotsman who seemed terrified to contradict the boy or upset him in any way, either by order from the mistress of the house, or out of the reputation her family held in these parts, which Elias quickly learned lay somewhere between grudging respect and visceral horror. Either way, no one came to visit, and his father was constantly traveling with Marsila, or tending to her every fatuous whim when they were home, leaving Elias hours per day, and every night after dinner, to spend in the mill with his new companion, unloading his satchel with household chemicals, simple tools, and various bits of food scrounged from the rubbish bin.
And the boy used every second to gain his true education, quickly forgetting everything taught to him by the house tutor aside from those slices of arithmetic, physics, Latin, and folklore that he could use to augment what he learned while sitting at the feet of the Half Made Thing, which began to change, looking more human by the day, by the lesson, as Elias memorized and recited various incantations. They were having an effect to the point where, one night, as Elias arrived with ever more s
pecific supplies pilfered from the house attic and extorted from his tutor, that which could only be found in the nearby town, the Half Made Thing rose on a pair of rudimentary knee joints. The thing was becoming a man, or something very close to it. The heaving figure that bled mucous and blood from many of its unfinished portions, finally cracked a smile from the middle of an onion-like protrusion, and what passed for a laugh of triumph. The sound chilled Elias, excited him, filling him with a weird sort of pride that he thought must resemble what a father feels when looking at his child. He wondered if his father had ever felt this way about him, and didn’t need to wait for the answer.
The following night, the servants solemnly arranged a line of hollowed out turnips carved with fierce expressions on the front landing of the house, placing lit candles inside each one. It was All Hallows Eve, and every good Christian soul across the darkening countryside hurried back to their homes and living quarters and locked their doors tight.
Inside the house, Elias clutched candles of his own and a shaving razor as he crept down the second floor hallway with a full bag of supplies stolen from the local university archives slung over his shoulder. He carried a second, lighter bag in his free hand. He stopped at a sliver of light that cut into the hallway from inside the master bedroom. Strange noises came from within. Growling and barking, interspersed with the shrill, discordant sounds of a shepherd’s pipe. Elias moved to the crack in the door and looked inside.
The Dark Rites of Cthulhu Page 25
