A Mythos Grimmly

by Morgan Griffith

  I'd done it now. I’d clunked mama, but good, and now I was all by myself in the old farmstead. So I buried old mama behind the empty shed, turning up the remains of some old skeleton when I did so. That was a bit scary, but the place was old, had been in my family for a long time, so who knew? Then I buried some of the beans in the patch where we grew stuff for the kitchen, nothing great but it was all that would grow. Then I took the rest of the beans and I made myself a delicious stew, filled the jar the beans had come in with moonshine from the still in the cellar and drunk myself blind and unconscious.

  Next morning I gathered myself up and stumbled out towards the outhouse and that’s when I saw it. Ever since I can remember, only small, crooked things have grown here. Or anywhere. I can tell they’re small and crooked because mama and papa had a book of pictures of this very farm, from before. But even if they didn't, I think I'd know just looking at them.

  But I am forgetting to tell things in order. That was when I saw it, so different from anything else that had grown in my lifetime, even me. Tall, straight, strong, reaching up into the grey skies where it went on until it was lost in the haze.

  Sometimes when papa was still around we'd go to the township, and it was pretty blasted and bleak there too, all the houses looking like they were just old and tired and wanted to die and the people not much better. Small, twisted people; we were not much better, but it seemed the open spaces around us kept the air just a little bit cleaner. Still, township was where trade happened, where we could hand over a few lumpy, glowing taters and string beans and get clothes and things for the house in return.

  I was thinking about that when I saw the huge beanstalk growing in the farm that was now mine alone. The beans - so big, so many, in such bright, tempting colours. I'd seen nothing like it and I wagered that none of the townsfolk, uppity though they'd act when we used to bring them our produce, had either. Their eyes would go wide and round and they’d beg for the stuff. I'd be able to ask for anything I wanted - new milk glands that I could hook up in the kitchen, maybe my own meat vat. Maybe a bikercycle that I could ride around on instead of having to hump papa’s handcart around.

  First, I'd have some bean soup for myself. So I went up to the great big wonderful thing and cast about for a cluster of low-hanging beans. I noticed ridges in the stalk, or trunk or whatever, ridges and little sticky-out bits, like handles. I reached out and pulled on one of those bits. It remained stuck to the beanstalk. So I slid a foot into one of the ridges, then hauled myself up to a higher handle. Soon, before I even knew what I was doing, I was climbing up the beanstalk at a fair clip. Well, this was exciting. I’d once stood on Watchout Hill and seen the countryside stretch out in all directions, like a dirty hanky spread out all over the world, but my beanstalk went even higher. I wondered what I'd see. Maybe a better place, far far away.

  I was sweaty and hot after a long while climbing, so when I saw an alcove coming up, I grabbed a few beans and then pulled myself into the alcove for a rest and a snack. These beans were a lot bigger than the ones I'd traded from that man; they were just the right size to hold in the palm of my hand, the way I'd seen papa hold mama's boobs once. Now you usually boil beans in some water but these felt nice, soft but not too soft, like I could bite into them, so I did. The bean was chewy, with a firmer outer bit and a pulpy inner bit that was like nothing I had eaten before. It actually had a taste, for one thing, and it felt good, like it was giving me energy even as I was eating it.

  This must have been what food was like, before the world became so feeble. So feeble and ruined that even dungbrains like me who were born and raised in this world know it's a terrible place.

  Stronger now, I climbed again. I knew I was planning to go to the town, but climbing the beanstalk seemed a lot more exciting. I was full of beans, alien beans, full of alien beans and raring to go. I must have climbed most of the day, stopping now and then to rest and eat, because the sun was descending into the hills far away to the west, almost lost in the murk. The days were never very bright, and it should have been too dark to see more than a few inches in front of my face by now, but the stalk itself gave out a glow, a weird glow, no colour I’d ever seen before. I felt strength growing in me as the sun's light faded and the glow of the beanstalk grew brighter. I felt my limbs shift, I knew they were thinking about changing. I didn't know into what, but I was open to suggestions.

  My climb was finally at an end. I had reached a sort of plateau right at the top of the stalk. It was a wide, flat space, more or less circular, and right in the centre of it was a house. Not a house like the falling-over shack I lived in, or like the sad old heaps in town, sad old buildings that knew they'd lived on too long and should give up pretending they were still anything but heaps of junk. This was a big, beautiful house, grown from the same greeny stuff as the stalk itself, long, square house with two floors, lots of windows with see-through thin leafskins across them, the edges all wisping into beautiful green-yellow curly bits.

  The glow was stronger than ever. It seemed to spread out across the sky and the weirdest thing was that a light just like it, in that same colour I'd never seen before, seemed to be answering it, streaming out of an old dead well not too far from the farm.

  On the beanstalk plateau, holes were opening up in the surface and many plants and trees were starting to poke out of them. They didn't look like the things I knew, or the things I'd seen in old pictures, but they looked strong and healthy. Slowly, these things grew fruits, or nuts or things I didn’t have words for, and these exploded, sending seeds or spores flying through the air far and wide to fall on the earth below.

  Wherever they fell on the blasted, ashy ground, they started to grow and each of them cast the same glow around itself.

  All this was fascinating. I had been seeing so many new things since that day, just a day back but it seemed a lifetime ago, when I had met that crooked old man and he'd traded me the jar of beans for those old milk glands. Crazy old man, too, kept muttering to himself about ten thousand years of transformation, time for fruiting, or maybe he said fruition. I stopped thinking about him. So many new things, but they were feeling less and less strange.

  Right now, I wanted to see who or what lived in that house, so I walked right up to the big door in the middle of the ground floor and banged on it. It made a pulpy thudding sound. I waited a bit and then tried again. As I stood there, I could feel my bones moving inside my skin. I'd had a few growth spurts just a few years back, near the end of my boyhood, but these were faster, and without the pain. I put my hand out to bang on the door again, and I saw that it had become longer, with more joints, more fingers than I remembered. My skin was changing too, becoming glossy, smooth, and with that same glow all the plants and the beanstalk itself had. I felt the top of my head slowly narrowing and lengthening.

  I was not surprised by all this. There are human beings and there are alien beings. And now I knew which I was going to be. I saw the thousands of years since my people had sent that first seed of change, to transform this land. Saw the slow spread of the conditions we needed to live in, the soil changing, becoming grey, ashy, the water changing, the light changing. Saw the long millennia of what the humans called cataclysm, saw the ages of seeding.

  As the door opened, the last vestiges of the human whose form I had infiltrated and subverted actually joined with me in exultation. I think he/me knew that the human order was done. Thoughts of a pinched, meagre life, hungry and weak and so used to it you would never even know how frail and tired you were, of people made mean and wicked by the sheer grind of it all, of inbred bloodlines spawning weaker and weaker people, of the hatred and twisted love, the incest, the murder, the ugliness. Then, thoughts of strange action from a distance changing all that, changing the world, changing you. Changing into me.

  I walk through the halls of my palace. I am the first; there will be many more. But right now, I am the first man on this new earth, and I am ready to ascend my throne, to gaze out over this wo
rld, now my world. The light, so bright, so natural and right. The pretty colours all glowing. Colour, at last. Life, light and a world, a new world to create.

  What his fate would be, he did not know; but he felt that he was held for the coming of that frightful soul and messenger of infinity’s Other Gods …

  – H.P. Lovecraft

  The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

  ONE

  I am not the monster they think I am.

  I am an average, everyday guy, with an average, everyday job, and an average, everyday life. But they’re going to make me out to be something I’m not; they’re going to make me out to be an inhuman monster, a soulless and brutal and amoral killer.

  But that’s not me. I’m just an average, everyday guy.

  “So … Brendan – do you mind if I call you, Brendan, or do you prefer something else?”

  I kept my eyes on him, sizing him up. What kind of detective was he? What kind of cop was he? What kind of man was he?

  The detective was tall and lean, with a ruddy complexion on a narrow face and unkempt brown hair longer than most male cops. The face and hair made it difficult to pin down an age, but I put him in his mid-thirties. His clothes – a white button-down pinstripe Oxford shirt with a red and blue geometric print tie, jacked down at the neck, and wrinkled khakis – hung off his frame as if he had lost twenty-five or thirty pounds but hadn’t updated his wardrobe. His manner was easy and his smile genuine, but it could have been an act, given that his slate-blue eyes were hungry and calculating.

  I shrugged. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”

  “Brendan, I’m Detective Colson and my partner over there is Detective Rainford. We need to ask you some questions, is that all right with you?”

  I glanced quickly at the female investigator, Detective Rainford. She was short and very attractive, with skin the color of milk chocolate and a figure that in the 1950s would have been called statuesque. Her dark hair had a lustrous sheen and was stylishly pulled back, while her navy business suit had been tailored to accent her shape, and the white blouse was open at the neck with perhaps one button too many left unfastened. A simple gold cross on a delicate gold chain hung just in the start of the valley that defined her cleavage. I turned my attention back to Colson.

  “Is that one of the questions?”

  He smiled, but it was the kind of smile a person gave before they punched someone in the face.

  “If you want it to be, sure,” Colson said. “I know you’ve been read your rights and you don’t have to answer any questions, but I guess I didn’t realize we had a limit on the number that we could ask you.”

  I knew I had been set up – I was the patsy, served up on a shiny silver platter with all the trimmings – but that didn’t mean I had to go down willingly.

  “We can do this however you want, Brendan,” Colson said after the stare down ended with him glancing at Detective Rainford. “The choice is yours.”

  Colson was the only cop who had spoken so far in the interview room, but I didn’t think he was the one in charge. I turned my attention to Rainford and said, “Ask away.”

  “Brendan Lockhart, age thirty-seven, of 2001 Winchester Terrace, how long have you lived there?” Colson asked.

  Ignoring the question, I held my gaze on Rainford and her dark brown eyes. They were warm eyes, the kind that someone could get lost in and not want to find his way out. They held no compassion for me, however. In her mind, I was nothing but a monster in human form, already tried, convicted and on death row. I smiled and turned back to Colson.

  “A little more than eleven years, but I’m sure you already knew that.”

  He grinned at me, but it wasn’t a friendly expression. “What do you do for a living, Brendan?”

  “I’m the senior copywriter and editor for Braddock & Haynes. They’re a marketing and public relations firm.”

  “How long have you worked there?”

  “Almost seven years, the last three in my current position.”

  “And do you work downtown?”

  “I have a work area there, yes, but my job responsibilities allow me to work from home a great deal of the time.

  “That must be nice.”

  I gave him a one shoulder shrug. I was far more productive in my home office, away from the distractions of the corporate world, but I also worked far more hours than the forty I got paid for.

  “What do your duties entail at Braddock & Haynes? What do you do?”

  “Where is this going?” I asked. “I’m sure a quick Google search can tell you what a copywriter does. The title alone should tell you it’s a person who writes copy.”

  Colson glanced at Rainford from the corner of his eye before putting his stare back on me. “Does your job entail taking photographs?”

  “Sometimes, yes.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I often use photos to help me describe what I need to describe. The visual images help me put words to them.”

  “That’s interesting, and I can see how that would work,” Colson said. “It helps the creative process. It gets the creative juices flowing. Is that what it does?”

  I gave him a two-shoulder shrug. “If you say so.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to understand all this,” the detective said, apologetically. “Me … I’m not creative at all, and I can’t take a decent photo to save my life. The reports I write up are pretty boring, straight to the point without any catchy prose to liven them up. I’m sure Detective Rainford will attest to that, she’s the poor soul who has to read and sign off on them. Isn’t that right, Detective Rainford?”

  Her affirmative nod was barely perceptible, but her eyes never left me.

  “Do you consider yourself a good photographer, Brendan?” he asked.

  “I would say … good is a relative term.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Photographs that you think are good, Detective Rainford may not think are very good at all, and vice versa.”

  “So … it’s in the eye of the beholder, is that right?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Why pictures of the girl?” Colson asked. He leaned back in his chair but kept his eyes squarely on me.

  I knew I had to tread carefully on this one. Why did I have more than three hundred digital photographs of Maddey on my camera? I couldn’t say for sure, I’m not certain I knew, but all of them were candid shots taken without her knowledge or permission.

  “I wanted to help her,” I answered after rattling ideas around in my brain for what seemed like fifteen minutes. Hell, none of them even sounded good to me.

  “Help her?” The detective smiled at me. “Really? You wanted to help her?”

  “Yes, help her.”

  “How were you planning to do that by … by taking pictures of her?”

  “I … I gave her money …”

  Each detective arched eyebrow in surprise at that one.

  “… for food. I gave her money for food. I even bought her a meal one night.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, I …” I stopped mid-sentence because I really wasn’t helping myself. I decided to shut my mouth before I swallowed my entire leg along with my foot.

  “Now, why would …”

  “Tell me about the girl,” Detective Rainford said, interrupting Colson and joining the conversation for the first time since I was escorted into the room. “When did you first meet her?”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I glanced at the video recorder, red light glowing like a solitary crimson eye, in one corner of the brightly lit chamber.

  The windowless interview room was small, almost claustrophobic. The two detectives sat with the door at their backs on one side of the battered table that was bolted to the floor, while I sat on the other, nothing but a blank wall behind me. The air was warm with hints of sweat, urine and fear. It smelled of … desperation.

  How much should I tell them? How much could I tell them wi
thout sounding like a raving lunatic? It had happened to me, and I had a hard time believe it.

  I glanced at Colson. His cold eyes told me he wouldn’t dial 9-1-1 if he saw me on fire. I was something that repulsed and disgusted him. I was less significant than a piece of chewed gum stuck on the bottom of his leather hikers.

  So I turned my attention to Rainford, and her eyes held more promise. I could tell she genuinely wanted to hear what I had to say, but I held no illusion she would believe my words.

  I sighed out loud and begin to tell my story.

  TWO

  He usually ignored the street urchins in this part of the city, rarely looking at them and never making eye contact as he passed, but Brendan Lockhart knew she was different from the very first time he saw her.

  He could tell she was not the same as the other ragamuffin kids hanging out on the sidewalk just by looking at her, watching her, studying her. Lockhart saw it in the easy way she glided along the concrete and asphalt in the neon-lit night, the confident manner in which she approached targeted passersby to ask for a couple dollars, the clever way she appeared passive but took no crap from anyone else.

  He trolled down the street twice in his car before he parked it several blocks away and took to his feet.

  Lockhart’s heart hammered in his chest and his knees felt weak – he hoped he didn’t collapse face down on the concrete – as he rounded the corner. He spied the red hoodie a few blocks ahead, took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and began to walk.

  As he walked, dodging the odd-out pedestrian heading in the opposite direction, he tried to formulate a reason to talk with her. None of them sounded plausible in his mind, all sounded contrived and a couple came off downright creepy.

  He stopped and idly checked out the window displays of some shops as he headed toward her, but he had no clue what he actually looked at. The street contained a mish-mash of eclectic and esoteric stores that catered to a diverse clientele, but Lockhart repeated the process until he was about a half block away from the teen.